Unsung Hero: Rich Cromwell, connecting with Cambodian kids

Photo: Roger S. Duncan / For The Forecaster: Rich Cromwell of Brunswick has traveled widely across Asia and Africa providing hope and help to children and families across the world. Roger S. Duncan / For The Forecaster

By David Treadwell
Mar 05, 2012

Their children are a drug like no other. The tykes poured out of their huts, running to road’s edge with their scruffy, smiling faces and ragged clothes, hollering “Hello” and “Bye-Bye” and waving until I thought they’d break a wrist. I often had big alligator tears of joy smudging my sunglasses.

BRUNSWICK — Rich Cromwell wrote these words in 2010 after a long bike ride through the remote corners of Southeast Asia.

Along the way his encounter with children in a Cambodian orphanage forever changed his life.

Cromwell did not make the trip to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to have his life transformed. An adventurous sort, he had taken many bike trips since his retirement in 2005, including a ride down the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico and a 1,000-mile ride across southern Spain.

During his ride through a floating village on Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia, a group of excited kids in yellow T-shirts rushed up to greet him. They invited him inside the orphanage where they lived. Read the rest of the article and see more pictures at The Forecaster.