While meeting with the public over the winter to plan its fund-raising kickoff rally for Sept. 11, representatives of the United Way of Eastern Maine were interested to hear a recurring theme about modern small-town life.

While the residents all said they were immensely proud of their towns, they also were concerned that the community spirit that made those towns so special was waning. Most of their civic-minded leaders, the ones who always seemed to roll up their sleeves and get things done in their community over the decades, tended to be the aging members of the World War II generation.

When they were gone, taking with them their lifelong commitment to community service and the welfare of their neighbors, what would inspire the younger generations to come forward to fill their shoes, to become the new lifeblood of their towns? Recalling last year’s United Way rally at Bass Park in Bangor, just two days after the terrorist attacks, the board members realized they had seen that very kind of humanitarian spirit in abundance. The rally drew about 2,000 people, about twice the usual number.

“People just needed to come together that day,” said Jeff Wahlstrom, the United Way president. “The whole community felt helpless. We were all struggling with what we could do. There was a great need to reach out and help.”

The theme of this year’s campaign, Acts of Kindness, is an effort to tap into that reserve of generosity, to expand it beyond a single tragic anniversary date and make it the habit of a lifetime.

“We thought that the best way to nurture the feeling from last September 11 was to make this a day of caring and community service,” Wahlstrom said. “There will be any number of ways for people to observe the anniversary, but we wanted to give them a chance to feel better in a tangible way, as they did when they gave blood last year. We’d like to see community service become a tradition in people’s lives.”

It’s a big campaign goal that’s being launched in the smallest ways. The United Way is asking people to pledge themselves to performing simple acts of kindness in their communities. The displays of compassion and caring can take any form, and need not be part of a large, time-consuming volunteer project.

“There are all kinds of ways for people to help one another,” Wahlstrom said. “You could just take a casserole to someone at the hospital, or rake the lawn of an elderly neighbor. The idea is to be kind and helpful to one another, to reach out beyond ourselves.”

The opportunities for kind deeds are limitless, he said. You could collect bottles and cans and donate the money to charity. Give blood or simply write a check to the Red Cross in appreciation of the critical role it played after the 9-11 attacks. Go through your attic and find items to donate to The Salvation Army. Volunteer to be a Christmas bell-ringer, walk the dog of a shut-in neighbor, help carry the groceries for an elderly person at the supermarket.

“It would be nice to think that one day we could use the occasion of September 11 not so much as a memorial of a tragic event but as a celebration of a renewed sense of community in Maine,” Wahlstrom said. “Rather than a day of sadness, we can honor what a community can do when it works together. It might not change the volunteering patterns of older adults, who are set in their ways, but maybe it will instill in youngsters a strong spirit of community they can carry into the future. Maybe they’ll turn out to be the that next generation of volunteers after all.”