Editorial: the Touch of the Year. The Year of the Touch

Photo: Dmitri Kotjuh / Järva Teataja

As each year comes to its close, the editorial board at Postimees pick a person whom we wish to compliment on remarkable things done. The name is announced when the year’s over. Yesterday, we did it for the eighteenth time around.

The tradition was started with the magazine Luup and after the example back then of the US journal Time which has handed its yearly title ever since 1927 to those who most impacted the year – for the good and for the bad.

Over the years, we’ve had heated debates among the staff if we could also pick some bad impact people. Also, we have debated whether we could hand the award to someone who has impacted the world while in no direct touch with Estonia.

All eighteen picks point to what we have arrived at: the title comes as credit for good deeds in some way linked to Estonia.

For the most part, we have explicitly picked a definite person while realising there were other dedicated ones behind the scene. There are the few exceptions. In 2004, we elected the Estonian Soldier in Iraq to recognise our professional military along with the faith and hope in their loved ones. In 2006, we proclaimed the animated film «Lotte from Gadgetville» as deed of the year, to respect the emphasis of values – goodness and honesty, inventiveness and humour – to children in Estonia. 

Not on a single occasion has picking the person of the year been smooth. To the contrary, the passions have always flared. Even with basic principles more-or-less established, fiery words fly. Might the person of the year be a sportsman, a businessman, a musician, a scientist, a writer, or even a national official? Or the first Estonian mountaineer to climb the highest peak? Over the years, this has varied a lot. Some of the people would be household names in Estonia. Lots of picks, however, have been in order to recognise remarkable dedication and deeds which will not draw the daily limelight – still serving to lift Estonia and its people to a new level.

Yesterday, Hirvo Surva – Postimees Person of the Year 2014 – extended his thanks to all his fellow workers and said the Song Celebration miracle happens as every single participant adds a piece of their soul, the miracle this a mosaic of all. True, modesty is yet another virtue shared by the persons of the years.

The big question, however, remains: would all the miracles happen without someone providing the push? In all probability, a «Touched by Time. The Time to Touch» this wonderful would never been without the gentleman in question. A man does matter!