We all know that feeling when the daily planner has filled up with obstacles, and e-mail and voice mail is overflowing with conundrums and impossible requests. Nothing is easy, and the day is too short. We really could use someone with the energy, the imagination, and the connections to get things done. Someone with the fresh and youthful approach. Someone like a couple of ageless women we know.

Julia Wasserman and Mae Schmidle will be honored on Sunday, June 28, at a public reception in the Great Hall at the Congregational Church on West Street. The event is co-sponsored by the Newtown Health District and the local Visiting Nurses Association — a couple of organizations quite familiar with obstacles and conundrums that have grown and thrived nonetheless, thanks to the preternatural enthusiasms and countless able assists of these two women.

They both are politically deft after years of stepping up and stepping forward as volunteers and elected officials in Newtown and then honing those public skills for decades more in the General Assembly in Hartford. Both have remarkable personalities and are tough and persuasive, each in her own way. Mrs Schmidle, a born promoter, and advocate for all things Newtown, raised the town’s profile, and, not incidentally, the cause of its famous flag in the middle of Main Street where it stands today with full state recognition and protection thanks to her efforts. Mrs Wasserman, while not shy in the least, proved to be the consummate behind-the-scenes agent for consensus and progress, negotiating with considerable skill and grace the tricky business of securing for Newtown the Fairfield Hills campus and associated tracts of open land.

Our point, without launching into the voluminous litany of their good work for Newtown and the State of Connecticut, is that Julia Wasserman and Mae Schmidle give us hope for the future even though their record of service is so intrinsic to our town’s past accomplishments. The challenges we face as a community in the coming decades will require great reserves of intelligence, tenacity, resourcefulness, and good humor. We cannot say that it cannot be done because of the example of these two women.

So, regardless of what you find in your daily planner on Sunday, clear away the obstacles and make time to stop by the Congregational Church sometime between 2 and 4 pm to express your appreciation to these two remarkable public servants. And if you happen to be wrestling with a conundrum, do yourself a favor and ask for their advice.