If gravity is the force that pulls us down, then kindness is the force that pulls us up, Values-in-Action founder, CEO and President Stuart Muszynski said in welcoming 500 dinner guests to Values-in-Action’s Values Matter Awards Dinner on June 10 at Landerhaven in Mayfield Heights.
Muszynski, who with his wife, Susan, founded Values-in-Action in 2012 as a spinoff from their Project Love Remember the Children Foundation, chose as the evening’s theme “Defying Gravity,” based on the song from the musical, “Wicked,” which pulsated in post-dinner videos introducing five Values-in-Action 2026 award recipients.
Muszynski, a congregant of Oheb Zedek Cedar Sinai Synagogue in Lyndhurst, compared kindness to pushing a boulder up a hill.
“Everyone is carrying a weight,” he said. “So, be the person. Be that difference. Let’s create a United States of Kindness.”
Celebrated with the 2026 Rescuer of Humanity Award, Jonathan Ornstein, CEO of the Jewish Community Centre in Krakow, Poland, was that person, introduced by Jewish Federation of Cleveland board member Suellen Kadis as the “right man at the right time in the right place doing all the right things.”
JCC Krakow has led the resettlement of 500,000 Ukrainians who fled their country following the Russian invasion in 2022, helping house, feed and clothe them, providing trauma care, career training and language classes. Ninety-nine percent are non-Jews.
“When war broke out in Ukraine, he felt responsible,” Kadis said. “There was no one to help refugees.”
That he was Jewish mattered because unlike neighboring Europeans’ post-Holocaust response, Ornstein said he wanted the strangers to feel welcome in his adopted country. A native New Yorker, Ornstein immigrated to Israel in 1994, served in the Israel Defense Forces, and moved to Poland in 2001.
That Krakow is but 40 miles from Auschwitz mattered, too, Ornstein said in his acceptance speech. He said that of the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, 3.1 million were Polish.
“Ninety percent of my community was murdered,” he said. “Look around. That percentage means that of 90% of the people in this room, only four tables would be left.”
Which led him to pose another question: how do you kill 6 million people?
“How do you do that,” he asked. “Killing one person is hard. One bomb doesn’t kill six million people. How do you find people over five years?”
The answer, he said, boiled down to one word: indifference.
“The world stood by – Poland, the U.K., the U.S. – they remained silent,” he said.
“We have a choice. No one cared. No one helped us – so because we have knowledge of the horror of murder, it gives us the responsibility to stand up and prevent stuff to others. Our living memory provides life-saving support.”
“Eighty years later, our community is giving refugees a chance, new hope,” he said. “We feel lucky that our community that has been a symbol of tragedy and loss is now a center of life. I am incredibly grateful of our work and proud to receive this award.”
The first of three local awards went to Paul H. Carleton, managing partner of Carleton McKenna, who was the recipient of the Gordon E. Heffern Award for Values, Ethics and Community.
“I’m deeply honored,” Carleton said in his acceptance speech. “I accept this award with gratitude and humility. You never know how far a single act of kindness will travel.”
Their winning reflections on the meaning of kindness earned Grant Lee of Solon High School and Sophia Lopez of Cedarville High School near Springfield the Eric Scott Russell Student Kindness Award, which recognizes students who consistently demonstrate kindness, caring and mutual respect in interactions with their peers and adults.Lee and Lopez were chosen to host a “Kick Off for Kindness” video viewed in a half-million high schools nationwide in February through VIA’s partnership with the NFL Foundation.
Vincent Delie, chairman, president and CEO of F.N.B. Corp. and First National Bank, received the Malden Mills Corporate Kindness Award in absentia, with Boyd K. Pethel, First National Bank’s executive vice president of metro markets and Ohio regional president, accepting it for him.
“He’s passionate, caring and leads with empathy and kindness,” Pethel said of Delie. “We should all do it, but we don’t. I love Values-in-Action. I want to make the world a kinder place. Sign me up for that. Sign me up every day.”
The family of the late Michael Gibbons, Values-in-Action board chair from 2023 to 2025, accepted the Heffern-Meyer Family Legacy Award in his memory. Ohio State Rep. Matt Huffman of Lima recalled the time that Gibbons, wearing a tux en route to a formal dinner, stopped to help three women change a flat tire, arriving late and disheveled.
“That’s how he defied gravity,” he said. “He wanted Ohio to be ‘the kindness state.’”
At the evening’s outset, Muszynski invited all to be part of Values-in-Action’s “United States of Kindness” initiative by completing 250 acts of kindness this year in honor of the nation’s 250th birthday. He calculates that 250 billion acts of kindness can change a nation.
“’Values in Action,’ or ‘via,’ is a small but powerful word. Our ‘via’ is our way forward when the path is not easy,” Stewart Kohl, Values-in-Action advisory board chair, said. “Let’s go out and push kindness.”