We all come up with an unending supply of dumb, irrational, impractical and irritatingly banal ideas for stories or projects that cause people who work for us to pat us on the head and suggest we get some more rest.

I certainly come up with more than my share of silly proposals, but now and then, under the premise that even a blind squirrel finds a chestnut every once in a while, a good idea emerges.

It’s not unlike the theory that if you put a chimpanzee in front of a typewriter long enough, eventually, by sheer chance, he’s going to peck out the entire text of "Gone With the Wind."

It was just such a brainstorm in early May that led to what I believe to be the best thing this newspaper did all year.

Actually, we did a lot of nifty stuff in 2004. We worked in conjunction with the League of Women Voters and the State University College at Oneonta to encourage people to vote and even published a form that folks could cut out and send in to register.

Our reporters kept the public informed about the issues, and we were happy to have several candidates for local office talk to our editorial board.

We tried mightily to restrict our opinions to the editorial pages and continued to offer columnists from the left and the right of the political spectrum.

About 2 1/2 years ago, we began a series of community forums in which we asked people we interview about various subjects to help us do our jobs better. We’ve had seven meetings, including three in 2004, and they’ve gone a long way toward greater understanding between the newspaper and its sources of information.

We covered tragedies, trials and triumphs, and always found room on the front page for "On the Bright Side" features that reminded us that so many people in our area are performing unprovoked act of kindness year-round.

But I think the best thing we did was create a World War II "Roll of Honor," commemorating the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

The idea was to pay homage to all the heroes — living or dead — of World War II who have ever lived in Otsego, Delaware, Chenango and Schoharie counties.

I refer to them as heroes because that’s what they are. I don’t care if they held out in Bastogne during the "Battle of the Bulge" or spent the war years cleaning latrines at Fort Dix, they did their bit when democracy itself was at such great risk.

With American World War II veterans dying at the rate of 1,100 every day, we wanted to do this project before it was too late.

We contacted many veterans organizations and asked our readers to send us names. To be honest, I never expected that we would get more than a few hundred.

We wound up with more than 5,000.

Phone calls, e-mails, faxes, post-office mail and people who visited our offices contributed to the terrific outpouring of interest in this project.

Many relatives of those who had died during or since the war were kind enough to include their reminiscences along with names. They were welcome reminders to us that there were real people with real personalities behind every name.

Daily Star Librarian Deb McCaffery really knocked herself out as the point person compiling the names. Several of her Daily Star colleagues also did yeoman’s work on the project.

I’m sure there were moments (or entire days) when Deb and her cohorts had wished their editor had not come up with an idea that meant so much work, but not one of them ever complained.

The list remains linked on the home page of The Daily Star’s website (www.thedailystar.com).

Perhaps the most significant thing to me is that since the June 5-6 publication of those 5,000-plus names, we’ve had dozens of requests to add the names of some of those we missed to our website. We have been honored to do so, and will continue to as long as anyone requests it.

It illustrates that many of "The Greatest Generation" who live in "The Heartland of New York" find value in the Roll of Honor and want those names preserved for the generations to come.

I think everyone can agree that’s a pretty good idea.

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Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.