By Birgitta Wolfe, Managing Editor
BORDENTOWN CITY Sometimes superheroes emerge in times of tragedy and a lot of times those superheroes turn out to be just plain folks, neighbors, colleagues.
In the case of the Feb. 16 school bus crash in Chesterfield that killed an 11-year-old girl and maimed three other children, there is a crowd of heroes who on their own are staging benefits, sales, dinners anything that comes to mind to help the two devastated families, the Tezslas and the Zdybels.
Among that crowd is an outfit with the counterintuitive name of the Successful Failures. It’s a four-man rock band that plans to hold a benefit concert onFriday, March 30, with all the proceeds going to the two Chesterfield families.
The Tezslas’ daughter, Isabelle, died when her school bus collided with a dump truck. Her sisters were injured and are undergoing rehabilitation therapy. Jonathan Zdybel, 11, will also undergo therapy once he is released from Cooper Hospital.
The concert will be at The Record Collector, 358 Farnsworth Ave. Tickets are $12 at the door, $10 in advance. The M.E.R.C.K band is on at 7:45 p.m. and The Successful Failures take over at 8:30 p.m.
Mick Chorba, the band’s singer and guitarist, said about half of the tickets are already sold and he’s hoping the rest go quickly. The Record Collector hall holds about 100 people.
”It’s one of the coolest venues. There’s no bar, you just go there to listen to the music,” he said.
Mr. Chorba, of Recklesstown Way, Chesterfield, is an eighth-grade English teacher at Northern Burlington Middle School and knows the Zdybels because he gave private guitar lessons to their daughter, Kaitlyn. His son, Ben, is a fourth-grader at the Chesterfield Elementary School.
The day of the accident sent shock waves through the community, he recalled.
”As a teacher, I can only compare it to 9/11. It had the same kind of vibes,” he said. “Everyone in town is doing what they can to help out and this concert is our way of pitching,” he said.
The Successful Failures, which formed in 2006, had already signed up the hall to celebrate the April 3 release of its new CD album called “Here I Am.” But after the accident, decided to turn it into a benefit.
The schoolteacher also runs a recording studio out of his house. The band does live recording, it’s not into computer technology, he said. The band members are Ron Bechamps on bass, Rob Martin on drums and John Williams on guitar.
Mr. Chorba’s 10-year-old son is already playing sax and a little guitar.
”He’s got a knack for music.”
The theme of the Successful Failures’ new album, “I Am Here,” he said, is the drama of comic book-type action heroes there’s a song about Mickey Mantle’s knees.
But as the community has come to know, there are many kinds of action heroes.

