Mapping out the motorcade route. Check. Arranging for a police escort. Check. Asking Marty Candon to chauffeur the homecoming dignitary in Candon's red Volkswagen convertible. Check. Corralling a welcoming party of 300 elementary school students. Baking hundreds of cupcakes. Finding two plastic kiddie pools in the back of Dan & Whit's general store, cupping them together, and painting them gold to create a huge Olympic medallion. Buying 200 miniature American flags that normally sell for 79 cents apiece at a hardware store across the river, but these are for Hannah, anything for Hannah, so let's say 49 cents each. Check, check, check and check. Two weeks ago, on a slushy night on the other side of the continent, an American freestyle skier named Hannah Kearney zigged and zagged down a rutted slope, did a flip, zagged some more and then launched herself again to perform a helicopter turn. She seemed to float in the Vancouver air. Kearney returned to earth to win the gold medal in women's mogul skiing, the first for the United States in this year's Winter Olympics and the first ever for her hometown of Norwich, where cheers disrupted the hush of that February night. A gold medal does not ease the recession, or bring the troops home, or dry the tears from quake-shaken Haiti. It will not end the small-town political quarrels here in Norwich, where argument, for some, is a form of aerobic exercise. It cannot reverse time to the moments before another Olympic hopeful from Norwich, the gifted snowboarder Kevin Pearce, suffered a brain injury while training on New Year's Eve. But a gold medal -- or, better yet, a young woman who has won a gold medal -- provides her proud Vermont town with a reason to pause and freshly consider the hoary lessons about hope, and resolve, and what is meant by community. So when a few people asked whether anyone was interested in throwing Hannah a homecoming party, the answer was yes -- times 3,500, the town's population. Yes to the 'Congratulations, Hannah' posters planted in the sidewalk snow. Yes to the yellow sweatshirt reserved for Hannah and laid out for people to sign at Dan & Whit's, the nerve center of Norwich. Yes to the addition of sweat pants once the sweatshirt ran out of room for signatures. Yes. Norwich is a small but Olympian town, having dispatched nearly a dozen athletes to the Winter Games over the last half-century. Send-off ceremonies are so common that when Marty Candon's son was young, he just assumed that every American town sent a representative to the Olympics. Hannah received her send-off last month from the town green's new bandstand, the construction of which had been good for about a year's worth of squabbling. She left with a plastic bag containing the cheers of students from the town's elementary school, her alma mater, across the green. The next thing Norwich knew was: Hannah did it. Hannah, who lives down the main road; who must have started skiing when she was in the womb; whose mix of decency and determination was displayed in Wendy Thompson's third-grade class, in Tracy Smith's art class, in everything she did around town. She now wears gold; those bagged cheers had worked. The Norwich Recreation Council soon announced plans for a homecoming on the town's Internet community board, used by moneyed retirees, muck-covered farmers and middle-class Janes and Johns. So many people offered to help that Aimee Goodwin, the event's food coordinator, had too many offers to bake goodies, but did not have the heart to turn any of them down. By Thursday, the day before The Day, much had come together, yet much hinged on the weather. What if the approaching winter storm meant no school? What if it rained hard enough to wash the kindergartners from the town green? What if Hannah's evening flight was canceled? In the Town Hall, Jill Kearney, Hannah's mother and the town's recreation director, fidgeted with excitement. Her office, festooned with boxes of baseballs and stacks of plastic soccer cones, was now decorated in 21st Century Olympian, with photographs of Hannah on the walls and a USA Olympic jacket hanging from a hook. All of it hard-earned. Hannah's travails are well known here: the disappointing performance in the 2006 Olympics; the subsequent knee surgery; the concussion that ended an imperfect back flip, giving the Kearney family only the smallest sense of what the Pearce family is going through, as their Kevin works toward recovery. All the while, Hannah kept coming back, coming back -- and now she was coming back to Norwich. On Thursday night, as rain fell and the wind whipped, some volunteers collected the kiddie-pool medallion from Smith's art room and draped it over the bandstand. Meanwhile, some homecoming volunteers discussed last-minute details in the Town Hall, where, the night before, a meeting of the Selectboard, or town council, was canceled because it could not muster a quorum -- thanks to another brewing quarrel. But this was a night for planning a celebration, not settling a score. 'Should we start with the weather?' asked Chris Healy, the lead coordinator and a father of three. 'Most people are saying we can handle it.' 'She won it in pouring rain,' answered Pete Webster, the town manager. 'It would be fitting.' The volunteers moved on to other matters. The motorcade stops that would first be made in Hanover, N.H., across the river, where Hannah attended middle and high school. The reserved parking for the governor. The delivery of the custom-made cakes from Ben & Jerry's, because The Day was also Hannah's 24th birthday. Check, check, check. Through the night, the gusting wind pounded against Dan & Whit's general store, the Norwich Inn and the lightweight kiddie-pool medallion dangling from the bandstand. But Friday morning arrived dry and sporadically sunny, although Smith had to take the medallion down to bang out dents and do some touch-ups with gold spray paint. By noon the town's bandstand, once a symbol of contention, had become a buzzing hive of anticipation. Two men tested the sound system, while a woman ventured up a ladder to hang an American flag. A Lion's Club member looked for an appropriate place to display another 'Congratulations, Hannah' sign. Three sixth-grade girls -- Lilly, Kelly and Emily -- practiced a trumpet fanfare that included strains to what has become the Olympic anthem, Leo Arnaud's 'Bugler's Dream.' By 1:45, the kiddie-pool medallion was back in place. Phil Dechert, the town planner, was standing guard on Main Street, making sure no one parked in that space for the governor. On the green, two signs dedicated specifically to Kevin Pearce -- 'You're an Olympic hero in our hearts' -- were on prominent display. Then word rippled through the crowd: Hannah's motorcade had left Hanover. Soon there came the sirens of her police escort, followed by a spot of red in the distance: Marty Candon's convertible. Sitting high in the passenger seat, waving with her right hand and holding aloft a chunk of gold with her left, was the birthday girl. She climbed out of the car and walked toward the bandstand, amid chants of 'Hannah!' and 'USA' She slapped high-fives with dozens of students, took photographs of people taking her photograph, and paused to hug Thompson, her third-grade teacher. There would be speeches. But first Hannah Kearney, along with the hundreds gathered on the slushy town green, paused to hear three sixth-grade girls with trumpets play music that seems to demand the best of us. 