To listen to Minnesotans, you would think that Iowa, their immediate neighbor to the south, was a foreign country.

But before you get upset at the characterization, I’ve found the reverse to be just as true. Most Iowa residents seem to have no idea what their neighbors to the north are doing. I can say that. I live there.

So, when I talk of Iowa late governor, Robert Ray, you need to know this: He was one of Iowa’s greatest leaders, but the lessons he taught are ones we all can use, no matter where we live.

His achievements and accomplishments are particularly poignant during what I’ve come to think of as “the mean season” in our government. Ray — who served an unprecedented five terms — did not know about mean. And he still got the job done.

When Ray, 89, passed away from Parkinson’s disease earlier this month, the tributes were long and heartfelt. To be honest, we often paint those who have passed with a heavier brush than they might deserve. But Ray deserved every bit of it. His call for doing what was right was always accompanied by action.

When Iowans speak of Ray, they speak of his civility — do we even know what that word means these days? — as well as other qualities that we’ve seemed to have lost as of late: compassion, courage and class.

Ray, a Republican, served a portion of his tenure as governor during the Vietnam era, taking the governor’s chair in 1969 after a hard-fought campaign and surviving a plane crash. Ray wasn’t as worried about his campaign chest as he was about just doing the right thing, and was known for his ability to work with opposing sides to accomplish great things. He helped to institute a new education funding formula and helped form the state’s community college system. He worked for a new energy policy in response to the energy crisis in the 1970s. He helped to establish Iowa Public Television and helped to form the Iowa Department of Transportation.

If Ray will be remembered for all those things, another accomplishment eclipses them all. The compassion he showed for the Southeast Asian refugee populations trying to escape death and tyranny in the 1970s resulted in programs that welcomed thousands of refugees into Iowa — not a politically savvy move, some said at the time, but Ray was always led by a moral compass and common sense.

“I didn’t think we could just sit here idly and say, ‘Let those people die’. We wouldn’t want the rest of the world to say that about us if we were in the same situation … Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you,” he was quoted as saying at the time.

He was deeply moved after visiting the camps, seeing the plight of the boat people and the many that died waiting to escape tyranny and the Khymer Rouge. The Des Moines Register, in its recounting of Ray’s life, said one of Ray’s most impressive moments came when speaking to his own church’s national conference in St. Louis of the refugee struggles, “in which he challenged the faithful to fulfill the moral imperative represented by the ‘Show Me State’ motto.

“‘Don’t tell me of your concerns for these people when you have a chance to save their lives. Show me,’” Ray said. “‘Don’t tell me how Christian you are. Show me.’” His compassion knew no borders.

When Ray retired, he pursued a number of business interests and public duties, including service to the board of directors for Drake University as well as serving a short time as its president. Concerned about health care and mental health, he served on presidential advisory boards for those issues. He served as U.S. representative to the United Nations. He earned countless awards, presidential invitations to join cabinets, which he declined. Iowa was his home and Iowa was where he stayed.

We need more people like Robert Ray, who are ready to stand and be counted and to work hard for neighbors — both existing, and those we’ve yet to meet. People who lead with a handshake and an unshakeable belief that we can, if we act on our conscience, be a stand-up member of our global neighborhood -— that we are great, and we are people who do the good things, the right things, when needed.