Harlingen, Texas, January 5, 2010 -- It was only a brief
news report, when it should have been a banner headline.
An eight-year-old girl used her Christmas vacation to
collect 251 new and used winter coats for people who
would suffer in the frigid cold of January. Here in the
Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where thousands of people
are impacted by living in one of the most economically
disadvantaged regions of the country, there are at least
251 people who will have a warmer winter because of one
little girl, the current
Little Miss San Benito, eight-year-old Zaralegui Guzman.
At the time I heard about this child and her coat
campaign, I was reading the words of best selling author
Dean Koontz. In his novel, From The Corner of His Eye
Koontz writes, “Not one day in anyone's life is an
uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no
matter how dull and boring it may seem, no matter
whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy
or a movie, a renowned philosopher or a Down's-syndrome
child. Because in every day of your life, there are
opportunities to perform little kindnesses to others,
both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example.”
Those tender moments of kindness are all around us.
Events such as this are happening every day of our
lives, but we seldom hear about them because of the
media credo of “If it bleeds-It leads!”
You seldom hear about people like Bobby Johnson, a
hairdresser in Columbia, Missouri. One of her steady
customers went through the trauma of breast cancer.
Bobby was there for her at the times she was the lowest.
The beautician provided her customer with a foundation
of emotional and spiritual support. Bobby's birthday
arrived and with it came a special gift, a check for
$5,000. The customer remains unnamed.
Nor are we often told about preschool children such as
those in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, who went to businesses
and friends with gifts of cookies...and raised more than
$150 so less fortunate children could have a Merry
Christmas.
On the morning of December 30 Elsie Clark was in the
Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and in trouble. The 79 year
old, wheelchair bound, lady had been left at the wrong
gate by a careless porter and had missed her flight home
to Canada. Then she was wrongly placed on a flight to
Chicago. When the flight arrived in the Windy City there
was no scheduled departure to Canada until the next day.
Elsie was trapped and would have been forced to spend
the night in the terminal.
Dean Germeyer, who had visited with her during the
flight to Chicago overheard the situation and
instead...took Elsie home. His wife fed her. They took her
on a guided tour of the city, placed her in a quality
downtown hotel and arranged for her to be taken to her
flight the next morning. As they departed, Germeyer told
the elderly woman, who lives on a fixed income, not to
worry about the bill as it had already been paid.
There are special acts, big and little, that are
happening all around us. Shirley Johnson of Waxahachie,
Texas anonymously arranged for a young friend to get a
much-needed tank of gas. Someone paid for Martha Staby's
62nd wedding celebration in Loveland, Colorado. In Chevy
Chase, Maryland, Patricia Jager and her husband managed
to be on time for a cruise trip, only because a stranger
carried the elderly couple's luggage to the ship.
All of these things happened because, even in these dark
and depressing days, people care about other people.
When all of our commentary and news seems to be about
the degradation of mankind, it is a small joy to learn
about unknown individuals reaching out to touch the
lives of others.
Martha Burnham of San Saba, Texas and her granddaughter
were returning home to Sweetwater three hours away, when
they found their car wouldn't start. Two young men,
Orrin Romine and Cody Slayton from Texas State Technical
College of West Texas, asked if they could help. They
discovered the starter motor needed to be replaced.
Martha didn't even have the $132 it would take to
replace the motor, so the boys went to a local junkyard,
found a replacement part and repaired the damage. When
Martha told them she would send them a check, they
wouldn't even give her their address. They just said,
“All we want you to do is pass the act of kindness on to
someone else.”
As Koontz write, “Each small act of kindness – even just
words of hope when needed or the remembrance of a
birthday, a complement that engenders a smile –
reverberates across great distances and spans of time,
affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit
was the source of this good echo...”Happy New Year. |
