Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 30, 1995 TAG: 9501310011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For more than 20 minutes I sat in the car, waiting for someone to stop and ask if I needed help. The cars in the right lane just blew past me. The cars in the left hammered their horns in anger, despite my flashing emergency lights.
There didn't seem to be a phone nearby.
I figured if I got out of the car that someone was bound to take pity.
But still 20 minutes passed and the cavalry never came.
Until finally a man stopped his car. He was on his way to Kroger to pick up some things for his mother, he told me.
With just a smile and a comment that I seemed to need help, this man single-handedly pushed my car - backward and uphill - into the VARO Credit Union parking lot.
He volunteered to drive me home, but I felt I should stick near the car and get it towed. So he drove me to the nearest phone, up the road a bit at a convenience store.
``Do you have any money?'' he asked as I got out of the car.
Nope. I'd locked my wallet in the car.
He opened up his wallet and handed me $5. And he refused to give me his name so that I could return the money.
``Maybe someday you can just return the favor by doing the same for someone else,'' he suggested as he got back into his car.
My father died rather suddenly last May. Until you've lost a parent, you really don't quite know how strongly this can affect you.
When my mother passed away - suddenly of cancer four years ago - it wasn't until Mother's Day came that it hit me what had happened:
I didn't have a mother any more.
When Dad died just a few weeks short of Father's Day, I was braced for how that holiday would feel.
But I wasn't prepared for the kindness of a friend with whom I'd spoken a year or two earlier about Mother's Days without moms.
When I got home on Sunday afternoon on Father's Day, there was a ``Thinking of you'' card taped to my front door with a message inside to call if I felt like I wanted to talk.
This friend - a father himself - had taken time out of his own holiday to drive all the way across town to make me smile on a day I hadn't much felt like smiling.
I was headed north on I-581 when a man pulled up next to me and rolled down his window pointing at my car. We were both going 55 mph (at least), and it took him quite awhile to gesticulate his message:
One of my rear tires was nearly flat.
The next morning, a woman loading her laundry into a tan Lincoln outside the Skyline Cleaners on Main Street in Salem walked back into the cleaners and looked around.
``One of your rear tires is nearly flat,'' she told me. I'd forgotten all about it. When I thanked her she said, ``We gotta look out for one another. Especially us women.''
The woman was right. We gotta look out for one another.
Last year we asked you to look for the best in each other, and you found plenty. More than 200 readers wrote or called to thank friends and neighbors - but most of all strangers - for kind acts above and beyond the call of duty. People you might not have had a chance thank simply because you didn't know them.
It's time to launch our second annual Kindness Revolution.
Take the next three weeks to reflect back on those who have somehow helped you out and made your day.
Divorce. Homelessness. Abuse. Cruelty. It's all out there.
But for the next three weeks, focus on random acts of kindness you witness. And never forget the old Irish proverb that it is in the shelter of each other that all people live.
To join the Kindness Revolution, write or call and tell us all about someone who has done something special above and beyond the call of duty. Stories of strangers helping strangers are particularly special, because maybe they'll read about themselves here and find they made a difference.
The Kindness Revolution deadline is Feb. 14. Call 981-3351 to tell your story by phone, or write to the Kindness Revolution, c/o the features department, Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, Va. 24010-2491.
by CNB