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As I walked home one freezing day, I stumbled on a wallet someone had lost in the street. I picked it up and looked inside to find some identification so I could call the owner. But the wallet contained only three dollars and a crumpled letter that looked as if it had been in there for years.
The envelope was worn and the only thing that was legible on it was the return address. I started to open the letter, hoping to find some clue. Then I saw the dateline--1924. The letter had been written almost sixty years ago.
It was written in a beautiful feminine handwriting on powder blue stationery with a little flower in the left-hand corner. It was a "Dear John" letter that told the recipient, whose name appeared to be Michael, that the writer could not see him any more because her mother forbade it. Even so, she wrote that she would always love him. It was signed, Hannah.
It was a beautiful letter, but there was no way except for the name Michael, that the owner could be identified. Maybe if I called information, the operator could find a phone listing for the address on the envelope.
"Operator," I began, "this is an unusual request. I'm trying to find the owner of a wallet that I found. Is there anyway you can tell me if there is a phone number for an address that was on an envelope in the wallet?"
She suggested I speak with her supervisor, who hesitated for a moment then said, "Well, there is a phone listing at that address, but I can't give you the number." She said, as a courtesy, she would call that number, explain my story and would ask them if they wanted her to connect me. I waited a few minutes and then she was back on the line. "I have a party who will speak with you."
I asked the woman on the other end of the line if she knew anyone by the name of Hannah. She gasped, "Oh! We bought this house from a family who had a daughter named Hannah. But that was 30 years ago!"
"Would you know where that family could be located now?" I asked.
"I remember that Hannah had to place her mother in a nursing home some years ago," the woman said.
"Maybe if you got in touch with them they might be able to track down the daughter."
She gave me the name of the nursing home and I called the number. They told me the old lady had passed away some years ago but they did have a phone number for where they thought the daughter might be living. I thanked them and phoned. The woman who answered explained that Hannah herself was now living in a nursing home.
This whole thing was stupid, I thought to myself. Why was I making such a big deal over finding the owner of a wallet that had only three dollars and a letter that was almost 60 years old?
Nevertheless, I called the nursing home in which Hannah was supposed to be living and the man who answered the phone told me, "Yes, Hannah is staying with us. "
Even though it was already 10 p.m., I asked if I could come by to see her. "Well," he said hesitatingly, "if you want to take a chance, she might be in the day room watching television."
I thanked him and drove over to the nursing home. The night nurse and a guard greeted me at the door. We went up to the third floor of the large building. In the day room, the nurse introduced me to Hannah.
She was a sweet, silver-haired old timer with a warm smile and a twinkle in her eye. I told her about finding the wallet and showed her the letter. The second she saw the powder blue envelope with that little flower on the left, she took a deep breath and said, "Young man, this letter was the last contact I ever had with Michael."
She looked away for a moment deep in thought and then said Softly, "I loved him very much. But I was only 16 at the time and my mother felt I was too young. Oh, he was so handsome. He looked like Sean Connery, the actor."
"Yes," she continued. "Michael Goldstein was a wonderful person. If you should find him, tell him I think of him often. And," she hesitated for a moment, almost biting her lip, "tell him I still love him. You know," she said smiling as tears began to well up in her eyes, "I never did marry. I guess no one ever matched up to Michael..."
I thanked Hannah and said goodbye. I took the elevator to the first floor and as I stood by the door, the guard there asked, "Was the old lady able to help you?"
I told him she had given me a lead. "At least I have a last name. But I think I'll let it go for a while. I spent almost the whole day trying to find the owner of this wallet."
I had taken out the wallet, which was a simple brown leather case with red lacing on the side. When the guard saw it, he said, "Hey, wait a minute! That's Mr. Goldstein's wallet. I'd know it anywhere with that bright red lacing. He's always losing that wallet. I must have found it in the halls at least three times."
"Who's Mr. Goldstein?" I asked as my hand began to shake.
"He's one of the old timers on the 8th floor. That's Mike Goldstein's wallet for sure. He must have lost it on one of his walks." I thanked the guard and quickly ran back to the nurse's office. I told her what the guard had said. We went back to the elevator and got on. I prayed that Mr. Goldstein would be up.
On the eighth floor, the floor nurse said, "I think he's still in the day room. He likes to read at night. He's a darling old man."
We went to the only room that had any lights on and there was a man reading a book. The nurse went over to him and asked if he had lost his wallet. Mr. Goldstein looked up with surprise, put his hand in his back pocket and said, "Oh, it is missing!"
"This kind gentleman found a wallet and we wondered if it could be yours?"
I handed Mr. Goldstein the wallet and the second he saw it, he smiled with relief and said, "Yes, that's it! It must have dropped out of my pocket this afternoon. I want to give you a reward."
"No, thank you," I said. "But I have to tell you something. I read the letter in the hope of finding out who owned the wallet."
The smile on his face suddenly disappeared. "You read that letter?"
"Not only did I read it, I think I know where Hannah is."
He suddenly grew pale. "Hannah? You know where she is? How is she? Is she still as pretty as she was? Please, please tell me," he begged.
"She's fine...just as pretty as when you knew her." I said softly.
The old man smiled with anticipation and asked, "Could you tell me where she is? I want to call her tomorrow." He grabbed my hand and said, "You know something, mister, I was so in love with that girl that when that letter came, my life literally ended. I never married. I guess I've always loved her."
"Mr. Goldstein," I said, "Come with me."
We took the elevator down to the third floor. The hallways were darkened and only one or two little night-lights lit our way to the day room where Hannah was sitting alone watching the television. The nurse walked over to her.
"Hannah," she said softly, pointing to Michael, who was waiting with me in the doorway. "Do you know this man?"
She adjusted her glasses, looked for a moment, but didn't say a word.
Michael said softly, almost in a whisper, "Hannah, it's Michael. Do you remember me?"
She gasped, "Michael! I don't believe it! Michael! It's you! My Michael!"
He walked slowly towards her and they embraced. The nurse and I left with tears streaming down our faces.
"See," I said. "See how the Good Lord works! If it's meant to be, it will be."
About three weeks later I got a call at my office from the nursing home. "Can you break away on Sunday to attend a wedding? Michael and Hannah are going to tie the knot!"
It was a beautiful wedding with all the people at the nursing home dressed up to join in the celebration. Hannah wore a light beige dress and looked beautiful. Michael wore a dark blue suit and stood tall.
They made me their best man. The hospital gave them their own room and if you ever wanted to see a 76-year-old bride and a 79-year-old groom acting like two teenagers, you had to see this couple.
A perfect ending for a love affair that had lasted nearly 60 years.
Some 14 years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our opening session in the theology of faith.
That was the day I first saw Tommy. He was combing his hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. My quick judgment wrote him off as strange – very strange.
Tommy turned out to be my biggest challenge.
He constantly objected to or smirked at the possibility of an unconditionally loving God.
When he turned in his final exam at the end of the course, he asked in a slightly cynical tone, “Do you think I’ll ever find God?”
“No,” I said emphatically.
“Oh,” he responded. “I thought that was the product you were pushing.”
I let him get five steps from the door and then called out.
“I don’t think you’ll ever find Him, but I am certain He will find you.”
Tommy shrugged and left. I felt slightly disappointed that he had missed my clever line.
Later I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was grateful for that. Then came a sad report: Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to me. When he walked into my office, his body was badly wasted, and his long hair had fallen out because of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice, for the first time, was firm.
“Tommy! I’ve thought about you so often. I heard you were very sick,” I blurted out.
“Oh, yes, very sick. I have cancer. It’s a matter of weeks.”
“Can you talk about it?”
“Sure. What would you like to know?”
“What’s it like to be only 24 and know that you’re dying?”
“It could be worse,” he told me, “like being 50 and thinking that drinking booze, seducing women and making money are the real ‘biggies’ in life.”
Then he told me why he had come.
“It was something you said to me on the last day of class. I asked if you thought I would ever find God, and you said no, which surprised me. Then you said, ‘But He will find you.’ I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time. But when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging against the bronze doors of heaven. But nothing happened.
Well, one day I woke up, and instead of my desperate attempts to get some kind of message, I just quit.
I decided I didn’t really care about God, an afterlife, or anything like that. I decided to spend what time I had left doing something more important. I thought about you and something else you had said: ‘The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you loved them.’ So I began with the hardest one: my dad.”
Tommy’s father had been reading the newspaper when his son approached him.
“Dad, I would like to talk with you.”
“Well, talk.”
“I mean, it’s really important.”
The newspaper came down three slow inches.
“What is it?”
“Dad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that.”
Tommy smiled at me as he recounted the moment. “The newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I couldn’t remember him doing before. He cried and he hugged me. And we talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning.
“It was easier with my mother and little brother,” Tommy continued. “They cried with me, and we hugged one another, and shared the things we had been keeping secret for so long. Here I was, in the shadow of death, and I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.
“Then one day I turned around and God was there.
He didn’t come to me when I pleaded with Him. Apparently He does things in His own way and at His own hour. The important thing is that you were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for Him.”
“Tommy,” I added, “could I ask you a favor? Would you come to my theology-of-faith course and tell my students what you told me?”
Though we scheduled a date, he never made it. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of humanity has ever seen or the mind ever imagined.
Before he died, we talked one last time. “I’m not going to make it to your class,” he said. “I know, Tommy.”
“Will you tell them for me? Will you . . . tell the whole world for me?”
Twenty-two-year-old Katie Davis abandoned her upper middle-class upbringing just after graduating from high school to travel to the other side of the world to become a modern-day Mother Teresa, her childhood hero. Her days are spent nursing the sick, feeding and educating the poor, and sharing the love of Christ. Known as “Mommy” to her 13 Ugandan daughters, Katie has created a safe and loving home in the midst of unfathomable adversity. Those who know Katie, describe her abandonment to God’s plans for her life as extraordinary.
How did a young woman in the prime of her life get to this place? In her own words, “Jesus wrecked my life. For as long as I could remember, I had everything this world says is important. In high school, I was the class president, homecoming queen, top of my class. I dated cute boys and wore cute shoes and drove a cute sports car. I had wonderful, supportive parents who so desired my success that they would have paid for me to go to college anywhere my heart desired. But I loved Jesus.” >>>>Continued below
For 34 years, LouAnn Alexander worked as a flight attendant. But at the age of 58, she received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Soon, the vivacious mother of two and grandmother-to-be was making plans for hospice care.
Her older brother Rex Ridenoure was flying to see Alexander when he asked the flight attendant—an old colleague of Alexander’s, as it turned out—if he could speak to the passengers.
He talked about his sister, even passed his phone around the plane so they could see photos of her. He then handed out napkins and asked if they’d write a little something for Alexander.
Ninety-six passengers responded. Some drew pictures. One man and his seatmate created flowers out of napkins and swizzle sticks. But mostly, there were warm words: “Your brother made me love you, and I don’t even know you.” And “My favorite quote from when I had two brain tumors: ‘You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.’”
Alexander died in April, but Ridenoure never forgot the compassion shown that day. “I’m just amazed that given the opportunity, even total strangers will reach out and show a lot of empathy and concern,” he said. -Arizona Republic-
Brian Kolfage had been stationed at the Balad Air Base in Iraq for two weeks when an enemy rocket exploded three feet from where he was standing.
His body felt like it was “lit on fire”: his legs were destroyed, his right arm severed, and his survival was touch-and-go.
But twelve months and 16 surgeries later, the triple-amputee was out of the hospital—reportedly as the most severely wounded Airman to survive any war.
Three years later, with three prosthetic limbs and new skills in his non-dominant left hand, he enrolled in the competitive program at the University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, where fewer than one in five applicants was accepted.
On track to graduate in 2014, the Pat Tillman Scholarship recipient has a 3.8 GPA and hopes to “revolutionize military architecture.” He noted: “I lost my legs, but I have my head, my brain. I can do everything I did before mentally.”
Gac Filipaj has long been a regular on Columbia University’s New York City campus, and not just as an undergraduate hustling to his next lecture.
For nearly two decades, the Yugoslav native has mopped floors and emptied garbage cans as a school janitor.
The work could be exhausting, especially as his shift ran from 2:30 pm to 11 pm. But it offered an irresistible employee benefit: tuition-free courses.
Filipaj, who spoke next-to-no English when he immigrated in 1992, signed up for one or two classes each semester, settling on a tough major—Classics—and regularly studying well past midnight.
In May 2012, at age 52, he graduated with honors. As he told ABC News: “I have fulfilled half of my dream. Going to graduate school would complete it.”
Filipaj plans to begin hitting the books again soon.
Martha Mason graduated valedictorian of her high school and earned two college degrees at the top of the class—all while living her life in an iron lung.
Paralyzed by polio at age 11 in 1948 and confined 23 hours a day in an immobile, 800-pound horizontal tube, the voracious reader stayed “endlessly curious”—and amazingly adaptable.
Custom-built intercoms connected her to school and made her a “regular member” in her classes, with the technology helping her from high school through Wake Forest College (now University), where the English major arrived at her dorm room in a bakery truck.
By the time she died in 2009, Mason had been in the iron lung for a record-setting 60 years. “Something happens to all of us,” she said in a documentary about her, Martha in Lattimore.
“Mine is more visible than yours, but you have to deal with your things, too. None of us are exempt from things that would make us extraordinary people if the world knew the story.”
There was a wise man Sviatozar. One day his nephew came to visit him. The young man was sad, gloomy and obviously upset with something. Sviatozar asked what happened to him. The nephew said that he suffered a serious setback and now he will never be able to achieve his goal.
The nephew asked an old man to give him advice what he should do next, but Sviatozar just asked to lead him to the hills. This road was difficult and long. But the nephew immediately agreed to help his uncle. When they reached the hills, Sviatozar said that he needed to go to the top of the highest hill. The young man was surprised, but decided to help his uncle, because the old man had never climbed there.
With great difficulty the nephew helped his uncle to climb to the hill, sometimes even dragged the old man on his back. On the top of the hill, sweating, he put his uncle on the ground and laughed happily.
Do you remember that when you were a little boy sometimes you returned home with tears in your eyes? – Sviatozar asked him.
The boys teased you. Do you remember why? — Exactly! — The young man looked around and nodded. He recalled that as a child he often played there with other boys. And they called this hill an Everest, because only few people could get to its top. At that time I was unable to get there. This hill seemed an impregnable rock to me.
And today you not only climbed there, but dragged up me, too, — an old man said and looked at his nephew. How could you do this? What do you think?
Perhaps I just grew up, — the young man shrugged. — I became stronger and fitter …
"And the formidable Everest suddenly turned into a harmless mound." You got my advice.
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