With Thanksgiving only days away, many people pause to contemplate why they are thankful. They may show their thanks during church, in an assignment written for school or in the form of a prayer at the Thanksgiving dinner table. There is no wrong answer. Whether one is thankful for a personal Savior, your health, your children, your spouse or a myriad of other people/things, they are all good reasons to be thankful.
One of the things for which I am thankful is six years ago I wrote a letter to someone that was very dear to me during my childhood in which I told him I was thankful for him, even though it was not Thanksgiving!
The story started in 1954, when my family moved to Swarthmore, Delaware County, a small town of about 5,000 people. Billy, who lived next door, and I were both nine years old and were best of friends until after graduating from high school. We wrote plays and performed them for our families, played little league baseball, had sleepovers at each other’s houses and got up early in the morning to yell out the front window of my house to the Wawa milkman: “Mama, I want more Wawa” (which was used in Wawa’s commercials). We wrote notes to each other using milk on paper and hid them under a rock in his backyard so the other kid could retrieve them, hold a candle under them and decipher what was written.
We did not always do the wisest things. The three apple trees in my backyard were perfect for apple battles and the two of us battled with sling shots against Johnny who shot back hair pins using rubber bands to propel them. This was great fun until blood appeared on Billy’s face. Oh yes, then there was smoking Parliament cigarettes (with the recessed filter) in the top of my garage and then eating lemons and onions to hopefully remove the stink!
Just as important to me was his dad, Bill (obviously way back then, known as Mr. McClarin to me). My father worked long hours and did a fair amount of traveling so many times Bill substituted for my dad.
After not seeing either Bill or Billy for around 30 years, I really had a desire to thank Bill for all he did for me but I had no idea how to contact him. I’m not very good at tracking down people on the Internet, so I did the next best thing.
The Swarthmorean was a small weekly paper established in the town in 1929 that still exists today. About six years ago I wrote a brief article to the Swarthmorean telling how I would like to contact Billy to see if his father was still alive and that I wanted to thank him for all he had done for me. I stated that Billy graduated from high school in 1964, his former address and the college he attended and asked for anyone with information on him to contact me. Within days I received four replies that included his address and his email address. Upon contacting Billy, I found out his mother had died a year before but his father was still living.
In writing to Bill, I told him that his legacy lives on from generation to generation. That I had recently gone out to lunch with one of my sons and explained to him that even “little” positive things he does over the years for people may live on for decades and teach others.
I reminisced how Bill took me to various events such as going to see Gene Autry and to my first professional wrestling match. He taught me how to read the baseball box scores in the paper and we discussed various Philadelphia Phillie players. I remembered shooting basketballs with him when he was 50. Naive as I was, I told him that when I was 50 I was going to shoot baskets every day (It didn’t quite work out that way).
The bottom line is how much I appreciated Bill who went the “extra mile” for me. I then gratefully thanked him.
However, this is not the end of the story! Bill, his son, Billy and his daughter, Barbara and I exchanged several letters. The final one I received from Barbara was such a blessing to me. She told me her dad had died at the age of 97 and that she quoted a part of my letter in her Dad’s memorial service. I was absolutely honored!
I was thrilled that I had made the effort to locate Bill and told him how much he meant to me during my childhood. The moral of this story is to: Give thanks before it’s too late. Is there someone you need to tell how much they meant to you?
Jeff Hall, Honey Brook, writes columns for Tri County Record.
