‘Love, Kindness, and Dignity in Action’

My Impromptus today starts with Bob Barker and then gets into some pretty choppy waters with Trump and his veracity, the myth and reality of neoconservatives, and so on. If you’d like to give it a whirl, go here.

I would like to publish one letter, responding to something I had in a column last week. In that column, I republished a couple of tweets. Something I had seen on the street prompted me to jot this:

Here was a response:

I received a letter from my friend Tim Saunders in Half Moon Bay, Calif. He writes,

Dear Jay,

Your tweet . . . brought back some memories on that exact point from a very long time ago, which I’d like to tell you about.

In the late 1950s I was living with my family in a section of Dayton, Ohio, called “Dayton View.” . . . Living next door to us was an elderly retired couple and their son. Dr. and Mrs. Greathouse were at least in their late 60s and may very well have been older. Being four years old at the time, I had not yet developed any skill in estimating ages of adults.

Their son Borden, often called “Bordy,” was middle-aged. As a child he had polio, which left his body severely deformed. I recall he was permanently hunched over, with his right hand twisted into an odd position, and he may very well have worn braces. He could walk only with a cane and then very slowly and often used a wheelchair. He was, to use the expression then common, a cripple, and his parents were his caregivers.

For some reason the Greathouses were quite fond of me. They encouraged me to come visit them any time I wanted. . . . To this day I have several clear memories of the time I spent with the Greathouses, including picking and eating raspberries from their bush, eating cherry pie, and watching Cleveland Browns football with Dr. Greathouse and Bordy.

Your comments brought back a few other memories of the Greathouses caring for Bordy, such as Dr. Greathouse helping Bordy sit down or taking his jacket off or Mrs. Greathouse bringing Bordy his cigarettes and matches. I now recall how quiet and natural for them helping Bordy was; the Greathouses were undoubtedly happy to do so.

Perhaps one reason my memories of the Greathouses are so clear is that there aren’t many of them. We moved to the suburbs before I turned five. . . . I never saw Dr. and Mrs. Greathouse again. I believe they passed away not long after we moved. I did see Bordy a few more times, the last being when I was in my early 20s.

By the way, the streets in the section of Dayton View where we lived are named for colleges and universities.  The Greathouses and my family lived on Amherst Place. That last time I saw Bordy, he observed that it was most appropriate that I had attended Amherst College and that my doing so would have pleased his parents a great deal.

I try to avoid speculating about what someone who’s dead would say or think about this or that issue, but here I’ll make an exception. I have no doubt Dr. and Mrs. Greathouse would wholeheartedly agree with your correspondent who said, “It is a joy and privilege.” And your comments have made me realize how very fortunate I was to have had the opportunity at the beginning of my life to observe love, kindness, and dignity in action.