Tag Archives: Kindness

Back-to-School Good Samaritan

by Woody

 Woody’s acclaimed memoir

WOODEN & ME is available HERE at Amazon

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Back-to-School Good Samaritan

Too often a story becomes news because someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

David Pichon is the flip side of the coin.

“I just happened to be in the right place, at the right time,” David shares, adding an all-important third element, “in the right frame of mind.”1schoolsupplies

The right place was Walmart in Camarillo. The right time was mid-afternoon two Mondays past. The right frame of mind is something David, now 50, learned as a boy from his father: “If you can, you should.”

So when David, who stands 6-foot-4, was milling around waiting for a cashier’s check to be printed so he could pay his rent, saw 5-foot-2 Maya Geisler struggling to reach notebooks on the top shelf, he stepped in to help.

Realizing Maya had forgotten to get a shopping cart, David next went to retrieve one while she counted out notebooks for her incoming class of 24 second-graders at Somis Elementary School.

“I thought that was so nice,” Maya recalls.

The kindness was only beginning.

If you can, you should. On his way to see if his cashier’s check was ready, David asked a store clerk to let him know when Maya got in line for the register.

When she did, David appeared. Doing some second-grade math in his head, he quickly figured there weren’t enough supplies for a full classroom of students. He rushed back to the back-to-school aisle and loaded up a second shopping cart with more sets of crayons, pencils, and a full box of notebooks.

He then paid for the entire bounty.

“I just couldn’t believe how generous this stranger was,” Maya rejoins. “I started crying a bit.”

More tears flowed when David pushed the cart to her car and helped load the largess into the trunk.

“You’re never going to miss a few dollars spent helping someone else,” David says, understating his generosity. “Really, what I did wasn’t a big deal.”

Maya disagrees. A single mother with two boys, she admits money is “super tight.” To her, David’s deed was a very big deal.

Knowing only the first name of the Back-To-School Good Samaritan, Maya posted a brief summary of the random act of kindness on her Facebook page and mentioned the business van David drove off in: Sound Doctor 911. Sure enough, someone recognized her hero as the owner of the Camarillo store that installs automotive stereo systems.

Maya’s heartfelt 164-word message on Facebook struck a chord and quickly went viral. In just days it was shared 7,000 times.

“Teachers are contacting me full of love and genuine thanks,” David allows, noting he has received more than 2,000 emails. “I’ve heard from people in Australia, Thailand, Africa, and all across the U.S. The beautiful part is the way others are responding by paying it forward because they were inspired by me.”

David pauses for a moment, collecting his thoughts, and adds sincerely: “The attention I’m getting is really undeserved. I didn’t pull someone from a burning building.”

No, but he did step forward to help a teacher during these times of burning school budgets.

Maya, now in her 11th year as an educator after previously working in banking and nursing, estimates she spends about $600 out of her own pocket each year on supplies for her students and classroom.

“We do it because we love our jobs and our students,” says Maya.

She is the norm, not the exception.

His act of kindness for Maya was not the exception for David, either. He is a loyal supporter of Casa Pacifica and the Boys & Girls Club, and also donates blood regularly.

To be sure, he has a remarkable heart – all the more so when you learn that this father of four, and grandfather of one, has survived two heart attacks in the past 22 months.

“I think I’m still here so I can do more,” David allows. “None of us can fix the world, but we can all help fix our own neighborhood. Like I said, my father taught me, ‘If you can, you should.’ ”

He could, he did.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden-&-Me-cover-mock-upCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

 

Column: Special Samaritans

by Woody

Serving Up Random Kindness

 

            Following a morning that included a dentist’s drill, a handful of cell-phone-talking drivers so recklessly rude they made me grit my numbed teeth, and a slow-moving line at post office, I was in a mood to write a column of rants.

 

            This changed when I was in line at the supermarket and a woman with a hand basket of items kindly told a young mother with a full cart, and a fussy baby, to go in front of her. This same woman soon allowed another person to leapfrog her, and then a third who also seemed in a rush.SpecialNote

 

            “I’ve never seen anyone let more than one person go ahead of them,” said the cashier, smiling in admiration.

 

            Thus clouds yielded to sunshine, which brightened further with a few feel-good stories that arrived on my computer screen via links on Twitter, Facebook and The Star’s on-line edition. The latter chronicled more than 500 Cal Lutheran University students who, as part of CLU’s “You Got Served” program, spent a day cleaning up hundreds of pounds of trash nearby Olivas Links Golf Course and Harbor Boulevard in Ventura.

 

            Across the country in a pizza parlor in China Grove, NC, Ashley England and her family “Got Served” a surprise when the dinner bill arrived.

 

Ashley, in a story reported by North Carolina’s WBTV, explained that her 8-year-old son Riley has special needs resulting from a severe form of epilepsy. His seizures, which number up to 100 per day, began at age 18 months and have robbed his ability to speak. The boy’s frustration at being unable to communicate leads to outbursts, like the one at the pizza parlor.

 

“He threw the phone and started screaming,” Ashely noted. “The past few weeks have been very hard and trying for us, especially with public outings. Riley was getting loud and hitting the table and I know it was aggravating to some people.”

 

Before she could calm the storm, a waitress came to the table – not to ask Ashley to take her son outside, but to tell her that another customer had paid her family’s dinner bill and also sent over this note: “God only gives special children to special people.”

 

The mystery Samaritan’s kindness made Ashley cry.

 

“To have someone do that small act towards us shows that some people absolutely understand what we are going through and how hard it is to face the public sometimes,” said the grateful mother.

 

            A similar anonymous kindness recently transpired at Tampa International Airport when a traveler had his credit card declined at the check-in counter.

 

Confused and in a rush to make his flight, and perhaps most of all “extremely embarrassed,” the man stepped out of line to check his credit-card balance.

 

Upon returning to the counter with the matter hopefully sorted out, he learned that a Good Samaritan had generously paid his baggage fee and left a note reading: “Hey, I heard them say your card was declined. I know how it feels. Your bag fee’s on me. Just pay it forward the next time you get a chance. Have a safe flight. :)”

 

Here is a third random act of kindness I read about this same day. While vacationing with his family a father was approached by a man trying to sell a flower for money to buy food for his own family, or so he claimed.

 

Remarkably, generously, and perhaps naively if he thought the money would go for food and not alcohol, the vacationing father gave the man a 100-dollar bill.

 

“Fifteen minutes later,” the vacationer was quoted in the on-line story, “we see the same guy walking on the sidewalk again. This time, he had at least 10 bags of groceries hanging from his arms, one of which contained diapers.”

 

Touched by the above examples, I went back to the supermarket and bought a turkey sandwich and Gatorade which I gave to a woman out front who looked down on her luck. I know we are encouraged to donate to worthy charities in order to discourage panhandling, but sometimes you just have to do a “You Got Served” deed right now.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME comes later this month and is available for pre-order at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

 

 

 

 

Column: A Kind Word Lifts Spirits

by Woody

A Kind Word Can Lift Low Spirits

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“We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used.”

                                                                                     – Blaise Pascal, French philosopher

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Given a quarter-full glass, or three-quarters empty depending on one’s perspective, my mindset is usually, “That’s a lot to drink because that’s a big glass.”

The other day, however, I saw that glass as 75 percent empty – and dirty and cracked. Some cranky e-mails about a column had me feeling low. Then a note from another reader lifted my fallen spirits and brought to mind the poem “On Friendship” by my hero Coach John Wooden:

At times when I am feeling low, / I hear from a friend and then

My worries start to go away / And I am on the mend

No matter what the doctors say – / And their studies never end

The best cure of all, when spirits fall, / Is a kind word from a friend

My cure came from a friend I have never met. Jon Gold, a Los Angeles sportswriter who grew up in Thousand Oaks, wrote me succinctly but with kindness in abundance: “I became a writer because I got to read you write like this when I was 10.”

His words were penicillin for what ailed me. That I somehow inspired someone even a small fraction of the way Jim Murray made me want to become a writer is as nice a compliment as I have ever received.

Jon’s note did something more – it reminded me of this wisdom from Russian screenwriter Sonya Levien: “Good intentions are not enough; they’ve never put an onion in the soup yet.”

How many times have I failed to put an onion in the soup; thought about sending a kind note but not followed up in deed? Thankfully, I have not faltered completely in letting those who have changed my life know it. I wrote to my first newspaper boss last year; my sixth-grade teacher before that; Jim Murray and Coach Wooden before their deaths.

My two adult kids, on the other hand, are chef-like at putting onions in the soup. This very week my daughter wrote a two-page letter to one of her favorite university professors, thanking him for his past and present mentorship. She has similarly written notes of gratitude to numerous other teachers, colleagues, friends.

My son also regularly puts pen to paper to express thanks to professors, mentors, coaches and friends who have influenced his life’s journey. Just recently he mailed a card, albeit three years belatedly, to someone he met only once.

Unfortunately it was returned as undeliverable. However, he was able to locate the person on-line at her new place of employment and resent it. It began: “Dear Liz Williams, I don’t know if you remember me, but I want to thank you for changing my life. . . .”

He proceeded to explain how she had been instrumental in his taking his first humanitarian trip to Africa – Mali – a momentous event that opened his eyes and heart, opened doors, and inspired him to return to Africa – Ghana – as well as make a four-week goodwill visit to Sri Lanka.

My son concluded: “I apologize for getting caught up in other things and not telling you all this sooner – it is one of the lessons from Mali that I have had to re-learn looking back. This long-overdue thanks is to let you know that you have taught me the greatest lesson of all: that we can profoundly change the lives of anyone we come in contact with, and while we may not always know if we do, I wanted you to know that in this case you have made a world of difference.”

Not surprisingly, his thoughtful words were as welcomed as Jon Gold’s were to me. “Thank you for reaching out!” Liz wrote back. “Wow, I am truly overwhelmed by the kindness of your words. It made my day (maybe even my year) . . .”

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to put an onion in the soup and write a long-overdue note of gratitude to my favorite college professor, Mr. Ridland.

— Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star. You can contact him at WoodyWriter@gmail.com or through his website at www.WoodyWoodburn.com