I saw a video on Facebook
of a black bus driver named Tiffany who saw a lost little five-year-old white
girl wandering on the street. [The bus had a security surveillance camera.]
Tiffany stopped the bus, invited the little girl on, sat with her until the police
arrived. They took her home.
I had an experience like
that, in Charleston, IL. I guess it was about a mile between my house and the
Wesley United Methodist Church building. I was a long-distance runner in those
days, and I often ran between the two if I were just doing something like
picking up the mail and it didn’t matter how I looked.
Normally Jeanne Piercy,
our office secretary, went out to the rural mail box on the street to pick up
the mail, as one of the last things she did each day, since the mail was
delivered late. But it was Thanksgiving vacation and the church office was
closed. I didn’t like to let the mail sit all night in the box. It was a busy
street and there was too much danger of vandalism and theft. So I had run over
to get the mail and take it to the office.
Usually I cut across the Eastern
IL U athletic fields to get to the church building, but it was dark already,
and they were not lighted. I did not want to step in a hole or on a badger, so
I had run on the sidewalks. As I started home, on 4th Street, I came
across two little black children, maybe two and three years old, holding hands,
and carrying sand buckets.
I looked around for
adults. There weren’t any. I approached the children slowly. A tall white man
in a hoodie could be scary. I squatted down and said hello and told them that
my name was John. I asked where they lived. They said, “At Mama’s.” That wasn’t
helping much.
I figured the best thing
to do was take them back in the direction from which they had come and hope
that whoever must surely be looking for them by then would come across us. But
there weren’t any houses down that way, just our church and campus ministry
buildings, which took up a lot of space, and Arnold and Mary Hoffman’s house. I
knew they didn’t have any little black children. [1]
I was herding the kids
along the sidewalk when a car pulled up beside us. “What are you doing with
those children?” A white woman I did not know, with a nasty voice. “Looking for
their parents,” I said. “I’ll help,” she said, in an officious and suspicious
way.
I was grateful for the
help but not her attitude. Turned out she was a social worker and was quite
sure I was kidnapping the children for perverted purposes. At least, that’s the
way she acted.
I explained that I was the
pastor of the church that was right there in front of us and that we should go
into the building to call the cops. She was suspicious even when I pulled out
my keys, ushered us all into the building and down the hall to my office, and
got in with another key. There I used the phone to call the cops. She still
eyed me with suspicion and stood between me and the children, which seemed
rather frightening to them.
Then I got an idea.
Married student housing apartments were back a ways beyond our building. I left
the children in the social worker’s care. I tried to give her a dirty look,
like I expected the worst from her, but I don’t think I pulled it off. I went
out the back of our building, onto our rather expansive parking lot. Sure enough,
I heard a frantic-sounding woman shouting the names of children. I ran to her
and told her I had found her children. She ran with me to the church building
to get them. The social worker turned them over to her without a word but gave
me the evil eye as she backed out of the building.
Yes, I was a little miffed
at the social worker, but I understood her concern. I was a little less miffed
at the mother for not saying a word of thanks to anyone, but I understood that
even better. When you have gotten a lost child back, you don’t think about
anything; you just sink deeply into joy and relief.
As the social worker drove
away with her husband, I said, “You know, some day I’m going to tell this
story, and I’m going to be the hero and you’re not going to look very good.”
I’d like to leave it at that, but it’s not right to end a story about a family
reunited with a smirk.
Even if you get more help
than you need or want, it’s a good day when you can get children back to
“Mama’s house.”
JRMcF
1] Arnold had played
football at Eureka College with Ronald Reagan. When Reagan came back to Eureka
while he was President, Arnold went up to the college for the celebration. He
was sitting on the steps of the library when the president and his entourage went
by. President Reagan looked up, saw Arnold, and said, “Hi, Hoffie.” “Hi,
Dutch,” Arnold replied. That was the extent of their meeting that day, but I
thought it spoke well for the president that after fifty or so years he
recognized a fellow team member and automatically called him by his nickname.
May this be a happy month
of Advent anticipation and Christmas gifts-given and accepted.
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