I was there to get a gift for the Community Chest, the predecessor of the United Way. I was in a 9 x 12 room in a small house four blocks away from the nearest cluster of shops. The room was a grocery store with an inventory of about 60 cans of vegetables and several dozen packages of beans, flour and cereals.
A little, elderly man came from another room and in a voice with a foreign accent asked what I wanted. I explained briefly about the Community Chest and half apologetically asked for a gift – whatever he thought he could afford. His reply was startling, “It’s not what I can afford; it’s what I ought to give.” With that he found some currency and made, by comparison with others, a substantial gift.
I left, refreshed in mind and spirit.
•
It was 1936. Wage rates ran from 25 to 60 cents an hour. The rate on government work relief was 50 cents per hour for 30 hours - $15 a week for support of a family.
I was soliciting for Community Chest again. I met with an employee group, spoke about the Chest, distributed pledge cards, returned three days later to get the pledges. They varied in size from $2 to $5, with one exception – a pledge of $52. I knew the woman who made the pledge. Her earnings were $12 per week. I spoke to her, suggested her gift was unduly generous.
She replied, “Mr. Lytle, a year ago I was lying in the hospital, lying between life and death. I prayed, ‘God, if you have nothing for me to do, let me die. But if you have work for me, make me well and I will give you one tenth of whatever I get.’ Well, I recovered and got this job, and I’m giving God one tenth of what I get. How much I give is none of your business. It’s between me and God.”
I had nothing more to say.
•
The man was head of a family owned business employing 600 people. He was reputed not to be generous. He and I had become friendly, and he was generous in his support of our work with the handicapped and the underprivileged. On one occasion I told him this story.
A 16-year-old boy was paralyzed when he was three as a result of polio. When he was four, he lost both his parents. For 12 years he was a ward of the state. Now, at 16, he would be on his own. He was scared. Twice, he faked epileptic seizures on the street to get institutionalized to assure himself of maintenance care.
The state referred him to our program for training. We put him at some simple assembly tasks to evaluate his abilities. He wouldn’t come to work, or he would come in late. He offered the whole battery of excuses – he overslept, he missed his ride, he had a stomachache. He wanted to be fired and institutionalized.
In a morning’s work he would equal or better standard production, but when he found he had done that, he goofed off for the afternoon. He deliberately failed in order to persuade us to give up on him. In spite of this, we kept him on, paying him according to his productivity.
One day, in a conversation with his supervisor, he burst out, “You think I’m no good, don’t you.”
“You haven’t shown anything else.”
“All right. Tomorrow I’ll show you.”
The next day his production was eight to ten percent above standard, and he maintained that rate day after day.
We had a great day, beginning one morning after a six-inch snowfall during the night. Our boy was at work at 8 am. He lived six miles from the city. He got a call that his ride to work wasn’t coming. With legs encased in heavy braces he hobbled on his crutched from the house down to the roadside, crawled onto the bus that came by, and was at work on time. Three months later, we placed him in private industry, and he embarked on an independent, self-supporting life.
I explained to my friend that the whole program had cost us and the taxpayers who subsidized his living probably about $1500, but that it would be recovered through income taxes on his earnings and savings in welfare payments. To which the man replied, “Yes, Howard, perhaps. But for $1500 you made a man. No community ever made a better investment.”
Quite a set of values for a cold-blooded, hard-hearted, tight-fisted fellow!
•
Three angels I entertained unawares. It was much later that I recognized them as such.
They came in human form.
They gave me mild, gentle, kindly rebukes. Angels answer needs, not necessarily wants.
They brought a bit of divine wisdom into mundane events.
Oddly enough, none of them thought of themselves as angels.
“God moves in a mysterious way.” (Hebrews 13:2)
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