The person I am thinking about today was a developmentally challenged gentleman who lived in town. If I remember right, his name was Thollie. Now, had he lived in a larger town or city, he probably would have ended up as one of the homeless living on the street, or maybe in some type of institution. In Sigourney, though, he had a place to live and a whole group of people who looked out for him.
If you ever spent time with this man, the last thing he would ask before leaving you was, "Am I square with you?" The question was important to him, as was your answer. He would wait for you to respond. He didn't want to feel as though he had ever shorted anyone in the dealings he had with them. It was almost as though he realized how fortunate he was to live in this type of environment.
As I look back, I realize just how blessed I was to live there too, but I was less likely to notice it. It is amazing to think about how many times people helped me out because we were part of the same community. It would have been just as easy to have fallen to the other side of the equation and been very harsh. One April when I was in college, I ran into Rob Marget. I knew I was overdrawn at his bank, actually by several hundred dollars. All Rob asked me was if I had summer employment and would I get the bank paid back when I had that job. No overdraft charges, no penalties, and no interest for what was actually a loan. He just wanted to make sure that in the end, we would be all right, that we would we be square. This was my experience living in that small town and I know that others had similar experiences.
I laugh at some of the students I went to school with at Drake. Generally, the student body at Drake came from a different economic status than I did. They were much more likely to have arrived in brand new cars and an allowance that was far beyond my family's means. From everything that I could tell, they lived in communities more like the one I live in today (Des Moines) than the one I grew up in. But as an undergrad, in a time where everything was quite surreal, these same students LOVED the cheese I brought from home for grilled cheese sandwiches on Sunday nights when the dining hall was closed. For those of you that haven't already made the intellectual jump, this cheese was square, came in about a three pound block and was part of the surplus food items available to families under a certain income level. Yup, my friends just loved the government surplus cheese. Again, though, it was a way my community took care of me and the people I surrounded myself with, even into my college years.
About two years ago, I started spending time in Neola, Iowa, where my company has a facility. It was the first time in years that I had been in a community that small. Sure enough, as I got to know the people in town I discovered there was a gentleman there much like the Thollie I had known at home. The community has things they ask him to do to keep him busy and out of trouble, and everyone looks out for him and takes care of him.
I absolutely know and believe this happens in larger communities as well, but I think it's harder to see. I knew Thollie well while living in Sigourney. He was part of the community and involved in my daily life. You would literally see him everywhere and he went out of his way to wave or say hello. Where I live now, someone like him could live only blocks from me and I wouldn't know them. For heavens sake, I have a cousin that lived a short distance from me and it took a while to figure that out.
I'm not sure how I can be better at recognizing people who might need my help and then figure out how to help them, but in today's world, it seems more important than ever.
Okay, there is my personal challenge for the day. And you have all heard it. We will see what can be done. Then, when all is said and done, I want to make sure that whoever I have dealt with, I am square with them.
