Our Impact is in Our Contributions

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Father's day, 2007

On that day, my wife & I took our kids (then 7 & 4) to a local museum; it was a gorgeous day.  After we left the museum, we sat outside the main entrance while the kids played on and around a 2 foot concrete elephant at the top of the stairs. I sat on a bench next to my wife and marveled at the kids playing, the clear skies with a few puffy clouds, temperature about 75-80 degrees, the walker’s & joggers running through the park outside the museum...one guy was running with his dog. It was beautiful day by any standard & by all measures. 

The only thing that stood out was the homeless guy sleeping in the grass with all of his possessions in the shopping cart next to him. He was definitely out of place.  The guy with the dog sat on the 3 foot tall stone fence separating the park from the street a few feet away from this man before he got up and moved along. I pondered the dichotomy of this situation and how everyone seemed to ignore this man sleeping in the grass…including me. 

The guy with the dog soon returned without his dog, but with a paper bag and approached this homeless man, who was disheveled & in desperate need of a shower & shave.  I could almost smell him from where I sat.  I continued to watch from my perch.

The dog guy woke him up to begin a conversation as he sat down, pulled out something from the bag and handed it to Jimmy. They shared ice cream for about 10 minutes before the man stood up, shook Jimmy’s hand and turned away walking toward the parking lot, which happened to be in my direction.

I left my wife on the bench and the kids playing on the elephant and approached the man as he walked toward his car and said, “Excuse me.” I told him that I had watched him and thought that was one of the most compassionate things I ever witnessed. 

He told me his name was Sean Wilson. He was a Captain in the Air Force and was stationed at one of the local Air Force Bases in town. Sean Wilson explained that he thought he was having a pretty crappy Father’s day as he was recently divorced and his ex-wife wouldn’t let him see his kids because it was “her weekend”. 

As Sean Wilson sat on the stone fence, he looked over his shoulder at Jimmy, sleeping in the grass and had a shift in his perspective as to what a crappy day might really look like if things for him were more like what they were for Jimmy. So, he went home, dropped off his dog and stopped by the ice cream store on the way back to share it with Jimmy.

(continued...read on)