“Kindness Runs in a Family”

Thursday, June 28, 2018

In the fall of 2007, Lisa and I drove to Florida to do something we had never done before. We were taking our daughter, Lesley, to Florida College to begin her college career. It was fairly traumatic for us, the first time she would live away from us after 18 years of being with us all the time. And she is our first born child, so we just had never experienced this.

To top it all off, we lived in Kentucky and she was going to be in Tampa, Florida, some 14 or so hours away. It wasn’t like we could just visit her on the weekend whenever we wanted. Her mother and I felt a sense of sadness, but we didn’t want to say anything about it so Lesley wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the whole thing. She was excited about meeting new friends and anticipating her studies that would take her closer to the college degree she sought and so she was looking forward to the experience while we were dreading it.

We pulled up to the girls’ dorm where she was going to be staying. It was the same dorm her mother had lived in when she attended Florida College. After we parked, Lisa and I looked at each other silently and took a deep breath (it was probably more like a sigh, to be honest). Here we go.

The first person to come flying out of the dorm to help us carry Lesley’s luggage and clothes inside was Ralph Walker. His familiar and genuine smile gave us some instant comfort. We had met Ralph through mutual friends years before but really didn’t know him well. We had heard him speak on various occasions and he was always encouraging to listen to and we felt a little better knowing that someone we trusted would be close enough to help if she got into trouble. After helping us find her room and carry everything in, Ralph was ready to assist the next family.

But before he left, he put his arms around Lisa and me and told us that it was going to be a great year for Lesley, that we had made the best decision in choosing to send her to Florida College and assured us that she would be fine. (We already knew all of that, but it was reassuring to have a friendly and kind reminder.)

A bit later in the school year, actually her second semester there, she was driving her little car to a Sunday evening church service with some friends. They had become quite close and Lesley often took them wherever they needed to go. They were not far from campus, headed toward the congregation where they all had placed membership, and the car broke down. Driving down the road, all of a sudden, there was a really loud screeching sound. When they stopped, the noise stopped and they realized they had to quit moving so they pulled over on the side of the road. None of the friends knew anything about fixing a broken car and they were not sure what to do.

Lesley was getting ready to call Triple A auto services and, as she was looking for her AAA card, a car pulled up and the driver asked them if they needed some help. They were uncertain about whether that was a good idea to have someone they didn’t know to help them but they noticed he was not alone. They could see that his wife was with him in the car, so they said, “Sure.”

To make a long story short, as they talked, they discovered that the man helping them was Ralph Walker’s son in law, Joe Cable. He and his wife, Bonnie, were headed to their own evening services, saw someone who needed help and without even realizing that everyone in the story was a Christian, Joe offered to do what he could to help them. It turned out to be a broken muffler and Joe twisted a metal clothes hanger around the muffler and the chassis of the car so it wouldn’t drag on the ground and they all went on their way. Lesley’s car was fairly loud without a functioning muffler, but it got them where they needed to be and a few days later, she had the car repaired.

All of that happened because Ralph and Paula Walker reared a godly daughter (three of them, actually) with values that included helping people in need and when she married, she chose a husband who had been taught those same values. And although it cost them some time and inconvenience (they were probably late for services), they did the right thing and helped. I have never met Joe and I doubt that he is a Samaritan, but he learned that parable of Christ well enough to put it into practice. If I ever get the chance to meet the Cables, I will shake his hand and thank him for teaching some young people a valuable lesson about kindness.

Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

--Roger Hillis

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