Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

A little kindness can go a long way.

  

Twenty years ago, Gladys Hankerson of Delray Beach, Florida, was trying to call her sister in Maryland where the area code is 410. Instead, she dialed a Rhode Island exchange where the area code is a similar 401.

Up in Rhode Island, Mike Moffitt answered the phone and politically explained to Gladys that she had dialed the wrong area code. So she hung up tried again, only to reach Mike again, an accident that happened several times over the next few weeks.

"It continually happened,” Mike said, “where she accidentally dialed the wrong number, but it eventually switched to just calling to say hi because one day I said to her, “Listen you're going to keep calling, let's chat”

So they talked. Many times. At a time in both their lives when they needed someone to talk to. Gladys had just lost her son and had come off of a rough divorce. “I was downhearted, and he (Mike) felt my sympathy and everything -- lifted me up,"

The phone friendship developed over twenty years until one day Mike and his family found themselves on vacation in Florida for Thanksgiving.

"The reason we ended up meeting was because a drawbridge was up," Moffitt said. "We waited 10-15 minutes at a drawbridge, and eventually decided to keep going. That's when I realized we were 2 miles away from Gladys' house."

After grabbing some flowers, Moffitt knocked on Hankerson's door and was welcomed with open arms.

"I walked in and said, 'Gladys, it's Mike from Rhode Island!' and she said, 'Oh, my friend Mike! I'm blessed,' and threw her arms up," Moffitt said.

Hankerson gave Moffitt a tour of her house, introduced him to her family and the two caught up like they would on the phone.

"I wish more people could be like that, you know," she said. "That would be so nice. The world would be better, too -- people would be better."