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."
