When Clyde heard that a friend of mine was hoping to contact her family in Laurel, MS, he quietly copied down her family’s telephone number, programmed it into his phone, and called it throughout the day.
He didn’t tell me he was doing this.
Later that afternoon, as I repeated my friend’s story to someone else, I saw Clyde fiddle with his phone. He often gets calls from the video store, so I assumed someone there needed Clyde to explain how to reset a computer or repair the DVD resurfacing unit.
Suddenly, Clyde’s eyes went wide. His voice was uncharacteristically loud and excited. "Yes! Yes! Can you hear me?"
I paused, glancing in his direction. When I saw tears in his eyes, I froze in place, afraid to move.
"I’m a friend of your daughter’s," Clyde said. "She’s been trying to reach you. She wants to know if everyone’s okay."
Later, Clyde would explain: "I’d heard that some people in Mississippi weren’t able to call out, but that they could receive local calls. I knew Mark’s friend couldn’t reach her family by phone from her home in New England, but I thought I might be able to get through, since we were in-state. So I programmed in the number and tried it several times throughout the day. Somehow, I got through. Her father said he couldn’t call out, but that my call was the second one he’d gotten that day."
Minutes later, we were on the phone to my friend, relaying news of her family, collecting messages from her, and calling the family again to pass them along — all because Clyde is the type of person who takes on quiet little tasks and sticks with them until he gets results.
I love that man.
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