The Secret to Happiness... Giving

[xoxoxoBruce]

Got the recession blues? Is everyday life sucking the soul out of you?

Just before Christmas in 1933, when The Great Depression was sucking the soul out of the nation, B. Virdot found his solution.

The year was 1933 and christmas was just a week away. Deep in the trough of the Great Depression, the people of Canton, Ohio, were down on their luck and hungry. Nearly half the town was out of work. Along the railroad tracks, children in patched coats scavenged for coal spilled from passing trains. The prison and orphanage swelled with the casualties of hard times.

It was then that a mysterious "B. Virdot" took out a tiny ad in the Canton Repository, offering to help the needy before Christmas. All he asked was that they write to him and tell him of their hardships. B. Virdot, he said, was not his real name, and no one would ever know his true identity. He pledged that those who wrote to him would also remain anonymous.

Letters poured into the post office by the hundreds. From every corner of the beleaguered town they came—from the baker, the bellhop, the steeplejack, the millworker, the blacksmith, the janitor, the pipe fitter, the salesman, the fallen executive. All of them told their stories in the hope of receiving a hand. And in the days thereafter, $5 checks went out to 150 families across the town. Today, $5 doesn't sound like much, but back then it was more like $100. For many, it was more money than they had seen in months. So stunning was the offer that it was featured in a front-page story in the newspaper, and word of it spread a hundred miles.

B. Virdot was not his real name, in fact nobody but his wife, (and maybe his banker), knew his identity until 2008, 30 years after his death.
The letters asking for help, and later saying thanks, are heartwarming.

It occured to me, the fact that someone, even a stranger or maybe because it is a stranger, reaching out to these desparate people may have had as much impact as the money.

Good read at Smithsonian.

[Lamplighter]

Nice post and thoughts...

[classicman]

Very nice and timely.