I did not learn generosity and compassion from my parents as a taught lesson but more as a series of examples, which after all tells you more about a person’s character than anything they may say to you.
The year 1955 brought a devastating flood to the Easton area, as well as many other areas in the eastern US where there was far worse suffering and death than we ever saw in Easton. Our suffering in south Easton was limited to 4 days without electricity and having to boil water for 2 weeks. The downtown area, Odenweldertown out along the Lehigh, and any other area too close to the Lehigh or Delaware Rivers was hard hit. By the time of the flood my brother David was nearly 3 and out of a lot of his baby furniture. My parents gave all of it to flood victims. That was example number 1.
Number 2 came a year or so later when there was a devastatingly long strike at the Ingersoll-Rand plant in Phillipsburg. There weren’t so many social welfare programs in those days and even a relatively well off striker was in bad shape after a month or more. My father’s work in the foundry wasn’t all that good then and many times we didn’t have a lot either, but mom and dad took boxes of food on more than one occasion to a lady on Bates Street in Phillipsburg who was collecting food for the strikers. As an adult I have come to believe that striking is the same as voluntarily depriving yourself of a paycheck, but I would do the same thing as they did. One is never so poor as to not be able to be generous.
About ten years later Mack Printing was on strike and that hit my father’s family hard, as he had 2 brothers, Jack and Charlie, both of who worked there. Uncle Jack was hit really hard because he had 5 children and things were getting really dicey for them. My father worked at the school at that time and I can remember more than once he took his check for the extra work, cashed it, and gave it to Uncle Jack.
Then it was my turn to prod my parents a little. Uncle Charlie was on strike too and he had 3 children at home. I said to my mother we should do something for them too. Mom and Aunt Wanda, Uncle Charlie’s wife, had never gotten along too well, and Mom said what if Aunt Wanda is not nice to her when she called to see if they could use anything. I think I said something to the effect that at least you will have made the effort. But Aunt Wanda was appreciative of the offer and Dad, my brother David and I took several bags of groceries out to them. That was the first time I had been in their house in about 8 years at that point.
I had the most generous parents I could have had. They didn’t teach their generosity, they lived it.