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My paternal grandfather was extremely well respected in Girardville, Pennsylvania, but sadly he passed away in 1982. That being said, I’m going to tell you a story that is related to him and this event happened in 1995.
A state trooper pulled me over that year for speeding in
Maryland, he looked at my driver’s license and asked, “Are you
originally from Maryland?”
I said, “No, I’m from Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.”
He paused and said, “You don’t look Irish.”
“Well,” I said, “My mother is Italian.”
He then responded, “You know, I knew a Thomas O’Neill from Girardville, Pennsylvania. We called him Red.”
I said in a shocked voice, “That was my grandfather.”
The trooper then walked back to his police car and turned off
his emergency lights on his cruiser. He came back to my car and said,
“Your grandfather fixed my bike tires when I was a kid.”
He then went on to tell me about how when he was a teenager,
he failed his driving test, and that my grandfather talked to the
officer who administered the test.
“The officer,” he said, “took me back out on the road and
pointed out all the mistakes I made and allowed me to retake the driving
test.”
With a smile on his face, he proceeded to say, “I asked your
grandfather,” trying to hold back from laughing, “well, I asked your
grandfather,” he repeated, “why that officer went out of his way to see
to it that I pass the driving exam.”
He continued on, “Your grandfather said to me, I used to fix his bike tires when he was a kid.”
The Maryland state trooper, while handing me his card, said,
“If there is anything I can do to help you, just let me know. Not that I
condone your driving, but out of respect for Red O’Neill this is my way
of passing his kindness forward.”
He let me go with a warning.
That was one encounter with a state trooper that I will
remember to my dying day. I would love to tell my grandfather that story
if he were alive today. I know he would have gotten a big laugh out of
it, and he most certainly would, in an incredibly special way, have
turned my story into a huge life lesson for me to learn from. Not to
mention, he would have reminded me that “kindness is the greatest form
of wisdom.”
Thomas F O’Neill
U.S. Voice mail: (800) 272-6464
China Cell: 011 (86) 13405757231
WeChat: Thomas_F_ONeill
Skype: thomas_f_oneill
Email: introspective7@hotmail.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/thomasf.oneill.3/
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