This originally appeared in The News & Observer.
The man's name I have never known, though he visits my wonderings quite frequently. Could he ever have realized the generations-long ramifications of just one decision he made on what was probably one ordinary day of his life?
The man worked at the International Nickel Co., or the "nickel plant" as everyone in Huntington, W.Va., called it. My father, whose parents did not go past the sixth grade, graduated from high school in 1961 and desperately wanted to work there.
My dad was 2 when his father died, and he wanted to stay near his mother. Five of his six older siblings had already left Raccoon Creek, W.Va., for work in shoe factories or automobile plants in Ohio and Michigan. My dad spent many summers up north, working as a bag boy in Detroit supermarkets.
But when it came time to find a lifetime job, a career, my dad applied at the 130-acre nickel plant, a facility his family passed nearly every Saturday when they drove the 22 miles to the city for supplies. Because of the winding roads, it was a 50-minute drive.
To get an interview, my father had to pass a typing test, the first hurdle toward employment as a messenger boy.
In his nervousness, he failed it. The man at the plant told him to come back another day and try again.
He failed it a second day. And a third. And a ninth.
The man had no reason to let my dad come back a 10th day. Surely there were plenty of promising people he could have hired in that amount of time. But he decided to let my dad try one more time.
A passing score finally behind him, my father embarked on a 30-year career that started in the mailroom and ended with his running the entire operations center. He retired from the plant at age 48.
Over those years, my dad, with his keen eye and uncommon sense, took the paychecks from the nickel plant and bought property he resold later at a profit. He opened a restaurant when I was in high school with the collateral being our new house he built on a mountainside.
In his "retirement," he actually has owned three restaurants at different times. He has turned a hillside into a nice mobile home park and discovered that buying used trailers, refurbishing them and reselling them can be quite lucrative.
Though he sold the park, he continues at age 68 to be the repo-depot man, as my brother and I fondly call him, because some of the mobile homes have been repossessed and the lot from which he sells his stock is enormous.
Learning to work hard
Clearly, my dad is a man who would have made his way even if the first failed typing test had been his last. He learned lessons in hard work from his mother, who reared her children on $33 a month in Social Security payments after my grandfather died.
My grandmother grew and canned her own vegetables, raised and butchered her chickens and hogs, stayed with the sick, helped birth babies out in the hollows. Even at 92, she delivered mail to "the old people" in her apartment complex.
But I've always been very appreciative of the man at the nickel plant who took a chance and helped set my father firmly on a path out of poverty.
Every time I think of him, I'm reminded that each of us has the capacity, every ordinary day, to be the person someone else is thankful for.
bwheeler@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4825
