Letter to the editor

For many years I’ve sent Christmas cards complete with Christmas letters. Several days ago, thoughts of Christmas caused me to open a box I haven’t looked in for years.

The enclosed Christmas letter was sent by two Winter Park residents … one year around and one seasonal.

Every November, a highly articulate veteran with a kind heart and shoulder length hair would arrive by train in Winter Park and spend the night in Central Park. And the next night, and the next night. I treated him to numerous lunches and dinners, bought him clothing at The Florida Hospital Thrift Shop, and got a kick out of seeing him walk around in my $900 full-length Brooks Brothers coat (with two moth holes that were barely perceptible) that I’d used to call on some of America’s top CEOs many years earlier.

I didn’t have a lot of money myself, but I had something even more valuable: intellectual capital. And I used it to help Neal. Several landlords, business owners, and churches helped. Almost everyone who frequented Park Avenue knew Neal. Finally, it got to a point that even a “Hold Harmless” agreement wouldn’t calm the fears of Neal’s benefactors who wanted no part of the potential vicarious liability that our litigious society preys upon. Neal was repeatedly asked to move around Winter Park until he literally ran out of places to go and stay for any length of time. God Bless the people who did help him, though.

What follows are excerpts from a multi-page Christmas letter sent in 2004:

“Despite owning homes in Connecticut and Florida, my grandmother’s favorite place on earth was her 10-by-16 foot prefabricated Sears Roebuck cabin overlooking a pond and an Adirondack mountain range along with her housekeeper and standard-sized French poodle (They had separate quarters.) She had no phone, pumped her drinking water, produced her own electricity, and got by without the elevator of Mrs. Post’s Adirondack camp, Topridge. This is the same grandmother who once gestured out the window of her Buick wagon (after we’d just left a Palm Beach thrift shop) to impress upon me the magnitude of her Uncle Harry’s former landholding...the 35-mile long beachfront parcel connecting Palm Beach to Pompano Beach. This is the same grandmother who told me of her mother’s marriage proposal from Andrew Carnegie and her mother’s insistence that the first-class Titanic tickets be refunded due to concerns about a maiden voyage. Talk about fate. “

I showed my homeless friend, Neal, pictures of my grandmother’s childhood horse stable, Warren Buffett’s current home, and my grandmother’s Adirondack cabin. Neal got a kick out of seeing how Warren Buffett’s attractive home would fit in my grandmother’s stable with room to spare. We agreed that, regardless of the role fate plays in life, most people are pretty happy to have their basic needs met, although I gave Neal a Diet Coke and he held out for a Classic Coke! We’ve come up with some remarkable insights on the rich/poor dichotomy based upon our collective experiences.

And so our Christmas message is this: If you have the means to do anything for the chronically ill who badly need a break, they should come first. And children should precede adults. Fate dealt them a very tough blow. Anything you can do to give a boost to the struggling to inspire them to never give up on the light at the end of the tunnel (so that they know they’re not looking at a freight train) ought to be next. The key is to provide partial help or a boost, if you will, to help the struggling solve their own problems whenever possible.

Although I’ve tried to empathize with Neal’s plight by telling him how I slept on a rock cropping in the Green Mountains and how an engine would start whenever I turned on the lights at my grandmother’s camp so I could find my way to the outhouse, that’s small consolation when the mercury dips below freezing in Winter Park. I’ve arranged for an attorney to provide a “Hold Harmless” agreement pro bono for anyone who can provide Neal with a basement, closet, hallway, restroom or similar cover from the elements. Being an Army veteran, Neal’s night watchman skills might actually lower your insurance bill! Please call me at 407-673-7883 if you can provide this in the downtown Winter Park area. Your only exposure will be the embarrassment of having Neal quiz you on Nietzsche, his favorite philosopher.

Merry Christmas and happy new year!

Will and Neal