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Copyright 2000 Greensboro
News & Record
SMALL MIRACLES
THROUGHOUT THE YEAR, TRIAD RESIDENTS HAVE BEEN TOUCHED BY
THE BENEVOLENCE OF
OTHERS.
Date: January 2, 2000
Edition(s): ALL
Page: D1 Section:
LIFE
Source: CATHY GANT-HILL Staff Writer
News doesn't always reflect the most pleasant events in our lives. Daily
accounts of political chicanery, sexual shenanigans, crime, pollution and
corporate indifference can send readers and viewers seeking refuge. Yet, it is
the business of newspapers to deliver the bitter with the sweet.
What a treat, though, when we can balance the bad news with the good.
What follows are a few select stories we've run across in our daily reporting
during the past year. They are stories that didn't necessarily make the front
page - or any page - but deserve to be told to the greater community. What
better time to tell them that at the start of a new year.
And so, we pass on
to you a few small miracles and heartwarmers.
JAMESTOWN - Some kids are fascinated by fire engines. Some dream
of blasting off into space. Then there's Nicholas Fahler, mesmerized by the
whir, grind and acceleration of the garbage truck.
Ask him why and his answer is as logical as a 3-year-old is going to be:
`` 'Cause I do. I like trucks.''
The Jamestown garbage truck and its crew come through his Whittington
Hall neighborhood four mornings every week. Nicholas, who is 3 today, is there
every day standing sentry.
When it's warm he runs to the yard. When it's cold he's on the porch or
inside the door. The three-man crew - driver Dan Jackson, Bruce Willard and
Colossie Epps - always waves and toots the truck horn before leaving the
Fahlers' cul-de-sac on Thora Drive.
``When he's out there waiting, he makes your day,'' says Jackson, who's
been driving for the city of Jamestown for more than 10 years.
The ritual has been going on for more than a year. A few weeks before
Christmas, Jackson stopped by to find out Nicholas' name. A week later, he and
his crew presented Nicholas with a gift: a toy dump truck.
On the morning of Dec. 21, a few days before Christmas, Nicholas
reciprocated the gift giving. His parents, Pat and Jane Fahler, bought large
tins of popcorn that Nicholas helped wrap and distribute to the trio. Nicholas
was waiting outside in the driveway, oblivious to the ear-stinging cold and
warning his 6-year-old sister, Mallori, that she's not allowed to help hand out
the gifts.
``They're coming now,'' Nicholas said, the swell of the truck's engine
audible two blocks away. ``The garbage mens are coming.''
When they got to Nicholas' house, he was ready. Epps, who had been out
sick, was replaced by a crewman who gave his name only as Sonny. Nicholas seemed
not to notice the substitution, taking his eyes off the crew and the truck only
long enough to hand out their gifts.
In 10 years of driving for the city of Jamestown, Jackson says, Nicholas
is ``the only one that I can count on being out there.''
The trio politely accepted their gifts from the Fahler family. They
snagged the family's garbage, loaded it and climbed back to their posts. As they
headed to the next house, they tooted out the sound Nick waits for every single
day: ``Baahmp, baahmp, baahmp.''
GREENSBORO - Sociology tells us they are the twain that shall never meet:
the younger black man and the older white woman.
The latter is supposed to clutch her purse and cross to the other side of
the street at the sight of the former.
But Johnny McKoy, 40, and Carol Lineberry, 61, sent that stereotype
sailing as soon as McKoy moved into Lineberry's northeast Greensboro
neighborhood three years ago. The two neighbors hit it off right away.
Lineberry, who's lived in the same house all her life, watches McKoy's house
when he's away. McKoy let Lineberry name his boxer Molly after her own departed
dog.
``This world would be a better place,'' Lineberry says, ``if more people
knew their neighbor and cared for their neighbor and would try to do something
to help someone.''
So on a late Friday morning in mid-July, Lineberry was dismayed when she
learned that McKoy's red Jeep had been stolen. McKoy left the vehicle running
while using an automated teller machine at a bank on Summit Avenue. A man jumped
in and made off with it and McKoy's belongings: $1,000 worth of horseback-riding
equipment, a Bible his mother had given him, cash, and his house keys.
McKoy got a ride back home and went next door to get his spare house key
from Lineberry, telling her what happened.
``Oh my word, John,'' Lineberry said. ``Isn't that terrible.
People are just so mean. I'm going to pray, and I'm going to find your car
before the day is over. I'm going to pray, John. I'm going to find your
car by 4 o'clock.''
Lineberry says she had a feeling the Jeep wasn't far from where it was
stolen. After taking her older sister Ruth to the beauty shop, the two set out
patrolling the streets between Bessemer and Summit avenues. They turned down a
few streets, and as Lineberrynavigated a curve, there sat McKoy's red Jeep.
``Ruth, oh Lordy, there's John's car. There it is right there,''
Lineberry exclaimed.
They called the police and then headed back to their neighborhood to get
McKoy, but he wasn't home. So they hurried back to the street where they'd left
the Jeep.
Meanwhile, McKoy, who had borrowed his brother's car, says something had
guided him to go down Bessemer Avenue and turn onto one of the side streets.
``When I got out there, Carol was there saying, 'John,
John, I found your car','' McKoy says. ``It was a miracle.''
GREENSBORO - Some performers prefer to keep their fans a body-guard
length away. Others may indulge their admirers publicly but guard their personal
time.
Country singer Robert Earl Keen, though, made friends of two of his fans:
John and Diane Stephenson of Greensboro.
``We've seen him probably 25 times,'' says Diane
Stephenson, who Keen's band calls the ``chicken lady'' for always
bringing them a home-cooked meal when they play in the area.
The Greensboro couple traveled the country to hear Keen play and built
vacations around the singer/songwriter, known for such tunes as ``Merry
Christmas From the Family.'' John Stephenson, who owned
School Kids, now Skids CDs, even booked Keen to play his 50th
birthday party two years ago at the Jokers 3 nightclub.
But the last time John Stephenson heard Keen perform was
when the music-store owner was dying of a brain tumor.
Diane Stephenson knew her husband wasn't well enough to sit
through the concert at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem in October, so she called to ask
if she could bring him over for a sound check earlier in the day.
Everyone agreed. Keen spent 20 minutes just talking to John
Stephenson, who was frail but enjoyed the scene from his wheelchair. Keen
and his band graciously played a 90-minute concert just for John
Stephenson, bothering little with the actual sound check.
Keen gave Diane Stephenson his unlisted home telephone
number in Texas and asked her to keep him informed.
Diane Stephenson used the number the day her husband died
on Nov. 16, leaving a message with Keen's wife. The singer called her back
within 15 minutes.
Unbeknownst to Diane Stephenson, the singer was in Rocky
Mount, heading to Asheville to perform. When Keen's big Silver Eagle touring bus
pulled up at Diane Stephenson's house on Cedar Street, she was as
amazed as she was moved.
``They could have so easily driven on by Greensboro, and I never would
have known it,'' Diane Stephenson says. ``To make the effort to
stop and spend 20 to 30 minutes at the house meant a lot to me. I knew what they
were saying was how much John meant to them.''
Diane Stephenson plans to see Keen perform again, but has
warned him and band members Bryan Duckworth, Rich Brotherton, Bill Whitbeck and
Tom Van Shaick not to be offended if she cries throughout the set.
More than likely she'll be thinking of their kindness and of her
husband's favorite Robert Earl Keen song, ``Paint the Town Beige:
``I gave up the fast lane for a black-top country road.
``Just gave up on all that talk about the Mother Lode.''
GREENSBORO - Dino Thomas was back at work Dec. 13 as a Guilford County
tax collector. He'd been out on medical leave for nearly seven months, and his
return was cause for celebration.
Thomas, 29, left work May 7 on a stretcher. He had been diagnosed three
years ago with congestive heart failure but was taking medication for his
condition. Although feeling ill for a few weeks, that week he felt all right.
Someone had brought a cake into the office, and after Thomas had dropped
icing on his shirt, he went to the bathroom to wash it off. That's the last
thing he remembered.
His co-workers, hearing a loud thud, went to check on him and found him
lying unconscious in the bathroom.
Meanwhile, Thomas' co-worker Ken Ervin was returning from the main tax
office in the Guilford County Courthouse to the Eugene Street office where he
and Thomas work.
``When I came in, everyone met me at he door, panicky, and asked if
anyone knew CPR,'' Ervin says.
A former deputy with the Guilford County Sheriff's Department, Ervin was
trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation when he joined the force in 1982. He
took a second class offered by the county in 1990 after he had joined the tax
department.
He rushed to where Thomas was lying, hesitating for two or three seconds
to collect his thoughts.
``It had been years since I had taken the course,'' Ervin says, who had
never had occasion to use his training. ``I could tell he was in serious
trouble. I just went down.''
Ervin tilted Thomas' head back and checked his air passages. Someone else
checked his pulse and couldn't find one. Ervin began chest compressions: one,
two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four, five; and once more.
He checked the passages again and still couldn't detect any breathing.
Ervin then gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation twice and began the chest
compressions again.
``It seemed like forever,'' Ervin says, ``but I would guess it was only
two to three minutes'' until the rescue team arrived.
Three days later, on May 10, Thomas woke up in a hospital, not
remembering anything past washing his hands. After several trips to Nashville,
Tenn., for treatment and to see a cardiologist who was pacing him for a heart
transplant, Thomas has progressed so well he says he doesn't need the
transplant.
``That was my Christmas present,'' he says.
That and returning to work with Ken Ervin.
``Really, I was just glad to see him alive,'' Ervin says. ``I really felt
that it was the work of God. I was just the instrument he used. It made me feel
good that I was at the right place at the right time.''
The Guilford County Board of Commissioners gave Ervin a certificate of
recognition at its Dec. 16 meeting, which Thomas attended.
``He always says he didn't do anything,'' Thomas says, ``but I try to get
him to realize that if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be here. He's an angel, and
he was there when I needed him.''
GREENSBORO - How many times have you thought about what you'd do with a
windfall, if someone would just write you a check for $1,000? You'd be set - at
least for a while.
For certain members of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, it was $500 that made a
difference in their lives.
On the Sunday morning of Aug. 15 as Pastor George W. Brooks sat looking
out over his congregation, ``The spirit just spoke to me and said there are
people who need to be blessed, and $500 will help them get where they need to
be,'' Brooks says.
``They're feeling hopeless, like nobody cares and nobody understands
their problems, and yet they came to church to worship.''
When Brooks got ready to preach, he followed the spirit, asking all those
who needed prayer for their finances to come forward.
``If $500 will get you current, and you have no other resource, please
come to the front,'' Brooks beckoned. ``And unless it's exactly $500, don't
come.''
A few people trickled forward. Brooks urged members not to be ashamed.
Several more rose from the pews of one of the most prosperous churches in town,
spilling down the aisle to admit they needed money.
In all, 20 people came forward.
Brooks prayed for them, and he did something else. He asked his wife,
Edna, to get the church checkbook and write checks to each of them for exactly
$500.
One woman told Brooks that bill collectors were constantly calling her.
That she was doing all she could do, working two jobs to get caught up, but that
she couldn't.
Another of the 20 was contemplating how to share a testimony but felt
unworthy to make a public pronouncement when ``they didn't feel they were good
stewards over what God had given them,'' Brooks says.
Still, another person had chosen that particular Sunday as a day to begin
paying tithes but was still $500 short of working it out financially.
``They weren't major things,'' Brooks says. ``For many of those people,
it was things that had come over them.
``You know it had to be a lesson in faith. It could have been 100 people
as easily as 20 or it could have been two. But it was a matter of me recognizing
the voice of God. As I moved in faith, people were blessed.''
In addition to giving the money, Brooks arranged for those people, and
others who acknowledged money problems, to attend a class called Spiritual and
Financial Stewardship.
Yet, the ultimate reward for faith came from Brooks' own congregation.
After members saw what he had spontaneously done, unsolicited they began to rise
and bring forth checks for $500 to put back into the church coffers.
Brooks can't remember exactly how much was raised that day, but he says
the church didn't lose any money.
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