Pay it forward

One Thursday evening in 1949, sixteen year old Pete Wagner went with his pals to Hilsabeck's Sporting Goods store in downtown Holdrege, Nebraska. The boys were ordering their letter jackets--a substantial expense at $30 each. While his buddies tried on samples for size, Pete stood quietly in the background. Although he was a new letterman, he couldn't afford a jacket. Pete's dad had died just a few months earlier, and it was up to him to work all the hours he could at the grocery store so the income of the short order cook mom and the apprentice meat cutter son could keep the family afloat.

Mr. Hilsabeck, the proprietor, talked quietly to Pete and asked him why he wasn't ordering a jacket. Pete told him he couldn't afford it, but that he might be getting a sweater sometime later. In a small town like Holdrege, everyone knew about Pete's dad and about the family's precarious financial condition. "You go ahead and order your jacket, Pete," said the proprietor, "and you can pay me a few dollars a week--whatever you can afford."

Through the kindness of Mr. Hilsabeck, Pete got his letter jacket, paying off his debt interest-free and the rate of $2 a week. It was a story Pete Wagner told me a dozen times or more, and it was an act of kindness and generosity I saw him repeat in his own life over and over. A proprietor himself in later years, he was always there to help the poor family in the neighborhood of his grocery stores, the disabled employee, the customer down on his luck, the shut-in down the street, the kid with no job, the college student with no place to stay, nothing to eat, and no car to get to class.

My father in law, Pete Wagner, the best fishing buddy I've ever had, died last Thursday after an intense battle with a sudden illness. We will lay him to rest this morning, a year after my own Dad's passing. A man is lucky to have a father he can look up to, aspire to be like, and learn life's important lessons from. I was blessed with two.