I am fortunate to have benefited from many acts of kindness from people over the years. Occasionally, though, I have wondered if there was something sinister behind a stranger’s willingness to help me, like the time a gravedigger came to my aid.
It was a hot Sunday, late August 1990, when I was driving to Newark Airport to meet Anthony. He was a police officer for the Port Authority and I was picking up some items that I had left at the shore house I had rented from him.
Several miles down the Garden State Parkway, my car started bucking and making noises like it was about to break down. Not wanting to be a casualty on the shoulder of the road, I took the nearest exit and steered the car into a gas station. Unfortunately, it was closed.
As I looked for help, I saw I was in a bad neighborhood. The streets were lined with trash and boarded-up buildings. And the air was still with the only sounds coming from the hum of low-hanging electrical lines and the atonal chatter of cicadas. The place was deserted—at least temporarily—and I felt as if a bad character might emerge at any moment.
Thankfully, I found a working pay phone (this is what we did in 1990) and called Anthony. When he figured out where I was, he said, “You’re not in a safe place. I’m coming to get you.” Fifteen minutes later, three squad cars with five officers pulled up to the gas station. It must’ve been a slow day at the airport.
While they were checking my car, a man in a flatbed truck pulled in. A big, burly guy, he explained that he worked at the cemetery next door and wondered if he could help. After conferring with the officers, they concluded my car needed to be towed. I heard one of them comment to another, “Look at the mitts on that guy.”
The cemetery worker said, “If you can help me get the car on my truck, I’ll tow it to her garage and then take the little lady home.” The officers nodded in agreement and I found myself climbing into the passenger seat of the truck.
Something akin to STRANGER DANGER flashed repeatedly through my mind. But since the officers didn’t seem concerned, I said nothing and decided to trust Richard. He and I became acquainted during the time it took to drive to the garage and then to my house on local roads at under 30 miles per hour, windows rolled down. Mostly we shouted at each other to be heard. The old truck took every bump and shift of the gears hard.
Richard told me he was a gravedigger. He’d been doing it for decades, ever since coming back to the States after a stint in the military—the Korean War, I think. He hadn’t planned on this type of career but took the job after his fiancée broke off their engagement. It was a way for him to quietly work out his grief.
At 60 years old, he reflected on his disappointment with never finding a better job or another woman to love. But he was able to give respect to the dead whom he had spent decades burying—and that counted for something—especially the ones who had no family or friends to come to the graveside. That’s when he would say a prayer for them.
When Richard dropped me off at home, I thanked him for going out of his way to help me and we said good-bye.
A few days later, I called Anthony* to arrange another time to pick up my belongings. He sounded relieved that I was okay and told me that after the truck had driven away, he and the officers wondered how they could’ve sent me off with a stranger. He said they should’ve at least followed the truck.
When I reflect on that story, I always feel that there was more to it, that God had interceded with an unlikely hero. During the next few weeks I sometimes saw a loud junky flatbed pass my house and I’d think it was him coming to get me. But I always return to the real ending—that a stranger, or angel – helped me simply because he could.
*Tragically, Anthony died at the age of 47 while attempting to rescue victims in the World Trade Center on 9/11. He was an inspector for the Port Authority Police Department; his last post was as the highest-ranking policeman at LaGuardia and Kennedy Airports.
© 2023 by Ellen Donker