Toward the end of the Depression, he tracked down the addresses of miners who’d moved on, and he wrote more than fifty of them letters. They’d say, “Dear Tom: You owe me $375.00 for your grocery bill. If you’d pay me $150, I’ll be willing to cancel the debt.”Just a short, simple letter with a different number and name on each.I saw that list of names and addresses written out in Uncle Bill’s chicken scratch on lined sheets of Aunt Merilyn’s stationery. He typed the letters, and he kept the list of names to check through as he got back responses.Some never wrote back. Some sent him five dollars at a time, saying they appreciated his understanding and would pay him back in installments. One man wrote, “You fed my family when they would have starved. I’ll pay you every cent I owe.” It took him five years, but he did.That man was the only one who got a blue circle drawn around his name on Uncle Bill’s list. I’d see it every time I passed that sheet of paper tacked on Uncle Bill’s rolltop desk, right next to his Ships of the Navy calendar.
