As my brother and I were getting older and becoming young boys, one day out of the blue, my parents decided that they would have a date night once a week. This meant leaving us kids at home for several hours in the evening. Not sure it was a problem with my brother, but I remember immediately complaining that I did not like Mom being away for so long! Now I do see how that was selfish on my part.
So off my parents went as I said goodbye to them at the elevator door that opened directly into our apartment I longed for Mom and Dad to come back. And they did come back a little early and Mom said eagerly said to us, Listen to what your Dad did.
With a great sense of admiration and accomplishment Mom told us about how Dad had helped a very poor girl out that night. A young daughter close to my age had been out in the cold at night selling soap bars.
This girl had a sick father and some problems with her mother and they both had been unable to produce an income for a several months so the responsibility had fallen on this little girl to provide for the family. Well that night my Dad bought several soap bars from the little girl and he also gave her extra money. A lot of extra money.
It was common in those days for poor people in the major cities to work by peddling something along the public roads. There were, however, as yet no vagabonds, gypsies or illegal immigrants. In those days the poor did this in the evening because you were supposed to be at work on another job during the daytime.
The next week came by and again my parents went out on another date. That evening I waited eagerly to find out how things went and was very happy to hear when my parents returned that Dad had again been even more generous with the same poor girl the second time he saw her.
This second time Dad gave her ten thousand lire and told her to go home and take care of her mom and dad. They needed food money to survive.
I never forgot what my Dad did and this was one of the many reasons I looked up to him as my hero and roll model – maybe more than anything else.
Later on, as I got older there were many different occasions where my Dad helped others financially. He would typically never say “no” to anyone who asked him for help – except for one time when someone he knew very well came to him asking him to loan them 100 million lire for a short time. That would have been the equivalent of close to $150K at that time or about a million dollars today. Although Dad would have loved to have helped this person, he did not. Only a few months later Dad was told that the person had declared what amounted to fraudulent bankruptcy. He had taken on all the private loans he could and then declared bankruptcy so that he had no obligation to pay anyone back.
As I observed his generosity in action, I thought about what Dad did for a long time and longed to be able to be like him. My sense of respect for him remained the very highest.