…”Coach Frank paid for my surgery. Tell his wife thank you.”
The boy in the photograph was about ten, wearing leg braces, standing proudly beside my husband, Frank, on a baseball field.
The elderly man’s name was Albert. The boy was his son, Tommy, who had been born with a foot deformity. In 1995, Frank had volunteered as a Little League coach. When he found out Tommy’s family couldn’t afford the surgery that would let him walk properly, Frank quietly paid for it. He never told me. He must have used his overtime money.
Tommy grew up and became a physical therapist. He died last spring in a car accident. In his desk, his family found an envelope addressed to “Coach Frank’s wife,” with instructions to deliver it on Christmas Eve, because that was the night Tommy first walked without braces.
Inside was a check for $12,000, exactly what the surgery had cost thirty-one years earlier, and a letter.
“You won’t remember me,” Tommy wrote, “but I remember you. You gave me my first new shoes after the surgery. I didn’t know until years later that you and Coach were married. You were both doing the same thing without telling each other.”
I hadn’t known. I’d been giving away shoes from the store for years, paying for them myself. Frank had never known either.
The little girl, Tommy’s daughter, Lily, held my hand while I cried in the middle of the dark store.
I didn’t keep the money. I used it to start a small fund at the store for children who need shoes. My manager found out after Christmas. He gave me the next Christmas Eve off. I spent it with Albert and Lily.
