THE ENDURING POWER OF TRUST

Mike Leonard

In the waning days of summer, prior to the start of my senior year in college, I bought a Super 8 movie camera. Nine years later, movies shot with that camera and projected onto the office wall of a TV executive led to my first job as a news reporter. I was a 31-year-old, married father of three with no journalism experience. How that camera came to be mine is a miracle of sorts.

August, 1969

It was late afternoon after my last day of summer employment on a Chicago construction crew. I had rented a room at a suburban YMCA for the bargain price of $14 a week. The money saved was earmarked for an $800 engagement ring I intended to purchase the next morning. Sitting in the cramped lobby phone booth, I fed quarters into a slot and spun the rotary dial.

My dad answered in his usual, cheerful manner. He had relocated to Phoenix a few years earlier with my mom, my two younger brothers and my grandmother, who had lived with us for years.

Long-distance phone calls were expensive, so I got right down to business, telling my father that I was going to propose to Cathy on Sunday with a planned wedding date in June of the following year -- if she accepted.

My delighted dad then handed the phone to my grandmother, who told me -- out of the blue -- that she had been saving her mother’s ring for this occasion. Her words caught me by surprise. I had worked all summer to save enough money for an engagement ring, and now my grandmother was offering to give me a ring -- a ring from her mother, Bridget O’Halloran from County Cork, Ireland. When my father got back on the phone, I told him how appreciative I was and then explained the problem with the gift.

It was late Friday afternoon, and I was going to buy the ring on Saturday, propose to Cathy on Sunday, then leave for school on Monday. How could I get the ring in time? There was no FedEx in 1969. My dad said he would try to think of something and told me to stay near a phone. The next morning, he called me at Cathy’s house with instructions to go to O’Hare Airport that afternoon. A plane from Phoenix would be arriving at 4 p.m. I was to wait in the arrival lounge. The ring would be delivered.

What my father did couldn’t be done today. He took Bridget O’Halloran’s ring to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix; and because there were no security checkpoints in those days, he simply walked to the departure lounge of a Chicagobound flight and waited for the flight attendants to show up. When they did, my dad approached one of the women and asked, “Could you deliver this ring to my son?” When she agreed, my dad handed her the diamond ring, explained that I would be waiting at the arrival gate in Chicago and left. He never asked the flight attendant for her name.

The plane landed on time. The passengers dispersed, leaving me standing there alone. A flight attendant peered from the jet bridge, then walked over to me slowly and said, “You must be the boy.” I nodded my head. Out of her pocket came a folded up napkin, and out of that napkin came a diamond ring. She placed the ring in my hand, gave me a hug, and said, “Have a wonderful life.” Then she walked away.

I never got her name.

A diamond ring once worn by an Irish immigrant who trusted fate by sailing off to an unknown land had just sailed across America in the trusted hands of an unknown woman. A day later, I gave that same diamond ring to a pretty girl who believed me when I said that I would find my place in the world. And after nine, long years of struggle, I did find my place by showing home movies on the wall of a news director’s office. Those movies came from a camera that I bought in Chicago on the weekend of my engagement. The movie camera cost $800 - the amount left in my bank account thanks to the gift of Bridget O’Halloran’s ring.

I may be old, but I got to see all the cool bands.

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