From todays (Sunday) Detroit Press.
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Sun. 07/23/06 12:54 AM
Finder's Keepers
My father was a postal supervisor who worked the night shift here in Detroit. He was a caring man, who grew up in Detroit and despaired over the riots of 1976 and was ever troubled by the problems of racial division and the impact of poverty in the community he loved.
Nobody can put a dollar value on the measure of my family?s gratitude or generosity.
The whole story, which I told to The Detroit News:
The $21,000 savings bonds belong to my father?s 82-year-old widow, a retired teacher, who agreed to offer a token reward of $100 when first contacted 10 days or more ago. When nobody called back as promised, she filed by mail to have them re-issued on Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt. The homeless shelter first contacted The Detroit News, who called me Friday morning. A few hours later the shelter called back having arranged a press conference -- they got the News and another, I think was from the Associated Press. That was not part of the deal. Okay?
I was a newspaper reporter for 6 years or so and I knew this was a set-up by a well-deserving agency, the Neighborhood Services Organization, doing a very hard job. From what I saw when I was there, they are doing it as well as can be expected. I respect and understand their decision to do what they did. My own expectation is to offer what skills I have to them. Leave that aside.
I called by mother and told her that I ought to take her offer of $100 for Mr. Moore, who found the bonds, as we offered. She agreed and I did. I merely delivered the token reward earlier offered by my mother at 3:30 in the afternoon with the two newspaper reporters and two photographers gathered around.
This 24-hour shelter is in one Detroit's worst areas. It would be a frightening trip for anyone. I lived and grew up in Pleasant Ridge and attended Wayne State University and the Detroit College of Law in the 1960s and 70s.
When I arrived at the shelter, people lingered on the curbs as the executive director drove his car in ahead of me and parked in a broken-glass strewn parking lot. Stray possessions spread across the vacant fields to the west. People were streaming in and out through the magnetic screeening machine set up at the entry way.
The Neighborhood Services Organization shelter to which Mr. Moore brought what he found -- if they were found in a dumpster as he reported, it was hours away from being hauled to a landfill forever lost. His finding them is remarkable and the reporter missed an even better story than she wrote. She did not ask about me the person but about me the lawyer $21,000 richer.
Not true as you will see. The better story was me the person because the last wedding I went to for a daughter, my father died the night before at 2 in the morning and The next wedding I went to was today, my youngest brother's step-daughter. I think my Dad is determined to make his mark.
My mother, who knew nothing of what my father had done, is the sole beneficiary as POD on every savings bond and as sole beneficiary of my father?s otherwise modest estate. I don?t disagree with some who say that $100 was a token reward. However, that?s the real story. Not what The headline writer and reporter made of what they thought happened. If your reporter had not called me first, if the shelter agency had responded days earlier, if any reasonable effort had been made for me to meet Mr. Moore -- he comes there every morning for breakfast, they said -- it could have been a much different story. If so, why did they fail -- did it not adhere to newspaper deadlines for the weekend?
You and some of your readers and many across the country -- who left me a series of hang-up telephone messages and rude e-mail messages, to all of which I have responded, made a series of cynical assumptions that my late father, who had a wry sense of humor, would say to me, "Sorry about that bundle of bonds I stashed away -- next time you'll know better."
Neil J. Lehto, West Bloomfield, Mi
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