A TRUE STORY

(Although not at all about Jimena, this item was sent in by our good friend Rocío. We thought it a good reflection for the rest of the year…)

THE GINGHAM DRESS
A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, and walked timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President’s outer office.
The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard.
‘We’d like to see the President,’ the man said softly.
‘He’ll be busy all day,’ the secretary snapped.
‘We’ll wait,’ the lady replied.
For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would become discouraged and go away.
They didn’t, and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a task she always regretted.
‘Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they will leave,’ she said to the President.
He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn’t have the time to spend with them and he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office.
The President, stern faced and with a pompous air, strutted toward the couple.
The lady told him, ‘We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here.
But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere on campus.’
The President wasn’t touched. He was shocked.
‘Madam,’ he said, gruffly, ‘we can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we did, this place would look like a cemetery.’
‘Oh, no,’ the lady explained. ‘We don’t want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard.’
The President rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, then exclaimed, ‘A building! Do you have any idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in buildings here at Harvard.’
For a moment the lady was silent. The President was pleased. Perhaps he could now get rid of them.
The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, ‘Is that all it cost to start a university? Why don’t we just start our own? ‘
Her husband nodded. The president’s face wilted in confusion and bewilderment.
Mr and Mrs Leland Stanford got up and walked away, travelling to Palo Alto, California where they established the university that bears their name, Stanford University, a memorial to a son that Harvard no longer cared about.

You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who they think can do nothing for them.
A TRUE STORY by Malcolm Forbes

People will forget what you said.
People will forget what you did.
But people will never forget how you made them feel.