----Source: Greenwood Gleaner Dec 6 1953 Smith Miller

H. W. HUNT-The Kindest Man I Ever Knew Sketch of H.W. Hunt S.H.Miller 6 Dec 1953

Mr. Albert Neuenfeldt, Editor The Greenwood Gleaner Greenwood, Wisconsin

Dear Ed :

I should like to impose on you again for a little human interest item that is very dear to me. My mother had sent me down to that little store on the north end of Greenwood Avenue. I sure has a Big Tooth for horehound candy and I incidentally helped myself to one of those same pieces of candy. But I was no doubt seen doing it. The man said nothing at all. He put up what I went for and then took me by the hand and led me over to a sort of a dais where he kept his roll topped desk and swivel chair. He then took me on his knee when I started to sob as if my heart would break. He spoke kindly to me, never mentioning the candy, roughed my tousled hair and told me about a great man 1900 years bygone who was once tempted. While wiping away my tears he told me story after story about that Prince of Peace until the sobbing was all gone. Then he got up and we started out into the main store. He didn't ask me to return the candy but gave me another one and I left that store without an apparent care, my bare feet pattering up the sidewalk. Every care gone that is peculiar to little boys sometimes. Such was the love of that man. If this world had such love instilled into them these days, iron curtains just would not be able to roll down and dictators would slink away into the darkness of their own making. There was something there that day. I never knew until later years. I know now that there was a certain kind of atmosphere surrounding that little store that one could feel and wonder about. This incident has remained with me all my life and there is no doubt that its impression was very deep. I can see that man today going into that little white church with his Bible under his arm I can see him passing into the entry passed where the white-haired (sexton) Colonel was ringing the bell..... I think H.W. Hunt was about the kindest man I ever knew.

P.S. Were you ever at a little distance from that little white church on one of those gorgeous summer days and heard the music that poured form the windows ....

Responses

Bio: Hunt, Hale W. (6 Dec 1953)

Contact:  Susan Williams

I think this was about Henry W Hunt not Hale.