I Never Knew

Being an educator, I found it necessary to enhance my income by working a second job, which I did for over thirty years.  I found my second job in the construction industry.  Over time and with the Lord’s guidance and help, I acquired my contractors license.  I did foundation plastering and stucco work.  Because the winter weather prevented the plastering of foundations during the coldest time of the year, it had to wait until spring.  That meant that by the time I arrived to do it, the people who had purchased the house during those cold winter months had already taken occupancy.  That was both good and bad for me.  It doubled up my spring work, and even extended that extra work into summer during years when a lot of homes were built.  I often had to move things away from the foundation in order to plaster that I wouldn’t have had to move if I’d done my job before they moved into the house.  On the other hand, because the springtime work demanded I do it after school, several times I had people bring me a plate of food from their dinner as a token of kindness that I’ve never forgotten.  It was such a simple thing and yet I remember it more than three decades later.  But of all the bonuses I encountered in such circumstances, one was the sweetest.  I was plastering a foundation in a neighborhood of upscale homes on the west side of the valley.  As usual, I began after school and worked into the evening.  During that time, the owner of the house, an older gentleman, came out to talk to me.  We conversed about the usual things but somehow my name came into the conversation.  When he heard that my last name was Imlay, he paused.  Then he asked me if I knew a Clark Imlay who had taught art at Tooele High School.  I informed him that Clark was my father.  He got tears in his eyes and with a voice impaired by emotion, told me that he had grown up in Tooele.  By the time he reached high school his life was well on a downward spiral.  He admitted that he knew it but didn’t care.  He said my father reached out to him and took him under his wing and began to give him a reason to alter his course in life.  He told me that my father had literally saved his life.  He began to do better in school and distanced himself from the destructive friends and activities in which he had been involved.  He graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Utah where he graduated with a degree in engineering.  He secured employment at Kennecott Copper and had just recently retired.  To that very day this man held my father in great esteem and still felt a level of gratitude that moved him emotionally.  I wondered how many others my father had “saved”.  I’m certain there were others.  It was just the way he was.  How many of us serve others in these quiet, gentle ways that go unnoticed by anyone else, but whose service uplifts, strengthens, and inspires in such a way that lives are changed for the better and generations are blessed because of it.  That’s my Dad.  If only I could be half the man he was.