What if you go to a memorial service and there are so many great stories told about a person that you can't find room for them all? Sometimes you've got to go to a take two.
In my Sunday column (Sept. 28) I was able to include many of the moving tributes to Herbert Cahoon Jr., the long-time mentor of students at Dwight Hall at Yale, who died Aug. 18 at 91.
But there was one anecdote, related by the Rev. Samuel Slie, which had to wait for this space.
Slie recalled the day a homeless person wrapped himself around a gate at Yale, near downtown, and refused to (or was unable to) budge. A group of Yale students were responsible enough to stop and ask if he needed help.
"Find Sam Slie," he told them.
The students located Cahoon at Dwight Hall and told them what was going on. Cahoon immediately called Slie.
But Slie told Cahoon, "I don't want to bother with that guy. I've given up on him. He's a lost cause."
Well, Cahoon told Slie that was unacceptable. "He's asked for you," Cahoon said. "You're the only person who can help him. You should go to help him."
Slie realized Cahoon was right. And he did go to that man, and he was able to help him.
"Eventually, there were some improvements in that man's life," Slie told the many friends of Herb Cahoon who had gathered in the chapel at Dwight Hall on the rainy afternoon of Sept. 26.
"Herb worked with soldiers, prisoners, the homeless, the hungry -- forgotten people," Slie noted. Herb knew how they needed him and that the rest of us needed to have our eyes opened."
For Herb Cahoon, there was no such thing as a "lost cause."