Lost and found: honesty really is the best policy

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Carol Forsloff - St. Helens, Oregon is one of those picturesque places with many stories to tell, of ash from a volcano of the same name and the small town wonders and glowing green countryside Oregon is known for best, but we can add another and that’s honesty, a policy two restaurants in the area share for sure.

Sue Joe Martin is a diminutive woman with the fresh face of youth, but that fresh face is really a beautiful aura that covers one of a much older woman.  At 65 Sue Joe can articulate her ideas with the savoir faire of the best.  She and her first husband, both Chinese, moved to Oregon from Canada many years ago, founded a restaurant that has been in the area for 25 years, raised their children and found success.  Later Martin lost her husband, Bing, to an assassin’s bullet, an event that put her on the front page of Portland papers as the grieving widow. It was a complex crime of the type that is talked about than disappears as only yesterday’s news, but for a grieving widow holds  sorrow that often seems never to end.

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But Sue Joe isn’t the kind of person that stays stagnant when grief invades  life.  Instead she reaches out to help others in need everywhere.  Her new husband, Jerry, who stood by her in her dark moments following the loss of her first husband, says, “She would truly give you the shirt off her back.  She is a loving, giving person who is always looking for something good to do for others.  Indeed she is a wonderful person in every way."

That way was demonstrated one Wednesday morning when a frustrated journalist, who had misplaced a camera at a restaurant near Bing’s the restaurant Sue Joe owns,  called to inquire if Sue might know that restaurant address and have a contact number.  An incident of a lost camera brought the kindest intervention on the telephone, information about where the other restaurant was located and a good word about it as well.

The lost camera was found at Warren Country Inn, where honesty prevails as well.  The camera had been found where the errant journalist in the daze of a day’s long hours had left it.  It had been found and taken to the office, where the journalist picked it up the next day.   Still, the lost and found story doesn’t end with this.

It might be good for folks to know that most people actually do return lost items.  That means honesty is the best policy with folks.  That news reinforces the practice itself in St. Helens, but there’s even more to it that shows how trust and honesty itself can lead to relationships that count.

The story is a never-ending tale of how people meet in one place, sometimes not for the purpose thought, as the lovely Sue Joe is now a friend, more than a voice on a telephone, but a person met at dinner, after the camera was recovered from Warren’s Country Inn nearby.  Where honesty and kindness exist, good feelings thrive as well.  Good feelings lead to trust, and trust to friendship, as happens with us all.  The potential tragedy of a lost camera, with its critical camera photos, and the sorrows of a Chinese woman whose emotional pain is drowned in the healing and sharing with others, is one of those timeless tales that all of us must share in a world where disaster news is all the time each day.  But in a small town in Oregon it’s the best news and the kind most of us surely want to know where honesty and kindness still prevail.  Being instrumental in the return of lost items is one of those acts that can create dimensions of human relationship, reinforcing the fact that honesty really is the best policy.

My Word Is My Bond

Dad's Point of View Column - Bruce Sallan - Do
you remember the old phrases, “He is as good as his word,” or “My word
is my bond,” or “A handshake is all I need (in the way of a deal)?”What happened?

Do
you remember when we didn’t think lawyers were the first people we had
to call before we made a deal? Do you remember when a contract was just a
page or two?  Do you remember when your friends returned your
phone calls promptly and a RSVP meant something? 

What
happened?  What happened to someone following through on a commitment of
“Yes” or “I’ll get back to you?” or “I’ll be there.”  I fear our
children will have fewer of these kinds of business or personal
encounters.  The irony is that we have much faster and easier methods
of communication yet all it seems to have done is to make life more
complicated and less trustworthy.  

I don’t like
this change.  Not one bit.  And, frankly, I still rail against it,
and expect better of my friends and those I work with.  I know that
having expectations usually only leads to being let down, but I can’t
help still hoping that people will behave as I try to do--with a sense
of honor, follow through, and respect. 

My former work life
should have taught be well not to have these expectations since showbiz
is notorious for its flakes and deal breaking.  But, I never got used to
it. Late in my showbiz career, a good friend betrayed me, and it really
broke my heart in a way from which I never fully recovered or regained
my enthusiasm for working in the entertainment business.  I left
that business shortly thereafter.  As with so many things that seem bad
at the time, I look back at that incident as a positive life change,
though it didn’t feel like it at the time. 

Now I am better
at minimizing my expectations in launching my second career as a writer
and, more recently, as a radio show host. To get my column launched, I
sent out thousands of e-mail messages addressed to specific editors,
publishers, webmasters, and others in charge at newspapers and websites
across the country and, later, around the world (only in
English speaking countries). 

Yet, I still had
modest expectations that some small, but reasonable percentage of the
recipients of my e-mail messages might take the time to read some of the
samples I sent and respond.  Maybe they’d say, “Thanks, but no thanks”
or, better yet, maybe they’d say, “Love your writing; we must have
it.”  

I got about a 2% response rate and about a ½% “we’d like
to have your column” response.  That comes out to one out of every
200 e-mail messages I sent led to my column being carried by a newspaper
or website.  The first of these, I might add, was The Santa Barbara
News Press when Arthur Von Wiesenberger, one of its publishers, sent me a
wonderfully warm e-mail response offering my first “official” job as a
columnist at a paper.  

But, one out of 200!  You need thick skin
to take that kind of rejection.  To be clear, that meant that 196 out
of the 200 e-mail messages that I sent were either not read, deleted, or
rejected as spam--who knows? 

The other thing that puzzles me
occurs in my personal life and also relates to e-mail messages.  As my
mind and interests are varied, I used to like to share a variety of
links, music, photos, jokes, and such with my friends.  Over time, it
became clear that most preferred not to be bothered.  This is yet
another puzzling change in human intercourse. 

My more recent
experience in trying to secure sponsors for my radio show was the straw
that broke this camel’s back.  Naturally, the first places I sought
sponsors were with friends in businesses that I thought would be a good
fit with my show and audience.  

However, as I’ve stated earlier,
the methods of doing business seem to have changed.  I got lots of
encouragement, lots of “I’m interested,” and ultimately lots of “I’ll
get back to you” with few actually getting back to me at all. These
weren’t strangers that I sent unsolicited e-mail message to but, rather,
people I worked with, I hired and paid for their services, and in some
cases considered friends.  And they, too, were not being up-front and
honest.  

Why wouldn’t they just say “No?” I followed up several
times until it became clear that they were unable or unwilling to give
me that “No” as if ignoring my request could possibly be better?  Or, as
my wife has suggested and is probably right, they just had other
priorities in their lives and would get to it on their schedule, not
mine.  And, that is the lesson for me to learn and to pass on to
my boys. 

My boys will live, work, and play in this different
world where common courtesy often is the exception, but if they
understand “the game” they will be better prepared and
less disappointed.  Business will still get done and friends will still
be friends. . They will eventually enter and have to learn to deal with
this “brave new world” in which business and personal affairs
are conducted in such a haphazard and unprofessional manner.  

But, I still don’t like it. 

Please
listen to “The Bruce Sallan Show - A Dad’s Point-of-View” Thursdays at
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., PST on KZSB AM1290 in Santa Barbara or on the
Internet via a live stream.  For that link and all information about the
show and Bruce, visit his web-site: http://brucesallan.com.
Bruce’s column, “A Dad’s Point-of-View,” is available in over 100
newspapers and web-sites worldwide. Find Bruce on Facebook by joining

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