My stepfather, George, was seventy and still woke up before sunrise to deliver newspapers.
\nI never understood it.
\nHe had worked his whole life and should have been enjoying retirement. Instead, he spent freezing mornings driving from street to street, carrying bundles that clearly hurt his knees.
\nWhenever I asked why he kept doing it, he smiled and said, \u201cI like the morning air.\u201d
\nI used to feel embarrassed when people asked what he did.
\nThen George passed away unexpectedly.
\nAt the funeral, a man I barely recognized introduced himself as his manager.
\nHe asked if we could speak privately.
\n\u201cGeorge never needed this job,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I stared at him.
\nThen he explained that George had asked for the poorest delivery route in town.
\nEvery month, he quietly used nearly all of his paycheck to buy groceries, school supplies, and winter coats for several families along that route.
\nHe never told anyone.
\nThe manager handed me a folder filled with thank-you notes George had refused to take home.
\nOne was from a little boy who wrote:
\n\u201cMr. George always left breakfast when Mom had no money.\u201d
\nI broke down.
\nFor years, I had thought he was stubbornly holding onto a job beneath him.
\nHe wasn\u2019t delivering newspapers.
\nHe was checking on people who needed someone to show up before the rest of the world woke up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My stepfather, George, was seventy and still woke up before sunrise to deliver newspapers. I never understood it. He had worked his whole life and should have been enjoying retirement. Instead, he spent freezing mornings driving from street to street, carrying bundles that clearly hurt his knees. Whenever I asked why he kept doing it, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10471,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10469\/revisions\/10471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}