Good morning, Netizens...

(PHOTO CREDIT) Dean Germeyer's "shiny shoes" sparked a conversation between the Chicago businessman and 79-year-old Elsie Clark during a flight from Dallas to O'Hare. When Germeyer heard Clark was stranded at the airport, he helped her out.
(Jean Lachat/Sun-Times/CBC)

Dean Germeyer could have done what others were doing, and ignore a 79 year-old handicapped Canadian woman in a wheelchair who was emotionally-exhausted and broke. However he did not.

Clark’s nightmare journey home from a visit with her daughter in Texas began in the morning of Dec. 30, when a careless porter pushed her to the wrong gate at Dallas/Fort Worth airport.

Suffering from a bad hip and unable to move her wheelchair, she missed her flight and was placed on a weather-delayed connecting flight to Chicago instead.

The pair struck up a fast friendship on the plane and Germeyer offered to help Clark make her connecting flight once they landed.

“She’s a very sharp, entertaining lady,” Germeyer said.

But though they rushed across O’Hare, the last flight to Winnipeg had gone. United staff offered her a discount on a hotel room she still couldn’t afford.

“I’m on a fixed income,” she said, “I’d have to have slept at the airport.”

Instead, Dean Germeyer, 43, took Clark home to his wife, fed her, took her on a guided tour of the city, put her up in a classy downtown hotel and arranged for a car to take her to the airport in the morning.

After a supper of quiche at his upper-end Streeterville condo, Germeyer took her to see a view of the Chicago’s skyline from Lake Shore Drive and to the base of the Hancock tower, from where she took a dizzying glimpse up at the stars.

When he dropped her off at the Affinia hotel and told her not to worry about the bill, Clark ended a tearful day with one last sob.

He could have ignored her, but instead showed her compassion and graciousness seldom seen in our hectic world of today.From the "little people" of Spokane, Washington, we need to find and deeply thank this man, for he is a person of stature. 

http://www.facebook.com/people/Dean-Germeyer/1473427139

Dave

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