By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
This past Tuesday at my Business Network International weekly meeting (which is held from 8 to 9:15 a.m. in the Veterans Museum), I heard a story that gave me chill bumps and made me have to swallow hard. Stephanie Reynolds, who works at the Limestone County Tourism office, gave a marvelous presentation on the role and impact of tourism in our county. The Tourism Office articles have been a part of Athens Now from the paper’s inception in 2007, and we are utterly blessed to have Stephanie’s articles show up in each edition.
In the 14 years that I have been involved with the paper, fall is the kick-off of festival season as it pertains to tourism, and so I was expecting to hear about one of my favorite times of year in Athens-Limestone County. And, I was not disappointed—so many of the best parts of living in Athens-Limestone County are nearly upon us — Fiddlers’ Convention, the Storytelling Festival, Thanksgiving, Christmas. As Pammie Jimmar of the Chamber of Commerce likes to say, “It’s when we turn into a Hallmark movie,” and she is right.
However, as special as festival season is, that isn’t what got me about Stephanie’s presentation, as good as it was. It was the reminder that the power of simple kindness and what we think of when we talk about Southern hospitality can and has defeated literal death and preserved the life of a weary stranger.
At one of the hotels in our area (and we have some lovely ones), a woman who was at her front desk position was doing what she always does—checking people in and out of the hotel. A man came up to her to begin the check-in process who happened to be from up north. Nothing about the situation seemed out of the ordinary. There was no “vibe,” no sense of anything being off, and the woman was literally being her normal self — kind, attentive, friendly, and helpful.
The woman let the guest know all of the amenities and perks he had coming to him as a guest of the hotel—the free breakfast and its hours, the use of the pool and the fitness center, and other features of the facility. She chatted with him, showed professional interest in him, made sure he was comfortable, expressed welcome, and in a word, was “just doing her job.”
Unbeknownst to the front desk clerk or anyone else in the hotel, the man had come to the place for the purpose of ending his life. He did not let on, of course, when he checked in, got his key and went up to his room. But the next morning he came down and told her, just as she was getting off the night shift what his plan had been. He let her know that the kindness that she showed him as a complete stranger made him decide to choose life and keep going.
Oh, my, has this story ever affected me and everyone to whom I have told it. The power of a kind word! Let us remember that “life and death are in the power of the tongue,” and give thanks that the simplest expression of “Southern hospitality” foiled the enemy of a precious man’s soul.
September 6, 2024
