Treasury of Joy & Inspiration

by Editors of Reader's Digest

  The envelope bore the return address of a social-welfare center in Seoul. Inside was a thick autobiography written by a Korean War refugee named Yang-chin Chi. He wondered if his story might interest my editors.

  I had my doubts, but as I began scanning the pages, I found myself intrigued. Then I came to the lines that hooked me: “I felt incredible frustration, and my determination seemed to fade. It was at this desperate time in my life that I met Dr. Roy L. Thomas.” What followed was a description of an extraordinary friendship that blossomed between a black U.S. Army surgeon and a destitute Korean boy.

  I wanted to know more, and that is how I found myself, on a breezy afternoon last summer, sitting with Yang-chin Chi on the patio outside his home in Seoul. “It goes back a long time,” the lanky 57-year-old professor told me, “and some of it is very sad. . . .”

  For 13 generations, the Chi family had tilled the hillsides of Gwi-nae, a tiny village on Korea’s Yellow Sea coast. It was there, on October 13, 1936, that Yang-chin Chi was born. As a child, Chi sat spellbound while his grandfather, a teacher, entertained him with tales of Asian history.

  Chi longed to pursue formal schooling himself. But disease and war conspired against his dream. Chi’s father died of tuberculosis in 1945, and by then all the family savings had been used up in his treatment.

  Realizing Chi’s passion for learning, his mother let him board with another family and attend the nearest school, 20 miles away. But on weekends he trekked home to hitch a yoke to the family cow and help his two brothers and two sisters cultivate the rice paddies.

  On one of these trips home, Chi’s life fell out from under him. A few hours after midnight on June 25, 1950, Communist North Korean troops swarmed across the border 20 miles away. A full-scale attack on U.S.-backed South Korea was under way.

  The Chi family fled to desolate Soonwee Island, 2½ miles off the coast. They cut a cave into a hillside and scavenged for food and firewood.

  By January 1952, North Korean troops had begun forays near Soonwee, and the time had come to flee again. The Chi family joined a throng on the beach and tried to find room aboard one of the boats escaping south.

  One afternoon Chi and his older brother, Moon-ok, managed to wedge themselves aboard a packed 20-foot boat, but they couldn’t squeeze any more room. Moon-ok stuffed a tiny wad of Korean money into his brother’s pocket. “You must go,” he shouted above crashing breakers. “If you survive, at least one member of the family can carry on.” Then he jumped off.

  The ramshackle vessel pulled away. Chi could only look back on the beach and wail in sorrow. It was the last glimpse he ever had of his family.

  A U.S. Navy ship took the boat refugees to Korea’s southwestern coast. Chi hitched a ride to the city of Pusan, where he found work feeding wounded soldiers. He also took English and math classes at the YMCA.

  Alone and afraid, Chi calmed his mind by focusing on his dream. I have to get a better education, he told himself. That will be my goal.

  Chi found further solace in assuring himself that he would one day see his family again. But when the war ended with an uneasy truce on July 27, 1953, the new demarcation line between North and South Korea placed Chi’s native village squarely in Communist territory. A journey home was now impossible.

  Chi moved to Seoul, where he hoped for more opportunities. He earned his high-school diploma and resolved to somehow get a university degree. I have nothing left except what I can build with my mind, he thought. But having little money, he harbored a smothering fear that fate had snatched away his dream.

  Chi found work as a houseboy at a U.S.-Korean military base in Il-dong, north of Seoul. There, in April 1955, he watched as a stocky black man with a thin mustache stepped from a jeep and dusted off his captain’s uniform. Chi scooped up the officer’s duffel bags.

  “I’m Dr. Roy Thomas,” the man said in a quiet, soothing voice.

  Along the way to the VIP quarters, Dr. Thomas chatted with Chi, asking him about his duties. I am just a lowly houseboy, and yet he wants to know about me, Chi thought.

  As chief medical officer at Il-dong, the 33-year-old surgeon was burdened with work, yet he always spared time for Chi. When the young man struggled to express himself in English, the doctor encouraged him to write down the words.

  Eventually Dr. Thomas became Chi’s language coach. He listened while Chi recited English aphorisms: “Poverty saves one thousand times more men than it ruins,” “Every cloud has a silver lining,” “Time and tide wait for no man.” Dr. Thomas used these simple sayings to reinforce the idea that nothing was impossible if Chi worked hard enough.

  During lesson breaks, Dr. Thomas asked Chi about his life and was clearly moved. In turn, Chi learned about the doctor’s past.

  Roy Thomas was born in Youngstown, Ohio, to a struggling family that had migrated from Greenwood, Mississippi. His parents had had little schooling and placed the highest premium on education. Young Roy followed their counsel, completing medical school on the Army’s tab. When called to Korea, Thomas left behind a wife and two children—an eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl.

  A few months after they met, Chi sought out his new friend. “Captain Thomas, I’ll never make it to university if I continue to live in this remote area,” he said. “I must find work in Seoul.”

  The doctor agreed, putting a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “If you work hard, Mr. Chi, I’m sure all will turn out well.” He made Chi promise to send his address in Seoul.

  Back in the capital, Chi worked as a waiter in an Army officers club. But the pay was poor, and he soon found his spirits slumping. How can I ever save up enough to enter college? he wondered.

  One October morning Chi was stunned to see Dr. Thomas striding into the club. The surgeon went over to Chi’s supervisor to get permission for the young man to take the rest of the day off.

  “Are you still serious about attending university?” Dr. Thomas asked. Chi nodded. “Come with me, then,” the doctor said. “There’s a place we should visit.”

  They hopped into a jeep and drove to the rolling campus of Seoul National University. “You belong at a school like this, Mr. Chi,” Dr. Thomas said.

  As they walked around the grounds, Dr. Thomas told Chi more about his own education. “After high school I wanted to work in the steel mills.” But a family friend who had graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta convinced Thomas of the value of a degree from the renowned black college. In September 1940 he entered Morehouse and was soon in its premed program.

  Becoming a doctor was no easy thing for a young black man in the 1940s, Thomas added. Few hospitals in the country were open to black interns and residents. But he wouldn’t let prejudice defeat him and earned his degree from Meharry Medical College, a black school in Nashville.

  His challenges as a black man gave him empathy for Chi and his struggles. “Believe in yourself,” he told Chi. “And don’t give up until you’ve achieved your goals.”

  When Dr. Thomas dropped him off that night, Chi learned that his friend’s tour in Korea would soon be up. The two would likely never meet again. “Good luck to you, Mr. Chi,” the doctor said quietly. Overcome, the young Korean clasped his friend’s hand. Long after Dr. Thomas had driven off, Chi stood at his doorway, staring into the darkness.

  Letters soon started arriving from America, all carefully printed in large block letters for Chi to easily decipher, and all filled with the gentle prodding one might expect from a loving parent. Chi read and reread them until they were nearly worn through.

  “Remember,” Dr. Thomas wrote in one note, “the hardships of your youth will turn out to be a valuable experience. The iron tempered in a forge is stronger than one that never faced the forge.”

  Each letter ended with the same sentence, underlined in bold red ink: “Do you still plan to attend university next spring?” />
  Only at a friend’s insistence, however, did Chi take the admission test for Seoul’s Chung-Ang University. It’s a vain exercise, he told himself. The tuition deadline was in eight weeks and, with his meager earnings, he had no chance of coming up with the $85 he needed.

  His frustration soared when he learned that he’d passed with high grades. His university admission was guaranteed—if only he had the funds. Chi decided to let the doctor know of his admission to Chung-Ang and mentioned the difficulty of the high tuition costs.

  Six weeks later, a letter arrived from the United States. Chi was flabbergasted to find four twenty-dollar bills and one five-dollar bill inside. The money was, Dr. Thomas wrote, “a congratulatory gift.” In April 1956 Yang-chin Chi, now 19, entered college.

  For a time, Chi kept his American friend apprised of his academic progress. But as their lives grew hectic, the correspondence began to trail off.

  Chi earned his undergraduate degree in English language and literature, then went into social work, becoming an orphanage director.

  In the late 1960s Chi won a Fulbright scholarship in America, receiving a master’s degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He had one short phone conversation with Dr. Thomas, but the surgeon moved soon thereafter and the two men lost touch. Eventually, Chi returned to his alma mater, Chung-Ang University, as a professor.

  In November 1975 Chi founded South Korea’s first private social-welfare center for the poor. And thanks to Chi’s work, the Chung-Ang University Social Welfare Center has become a model for several other centers across Korea. Then he began working with the United Nations agency UNICEF in Korea and other countries. Within a few more years, he obtained a Ph.D. in social work from the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. The boy who had almost given up on his education had become a renowned scholar.

  As the years passed and his professional successes mounted, Chi found himself thinking often of Dr. Thomas. In April 1992, when he and his wife and three children watched horrifying television coverage of the Los Angeles race riots, he felt an overwhelming sadness, hearing of the tensions between American blacks and Koreans. How can this be when Dr. Thomas and I could so easily reach across the boundaries of race and culture?

  “I hope I can meet him again someday,” Chi told me when we met in Seoul. “Dr. Thomas brought me through a time in my life when all I had was his helping hand.”

  I left Chi determined to assist him in his search for his old friend. I contacted the Ohio State Medical Association—no listing. There was nothing in the databanks of black-physician organizations. As a passing thought, I asked the American Medical Association if it kept separate data on retired doctors. It did. Before long, a St. Louis address turned up for a retired physician by that name. I telephoned.

  A soft, hesitant voice answered: “Yes, I am Dr. Roy Thomas. Who’s calling?” I explained.

  “I remember Mr. Chi,” Dr. Thomas said. “But I did so little for him, and it was so many years ago. I’m surprised he even remembers me.”

  A few weeks later, sitting with Dr. Thomas and his wife in their St. Louis apartment, I told him how his simple acts of kindness had opened up Chi’s life and how he was now a leading voice on social welfare in his country. “He credits you for all of this,” I noted.

  “I don’t understand,” Dr. Thomas said. “I’m glad to know my assistance helped, but he succeeded because of who he was—not because of me.”

  I knew Dr. Thomas was wrong. What had seemed like insignificant gestures to him had proved to be something quite different to a poor Korean boy alone in the world. They were the gift that gave Yang-chin Chi a future.

  On an evening last July Chi excitedly dialed the phone number I had passed along to him. In seconds, he was talking to Dr. Thomas, across nearly 7,000 miles, nine time zones and so many years.

  “It is a miracle I have found you after such a long time,” Chi said, laughing. “I had almost given up.”

  The two discussed the many turns their lives had taken since their time in Korea. Chi recounted his accomplishments for his old mentor.

  “My friend,” Dr. Thomas said, “I’m so proud to see what you’ve made of yourself. I always knew it was there inside of you.”

  Chi paused as he searched for just the right words.

  “I want you to know something,” the Korean said in a voice that shook with emotion. “Meeting you was one of the most significant moments in my life. Our friendship was a turning point for me.”

  Then, after waiting so many years for his chance, Chi finally spoke the words he had long held in his heart.

  “Dr. Thomas—thank you.”

  Money Talk

  Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. John Kenneth Galbraith

  • • •

  It is said that for money you can have everything, but you cannot. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; knowledge, but not wisdom; glitter, but not beauty; fun, but not joy; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness; leisure, but not peace. You can have the husk of everything for money, but not the kernel. Arne Garborg

  A Heart for the Run

  Gary Paulsen

  April 1997

  From Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers

  Cookie had been my lead sled dog for close to 14,000 miles, including an Iditarod, the nearly 1,200-mile race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. Several times she saved my life. Somewhere along the way she became more than a dog, more than a friend—almost my alter ego.

  Now she was due to give birth in a wild winter storm, and my anxiety was acute. I thought of bringing her from the kennel into our small log house in northern Minnesota, but it would be too warm. Her coat was in full prime—she was at least a third wolf with gray wolf markings—and the heat would be murderous.

  I decided to construct an igloolike hut from bales of straw I kept near the kennel. It was just big enough for Cookie—and me, since the only way I could get any relief from my worry was to stay with her. Once inside, I crawled into my sleeping bag and said to Cookie, “Nice. Way better than we’re used to.”

  She was busy licking herself and didn’t respond, although she usually did. We talked often. I frequently explained parts of my life to her, which sometimes helped me better understand myself.

  I fell asleep and awakened four hours later to find Cookie giving birth. Four gray pups making small whine-grunt sounds were out and cleaned.

  Everything went fine until the eighth and last pup. It was stillborn. Cookie worked at it, licking harder and harder, trying to get it to breathe, her actions becoming frantic.

  She growled concern, and it turned to a whine. I reached one hand to cover her eyes, and with the other took the pup and buried it under some straw near the door opening. With other females I had hidden the dead pup to take away later, and it had worked. The mother focused on the live pups and forgot the dead one.

  But I should have known better. This was

  Cookie—stubborn, immensely strong-willed and powerful, completely dedicated to those she loved. She looked for the pup, and when she couldn’t find it, she looked me in the eye. Where is it?

  I reached under the straw, and she took it gently in her mouth, set it down and began working on it again. When she could not get it to respond, she put it with the other nursing pups.

  The movement of the pups caused the body of the dead one to move. She must have thought it alive, because she lay back exhausted from the birthing, closed her eyes and went to sleep. I waited a full minute, then carefully removed the dead pup and took it outside to a snowbank 20 yards away. Pushing it into the snow, I covered it, then stole back to our shelter, got into my sleeping bag and slept.

  When I awakened, Cook
ie was still asleep. I was getting ready to leave when something stopped me.

  There in the middle of the puppies lay the dead pup, stuck into a nursing position. Without awakening me, Cookie had gotten up and found it.

  I was caught between heartbreak and admiration. Again I thought I would take the pup while Cookie slept. But when I reached across to get it, her eyes opened and her lips curled. Again she looked into my eyes.

  Almost four days passed before she finally let me take her dead puppy. But even then she growled, not at me, but at the fates that would have her lose a young one.

  I had another demonstration of Cookie’s devotion on a nighttime winter run. It was clear, 15 or 20 degrees below zero, with a full moon. I put her at the front of the team with three of the seasoned dogs and six of her now nearly grown pups behind, a total of ten dogs.

  I planned to run 100 miles along abandoned railroad tracks that had been converted to a wilderness trail. The tracks and ties had been removed, and the old trestle bridges had been resurfaced with thick plywood.

  Twenty-five miles into the run we started across a trestle over a river. In the middle of the trestle, 20 feet above the river, the dogs suddenly stopped. Some maniac had stolen the plywood that provided a base for the snow on the trestle.

  I jammed the two steel teeth of my snow brake. But instead of sliding on the plywood to a gradual stop, the teeth caught on an open crosstie and stopped the sled with a jolt.

  I slammed into the handlebar with my stomach, flew over the sled and dropped headfirst into a snowbank next to the river. I hit perfectly. If I had landed in the river, I would have drowned or frozen. If I had struck ice, I would have broken my neck.

  As I struggled to my feet, I saw Cookie waiting on the trestle above, the team lined behind her, each dog on a tie with open space between them. I couldn’t turn them around without getting them tangled. Nor could I drive them over the trestle in the harness; the younger ones could fall between the ties.