Dr. William L. Stidger sat down and wrote a letter of thanks to a schoolteacher for having given him so much encouragement  when he had been in her class 30 years before. The following week he received an answer, written in a very shaken hand. the letter read:
    "My dear Willie: I want you to know what your note meant to me. I am an old lady in my eighties, living alone in a small room, cooking my own meals, lonely, and seeming like the last leaf on a tree. You will be interested to know, Willie, that I taught school for 50 years and in all that time, yours is the first letter of appreciation I have ever received. It came on a cold, blue morning and cheered my lonely old heart as nothing had cheered me in many years."

 - Martin Buxbaum