Treasury of Joy & Inspiration by Editors Of Reader's Digest

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?
    â€œI 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œI 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