Free A Secret Gift by Ted Gup Page B

out their painful burdens to one that has taken such a unique plan of encouragement, the road would be easier to travel & this world a better place to live in. May God bless you & may the best men win. Your open letter is a tonic to a guy that can take [it] on the chin. Yours for a Happy Christmas and always a Brighter New Year Coming.
    Thanks for this priveledge
     
    AGAIN JUST BILL GRAY
    B. Virdot’s check for five dollars arrived four days later, on December 22, and on that day, Bill Gray wrote:
    Kind Friend
     
    Mr. B. Virdot
    Merry Christmas to you. I rec’d your check for $5.00 today. Thanks for same. You can be assured that it will be spent for something useful & I know that this fine gift of yours is much needed at this time & I’ll always remember you for it and again I want to thank you for it & I know each one you have helped will appreciate your kind offering. A Merry Christmas &
    Always a Happy New Year
     
    I AM BILL GRAY
NORTH CANTON, OH. R.D. #7
    Bill Gray, like so many who wrote to Mr. B. Virdot, wanted not a handout but a job. It was the hope of many that in reading their letters the mysterious B. Virdot would reach out to them with an offer of employment, a part-time position, or someone to contact who might know Someone. During the Depression, that “Someone” was capitalized because he or she might have an inside track on a possible job. In those leanest of days a job went unfilled only as long as the time it took for someone to get wind of it.
    Many of those who wrote to B. Virdot invited him to their homes. “Here it is,” wrote Bill Gray, “all these facts above mentioned are true & real & you can check me up on same.” In an era of scams, Gray and scores of others wanted the donor to see for himself that things were as described—or worse. In the Canton of the 1920s and the Depression, a fellow couldn’t be too careful, and the well meaning and trusting were prime targets for the unscrupulous. Those who wrote the letters were constantly exposed to flimflammers and schemers. Sam Stone was not a child himself, and it may well be that among the many considerations that led him to operate behind the mask of B. Virdot was this: its anonymity shielded him from the connivers who would have been eager to make his acquaintance. But those who wrote to Mr. B. Virdot inviting him to inspect their homes and their lives had a purer aspiration—they hoped that if he visited and attached a face to their hard-luck stories he might find work for them. His gift was most welcomed, to be sure, but the relief it brought was transient and their misery was not.
    Bill Gray was the son of Urias, a cigar maker, and Catherine Gray. He was the oldest of four children. He had a brother Charles, who worked as a foreman on the large painting jobs; a brother Roy; and a sister, Carrie, a nurse. Gray and his wife, Viola, had four children, Marjorie, Robert, Betty Jane, and Grace Ruth. In 1933, at the time he wrote to B. Virdot, he was forty-seven.
    But even today, three-quarters of a century later, there are more than dusty memories from those Hard Times. Bill Gray’s eldest child, Marjorie Markey, turned ninety-seven on October 10, 2009. She lives in the County Home in Ohio’s rural Wyandot County, 108 miles due west of Canton. She remembers the Depression only too well. She was forced to drop out of high school after the crash of ’29 to help support the family. In 1933, she was twenty-one and had long been working as “Gray the Painter’s” bookkeeper, so she saw firsthand the economic maelstrom and what it meant for her father.
    She remembers how he did all he could to protect the family from the worries that consumed him, but she also remembers the sound of his steps late at night pacing across the bedroom floor above. She remembers the terrible headaches that afflicted him, how underneath his straw hat he concealed a white kerchief he had soaked in cold water and tied around his head to relieve the throbbing