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Editor's note: Anonymous Thank Yous is a website that allows people to submit notes of gratitude to strangers who anonymously gave service. Michael McCarlie, its founder, contributes every other Wednesday. SALT LAKE CITY — Sarah sent in a story about Grandma Great to anonymousthankyous.com that changed her family's life. This is what she said:
"This thank you is half a century overdue. My great-grandpa died in the 1950s, leaving my great-grandma with 13 children, most of whom still lived at home. Grandma Great (as we called her) was not an educated woman. She had never had a career and she lived in a relatively low-income part of rural Utah. It was going to be very difficult for her to provide for her family.
"But when Great-Grandpa Clifford died, a few businessmen in town, including a grocer, got together to confer about Grandma Great's situation. They then came to her and said, 'You have 13 children and they will need many things. Send them to us and we will always give them whatever they need. You can pay us back whenever you have the money.
"I just heard that Grandma Great paid off her debt to these business owners sometime in the 1990s. It had taken her 37 years.
"I'm so proud of my great-grandma for working to take care of her family and repay her debts. But I'm also so grateful — so, so grateful — to those business owners who volunteered their resources (probably a LOT of resources, in at least the grocer's case), with no guarantee of repayment, to help out a struggling widow and her large family. Their unsolicited kindness is still a blessing and an example to me and to our family all these years later. I don't know who those men were, but my heart goes out to them and to their families. May they be blessed."
Anonymous Thank Yous: Have you ever wanted to say thank you for something a stranger did? Tell us your story at anonymousthankyous.com or follow along at Facebook and Twitter.
