Peter Hladký: Forms of Friendship and Help
Peter Hladký: Forms of Friendship and Help
The forms of friendship and help are various. Especially between people who
have never met in person, live thousands of kilometers apart on two different
continents, separated by an ocean and with a generation gap of more than
25 years. This is exactly my friendship with Mrs. Flossie Binder, who is 92
years and lives in the city of Ithaca, in the state of New York, in the United
States of America. We were united by the Internet, photography, jazz, that
is the power of music, but ultimately by empathy and solidarity.
In the first days when Russia invaded Ukraine, she contacted me and asked
me if we were safe and sound and if Slovakia had problems with refugees. I
wrote to her that despite the fact that the conflict is terrible, it also has
positive effects, mainly in that the war has caused a great wave of empathy and
solidarity in ordinary people and that many people are helping, organizing
aid, transporting refugees, housing, etc. That our Rotary club is also actively
involved in helping refugees and Ukraine and helps at the district level, as a
club and also individually - because the family of our current club president,
Stano Horváth, modified, arranged and adapted their uninhabited house and housed
7 refugees, mostly mothers with small, or school children, and later up to 31
refugees lived there. In addition to accommodation, friends and members of the
club helped them and still help them arrange documents, school, doctor,
employment and everything they need. Mrs. Flossie immediately responded
spontaneously saying that it is wonderful and that she wants to help too and
that she will send a bank check to our club. But the problem in Slovakia with
bank checks is that Slovak banks have not paid them for several years. I
explained to her that it would be a problem, but that she could make a
bank transfer to our account. She responded that she would have to go to the
bank in person, but that she would go to the bank. But there was a problem in
the bank. The branch manager was cautious and started asking Mrs. Flossie who
the money was actually going to be sent to, who I was, what she knew about me,
whether it was a scam, etc. She warned her that she was going to send money to
some unknown person on the other side of the globe whom she only knows from the
Internet. In the meantime, I realized that she doesn't know anything about me
and I sent her all the information about me, the address, the official website
of our RC including the list of club members. She texted me that she had just
returned from the bank and that it was okay, that she sent the money because
she trusted me She wrote me back that she had just returned from the bank and
that it was okay, that she sent the money because she trusted me. So this
brave 92 year old retired lady, with a good heart, sent us 500 US dollars to
our club account to support refugees from Ukraine. Of course I immediately
thanked her, sent her a copy of the bank statement with the amount we received
from her. The president of the club wrote her a letter of thanks, which we sent
to her together with the club flag. When she received the letter with the flag,
she immediately wrote to me that she was very moved and that she would put the
flag in a special place among her precious photos of family and friends. But
she was visited by a neighbor, to whom she told the whole story of our
friendship, and he told her that why not put the flag on the door of the
apartment so that all the residents of the house could see it and tell them the
fascinating story of our friendship and solidarity. So the flag of our club
found itself on the door of Mrs. Flossie Binder's apartment, in an apartment
house for seniors, and it advertises the Rotary International movement and our
Banská Bystrica Rotary Club.
That's right, friendship comes in many forms, and empathy and solidarity
bring people together. Thank you, Mrs. Flossie, for the beautiful gesture and
for helping the refugees from Ukraine.
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