In 1988, a woman named Mary Anderson was preparing to board a plane in Miami to join her husband in Norway, but the airline agent told her she’d have to pay an extra $103 for her baggage, and she didn’t have the money. Then a stranger stepped forward and offered to pay her baggage charge. She described him as tall, nicely dressed, wearing khaki pants and a cotton shirt open at the throat, and he had a “gentle and kind voice that was firm and decisive.” She thanked him, promised to pay him back, and he waved at her as she walked away toward her plane. As it happened, the man had just left his job and was starting law school, and didn’t have a lot of money himself at the time. But only 20 years later, he was elected President of the United States.
Photo: Mary Anderson with a letter from the man who helped her at the Miami airport.