A Fifty-Year Friendship Catalyzed By Kindness

"My parents came to the U.S. in the 1960s, along with the first wave of immigrants from India. My father came to Kansas, which is where he was getting his Ph.D. Six months later, my mother came with the three of us kids -- my sister, my brother, and me. We were just two, four and five years old. It was the very first winter we were in Kansas. It was cold. We didn't yet have heavy coats. We didn't yet have a car or anything like that, and my Dad didn't have a US driver's license yet. Back then, there were few Indians anywhere around." What follows is the story of a neighborly act of kindness that catalyzed a fifty-year friendship between two families.