Tracking Down a Stranger

I am setting out to do the impossible or nearly impossible. I am setting out to track down a person whose name I don’t know, but someone that had a chance encounter with my father over 48 years ago. In May of 1966, my dad was returning from overseas where he had been in the Air Force. He was returning home after not seeing or talking to his parents and family for over 2 years. It was Memorial Day weekend of 1966. A young man, my father, had just returned to the United States and was hitchhiking from Washington D.C. back home to Bethel, Ohio. My father was picked up by a man, whom my father recalls being in his mid-30’s, in or near Wheeling, West Virginia. The man told my father that he was driving to Columbus, Ohio, to see his girlfriend and that he’d give my dad a ride to Columbus. When they arrived in Columbus at the apartment of the man’s girlfriend, this stranger asked my father for the phone number of his parents and told him to wait in the car while he went inside to call them. What my father didn’t realize is that this man, whom he had just met a few hours earlier, wasn’t planning on ending this journey in Columbus. He called my dad’s parents to tell them that he was going to drive their son to Dayton, Ohio, and that they could pick him up at the bus station. The man had gone inside to explain to his girlfriend that this stranger he had picked up in West Virginia hadn’t been home in over two years and that he was going to make sure he got home as soon as possible. In a time where the internet seems to connect everyone young and old, I am hopeful that this story can spread and that we are able to track down this stranger from 48 years ago. I am hopeful that someone somewhere has heard this story told to them by the man who drove a stranger (my father) from Wheeling, West Virginia to Columbus, Ohio, and then to the bus station in Dayton, Ohio, on Memorial Day weekend of 1966. I have set up an email address with the hopes of finding this man whom did such an amazing thing and left such an impression on my father. [email protected]