It's Elmo Chapin Day

Yesterday would have been my Grandpa’s 91^st birthday.  Every year I send out a tribute to him and encourage others to consider leaving their world better than they found it in honor of him.  I call it Elmo Chapin day.

I am sending the note on a Monday because this year his birthday, January 6^th,  landed on the weekend.  An encouraging sign in my life was that my children remembered the point of Elmo Chapin day.   Hallelujah, they are listening!!

Here is how my Grandpa worked.  He was a servant.  He thought that you should always leave a room or any other place in better shape than you found it. 

So if he saw a piece of garbage on the floor he didn’t wonder who put it there.  He picked it up and threw it away.  If he was leaving a room he turned off the lights when he left the room.

He wasn’t perfect. 

At times he left you wondering how a person could so easily notice and take care of three scraps of paper in a public restroom but was unable to clean the stacks of useless piles of paper out of his own office.  The temptation to ask him how a 6 year old magazine on a subject he could care less about wasn’t garbage just like the paper towel you picked up off the floor ten minutes ago came to me quite often.   His office was always beyond a mess.

My Grandpa not only used this concept on the small level I have suggested above but he carried it out to a much larger level.  Thing that he worked on in his life like give to and supporting missionaries at church, starting the alarm division at Willmar Electric, and helping widows or the underprivileged are larger examples of his wanting to make the world a better place.  Giving people a hand up in the world made his day.

Finding a job or a place to live for somebody down on their luck was typical of Elmo Chapin.

Over the past few years of my declaring an Elmo Chapin day I have received several warm responses from people about how much they appreciated and loved my Grandpa.  They are always fun to receive.  I have also seen countless examples of people being like Elmo Chapin.  That is even more fun.  (Even when it was Dan Williams shutting off the lights on a room full of people leaving us in complete blackness as he left the room.  He laughed and we reminded him that shutting off the lights when you leave a room applies only if you are the last to leave!)

But his concern for his fellow man and the world around us was something we all need to try to emulate.