My advisor at college- I don’t know why he did this for me since he’s not even Jewish, but I’ll always be grateful to him for this.
I first met him when I was considering transferring to a different college. One summer day I was checking out the college I wanted to switch to and I spoke to a random professor (who happened to have his office door open) about the curriculum. After showing him my transcripts and talking in “math” he said “you know, you’re the kind of student that makes this college proud, I sure hope you make the change”.
Sure enough, I enrolled in that college and was surprised to see that he was assigned to me as my advisor (I still don’t know if he had anything to do with it or not).
Some time later, he informed he of the last high level math course which I needed in order to graduate- and he was teaching the course. The day before the final I was in an accident and couldn’t be at the final. I got married right afterwards and couldn’t make up the final in time to get a passing grade instead of an incomplete.
Since that was the last math course I needed I hadn’t spoken to him in some time when he called me out of the blue to tell me that he was teaching the course again. He also informed me that since I waited too long the incomplete changed to an F. On the positive side, he was promoted to chairman of the mathematics department, and he has the authority to change my fail to a pass (otherwise I’d still have the F on my GPA) and waive the tuition fee for the course. All I had to do was retake the final- at home and at my convenience- and fax it back to him by a certain date.
I still don’t know why he took such an interest in me and went out of his way like that.
He had a heart attack shortly afterwards and I called the department all the time to see how he was doing. I was pleased to hear one day that he was well enough to prove the quadratic equation to all those visiting him. I them called him to thank him for everything.
All he asked for in return was for me to keep up with him.