“Signed Dr. Howard Kelly. Tears of joy flooded her eyes as her happy heart prayed: “Thank You, God, that Your love has spread abroad through human hearts and hands.”
The above is a true story!!! “
I generally really DO hate to be a spoilsport, but if you go to Snopes.com and type in the search engine “Dr. Howard Kelly and the glass of milk” you will find that although the substance of the story is true, it has been GROSSLY, GROSSLY exaggerated to be more dramatic. He was not an impoverished kid with his last dime – quite the opposite, came from a very weall-to-do family that was putting him through school. He was not ready to give up and quit anything, and he was not starving and selling goods from door to door. He had been on a hiking trip and stopped by a farm because he became thirsty. The girl (not woman) who answered the door and gave him a drink, was not deathly ill with a baffling illness, she was merely one of his patients 75% of whom he never charged a dime, because they could not afford him. That alone is sufficient to make a hero of him, in my book, without the need to embellish his story with untruths that “sound” good for the story. whenever I read an e-mail that sounds like this, however sweet and poignant the story might be, if it purports to eb true, I always go to Snopes.com to see if there is a report on it. 99% of the time the story is false (like the girl with leukemia, and the American Cancer Society donating money for every e-mail forwarded – they RECEIVE donations, they do not MAKE them).
If all we are interested in is the essence of the message of the story, then it matters little whether or not it really happened. But if we are printing something as fact, we should be certain that it is indeed fact. Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble.