Passport mess and credit to the forum member who helped.

[coppercoins]

While finishing off the packing for our trip to Europe the night before we were to leave, I asked my wife if all the passports were out and ready to go. She disappeared for a while and came out to bear some very bad news. My son's passport had expired and we were to begin an overseas journey in less than 12 hours.

Our flight was to take us from Springfield to Chicago, then London, and finally Athens. We got online and found out that it is possible to do a walk-through passport in one day at the passport center in Chicago. The only problem is, we didn't have tickets to fly earlier than 5:30PM, long after they stop accepting walk through service.

Before taking a nap that night, I emailed Garry because I knew he lived in Chicago and asked if he could do anything to help us get downtown, and gave him our cell number. I figured he could arrange a private cab to get us down there, let us do our thing, and get back to the airport to catch our 8:30PM flight to London. Of course I would pay for whatever he arranged, my purpose in calling on him was to help us with the calls to arrange such a thing, and that only.

We found out that there was an earlier flight to Chicago that was to take off at 7:05AM, giving us plenty of time to do the walk-through passport service. We showed up for the flight to go standby, found out they had three seats to put us on the flight, and waited at the gate. Long story short, the flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems, and they had to put all ticketed passengers on a later flight, at 10:30AM.

We went to the service counter and asked if there was anything they could do for us. There really wasn't anything they could do sinc we weren't even ticketed to leave until late afternoon, and the problems caused by the mechanical failure booked all their future flights for the day completely solid. Our only choice was to attempt to transfer the ticket to United (we were ticketed on American) which is something they usually don't do. Well, they did it, and the flight took off at 9:00.

During that time I was in contact with Garry and he told me that there wouldn't be time to get a cab or anything of that nature downtown and back to the airport. Out of the kindness of his heart, he offered to come to the airport himself, pick us up, take us downtown to take care of our problem, then to take us back to the airport. I knew at this point that if I didn't take him up on the offer that we wouldn't have made it to Greece - there was just no other way. Reluctantly, I asked him for the help and he kindly agreed.

Garry took the day off of work, picked us up at the airport, drove us 20 miles downtown, hung around for three hours while we got my son's passport renewed (which in itself was a miracle - we went in at 2PM and had the passport at 4PM), then drove us back to the airport in plenty of time for our connecting flight to London. On top of that he wouldn't accept payment for what he did and wanted to give us money to get his wife a gift from Greece. Of course I didn't accept his money, and am mailing them a nice tablecloth with place setting napkins today that we got in Athens for them.

This post is in part to tell you of just some of the stress that we encountered during our vacation, but much more so to let you know how much I appreciate the community that has developed here. Some of the very best people in the world have found this place and called it home, and that makes me very proud. Garry's selflessness and willingness to be put completely out to help me has made me very appreciative of what we have here, and very thankful there are people like him around.

Garry, once again, I cannot thank you enough for all you did for us that Tuesday, and for being a regular participant on this site for all the years you have been around. You are a true gentleman and were a definite pleasure to be able to meet in person, albeit under less than desirable circumstances. I do intend on continuing to return your favor to you and pass it along to anyone else in need - I do realize what a blessing it is to have and to give help when it is needed. Thanks again.

[Bob P]

What a wonderful story..all the way around. It is so nice to see that this small community has grown, and the majority of the people in it are great. I am sure most of us would do something of the sort if asked, but Garry went far beyond what most people would expect.
For Mr. Chuck...I can't believe you didn't check that passport long before this. You will probably say you were busy or something Anyway, I am glad you were able to continue your vacation and I hope you had a wonderful time. I also think the tablecloth and place settings was very nice. The next step is to get him the table!

[Robert]

Kudos to Garry! What a stand-up guy!

Hope you had a good trip. Sounds like you need a color-coded checklist in Excel to get you organized....

[Doug]

Welcome back Chuck and thank you for relating such a tremendous act of kindness on Garry's part! There is a guy all of us here, and on the CU board as well, regard as person we are proud to be associated with in this hobby and can only hope to emulate in the future!!!

[coppercoins]

Well, the story actually goes that it has always been my wife who took care of such things. Since she is from abroad and has dealt with passports for years and is a travel agent and has to deal with people's passports all the time, it was assumed that she would do the same for her own family. She did it all the other times overseas travel came up.

[GarryN]

I guess I should come in at this point. It was a miracle I even got the email asking for assistance. I usually don't look at that email account at work. Why did I do it? Why would you do it? I think it all boils down to responding to a simple need for a 7 yr old to see his grandmother.

We were never sure until the last minute that the passport was going to be issued. It was apparently highly irregular to expect the Passport Office to run a new passport within a few hours and we had a 2 pm appointment. So we had till 5 pm at best to get it done. It was just a bunch of events that came together and turned into something positive. Chuck related problems with flights coming into Chicago. I happened to be in town and saw the email just before they got on the plane. They managed to get into Chicago on time, around 12:30. We got to the federal building in time for the 2 pm appointment. Chuck had an 8 pm flight out of Chicago so we had some time to work with. All we needed was cooperation by the Passport Office. So it was a miracle it went off at all.

I also want to respond to Chuck's comment about the community we have here. We all have heard about nightmares on the internet, and its easy to rationalize this and say, gee, a guy, not a girl, a guy I have been communicating with on the internet wants me to meet him at the airport. Yeah sure. But there is something about coin collectors. Ive never met a bad one. Even on Ebay. Everyone I have come into contact in this hobby is helpful and knowledgable and just a nice human being and I will echo what I said in another post, this community here is an island of sanity in a sea of chaos. Thank you Chuck for creating this place and thank you everyone for sustaining it. I hope we can all get together someday and spread out some coins on Chuck's/ Evie's table cloth in my home.

And guys, I met Chuck's wife.. a nice lady. If she told me to get off the computer, I would get off the computer.

[joeyuk]

Thats very nice.