In early 2017, in Clarksville, Tennessee, a substitute bus driver built a ramp for a girl who uses a wheelchair. His name is Thomas Mitchell. He is a school bus mechanic for the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System, and he drives a bus when he is needed.
One morning he saw Verna DeSpain, a single mother of two, struggling to carry the wheelchair of her 10-year-old daughter Lydia down the front porch steps. “There was just hardly any room for her to maneuver this wheelchair,” Mitchell told the school district. “It just didn’t seem right for somebody to have to struggle like that.”
DeSpain had been using a basic portable ramp for more than a year. It was all she could afford. She set it on the second step and guided Lydia down in reverse. “It worked better than not having one at all, but we had to put it on the second step and it was flimsy,” she told CBS News. “It wasn’t the best or the safest.” A few months earlier she had hurt her shoulder carrying her daughter.
A few days later, Mitchell called Verna DeSpain and offered to build a ramp for Lydia, free of charge.
“I was just so shocked,” DeSpain said. “I got a call from him out of the blue.”
Mitchell gathered tools and found a few friends to help. A local Lowe’s store donated the materials. One Sunday in late January, he knocked on her door with four friends, including a construction worker.
Less than three hours later, Lydia had a wooden ramp with a small fenced deck. DeSpain had expected the job to take all day. “It’s a major blessing,” she said. “This is the best year my children and I have ever had.”
The report was published in February 2017. It does not say how the family has done since, or whether the ramp is still in use.
The part worth noticing
Mitchell saw a woman having a hard time on her own steps, and he could not shake the picture. The rest was a phone call, a few friends and a Sunday.
Everybody should be helping out their neighbor, and so many people just drive by.
That is how Mitchell explained it to CBS News, as though it needed no explanation. The bus driver built a ramp because he had seen exactly what was missing.
In most stories like this, the only thing missing is the introduction. Somebody has a need, and somebody else has what it takes. The Needs page on this site is built for the first half of that: a person saying plainly what they are short of.
Where this story comes from
Originally reported by CBS News (Jennifer Earl), published February 15, 2017. Retold here with the details as that report gives them. The people in this story have no connection to MeetaNeed.
