My Friend and his Family in Glasgow are Safe

Distance does not have to be a barrier in working relationships. Thanks to our ability to communicate with co-workers in distant places, it is possible to develop office friendships with co-workers we have never met in person. Years ago I read the condensed version of Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road, the book in which she describes her twenty year relationship as a customer of Frank Doel the manager of the Marks & Company bookstore located at 84 Charing Cross Rd. in London. Hanff, an avid book lover, first wrote from her home in New York City in 1949 seeking inexpensive copies of out of print British books. This was the start of a regular correspondence between Hanff and Dole in which Hanff wrote letters, with checks enclosed, describing the types of books she currently wanted and Dole responded back with his choices for her along with comments and recommendations for others she might enjoy or suggestions for alternatives when the ones she wanted were unavailable. Gradually, personal comments were included, interspersed with the business portions of their letters – the usual personal chit chat that that is exchanged between co-workers or merchants and customers who have come to know each other. Both the book and 1986 movie of the same name (now available on DVD) make for a very entertaining and heartwarming story.

I can still remember as a child the year my father brought our first car and later that year taking some day trips to sites around Rochester, New York during my father's two week vacation. One of the trips was an overnight trip to Corning, New York to see the glass works there. But we also made a stop at the old Lincoln Rochester Trust bank's branch in Corning. My father worked in the main office in Rochester and, among other duties, he was responsible for calling each branch every month for data needed for the monthly branch activity report he prepared. For the past few years his contact at the Corning office was the same person and the two of them struck up a friendship of sorts over the phone. Our first stop on the Corning trip was at the bank where we met this gentleman and were given a tour of the bank and then we went out to lunch with him.

I started writing for HubPages last fall shortly after they started and it didn't take long for the relatively small group of regular writers to start getting to know each other and stay in contact through reading and commenting on each other's articles. Despite the huge growth in the site and the exit of some writers, there are still a few from that original group who regularly write and continue to read and comment on each other's articles. Of course we are linking up with new ones as well but, like friendships in traditional brick and mortar offices, over time the bits and pieces of our personal lives that creeps into conversations over the office coffee pot builds up until we get to know quite a bit about each other and come to the point where we share the joys of their triumphs both inside and outside the office as well as concern for their misfortune when it strikes.

Among those whom I have come to think of as friends is a fellow who goes by the user name Jimmythejock. Reading our articles it is clear that we share some common interests and for both of us the main focus and passion in our lives is our families – he with his wife and three children and me with my wife and 4 children. Naturally, I talk about my “buddy” Jimmy with my wife and, like wives everywhere she seems to have gotten to know Jimmy and his family from listening to me talk about him.

Thus, it was not surprising that, upon seeing the news of the Glasgow Airport attack, my wife immediately came to me and asked if that was near Jimmy as he lives in Scotland. I honestly didn't know as he never mentioned exactly where he lived in Scotland. Since the reports indicated that there weren't any casualties, I assumed that things were alright with him and his family wherever they were in Scotland.

When I checked HubPages later on Saturday there was a short article by Jimmy about the attack. It seems that Jimmy lives a mere 30 miles from the Glasgow Airport. Worse still, within the same 30 or so mile radius in other directions are a nuclear power plant, an explosives factory and Prestwick Airport which I believe also houses the Prestwick Air Traffic control center which monitors and directs international air traffic over the Eastern Atlantic Ocean and Arctic oceans north of Scotland – when I was flying with the Air National Guard we were under the control of Prestwick from the time we entered airspace over Scotland until we reached Iceland and were turned over to the control center in Moncton in the Canadian Province of New Brunswick.

Happily, Jimmy and his family are safe, but given what is going on in Great Britain at the moment, I will be keeping him in my prayers.

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