Sunday Journal

By KATHRYN WEXLER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 19, 2001

Faith comes calling

The road to Mrs. Ruby Bozzell's A-frame house was long and dusty and usually still.

But that cool autumn afternoon, 60 or so years ago, she stood by the kitchen window and saw a man, just a dark speck far down the lane. He inched past the farmhouses and withering cornfields. Past five telephone poles, he limped.

Headed straight for her front door.

He was in his 30s, perhaps, and leaning on a stick. Hobbling all the way down that dirt road in rural Cincinnati, ignoring the other houses. Right up to Ruby's whitewashed front porch.

Like a man with a mission.

Like a conman. Or a prophet.

He knocked.

Slowly, she opened.

"May I help you?" she asked.

His overcoat was dark and frayed. His hair was at his shoulders. His beard was straggly. And the sandals. Worn straight through.

"Yes, ma'am. Will you give me something to eat?"

She thought a moment. Gave him a once-over.

"Yes, I'll give you something."

The polite stranger followed her into the kitchen. He took a seat at her table. She got busy at the stove.

Then, the questions. Where was her husband? What was the name of her 6-year-old girl? Did the family go to church? Where? How often?

Ruby didn't mind his curiosity. Or the company on that otherwise silent afternoon.

She served up two eggs, fried potatoes, bacon and toast. He said no to coffee, yes to milk.

And gulped it all down like he hadn't tasted food for a while.

He needed shoes, that too was clear. Ruby's husband, Sam, who was at work as a Greyhound bus mechanic, had two pairs. Heck, she figured, Sam could wear only one pair at a time.

She asked the stranger if he'd take the other.

"What size?"

Eight-and-a-half. The stranger wore a size larger. He'd stick with the sandals.

"Oh, God bless you," he told her. "You're a Christian, I know."

"I try to be," Ruby replied.

"You are."

He left her then.

From the kitchen window, she watched him go back up the dirt road. He shuffled past farmhouses and withering cornfields and five telephone poles. When he was a speck again in the distance, she ran upstairs to watch him from the window.

And oh, what she saw.

Just as the lame man turned the bend, right where the trees started to thicken, he threw down his walking stick.

And ran.

"I got to thinking, why did he pick my house?" Ruby wondered aloud just last week. She was swinging forcefully on her hanging swing under her little carport in west Tampa.

She is 94 now.

"He could have stopped at any house on that road," said Ruby, slowly, raising a finger to her chin, her eyes squinty, the way she gets just before she makes a point.

"He was from God," she concluded.

Ruby is just as sure today as she ever was: Miracles are real. The stranger was testing her character, her kindness, her faith.

She passed the test.

"That had to be an angel. Had to be."

- St. Petersburg Times staff writer Kathryn Wexler wrote a story four years ago about how Ruby Bozzell had valiantly tried to fight off a burglar. The two women have been friends ever since.

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