Thank you for the hospitality and compassion in time of grief

Dear Editor,

I wanted to send a letter to your paper describing the very unexpected experience that my family and I recently had while in your town. Our son unexpectedly died recently while serving on active duty in the Air Force at Mountain Home. We live in East Texas so the distance between us is about 1850 miles. We had to go there this past week to pack and load his belongings for transport back to TX. Our plans were to drive his vehicle and pull a Uhaul trailer with things that we did not want to store long term. One day before our arrival we were told that the vehicle had an issue and needed to be worked on. It was taken to C & A automotive in Mountain Home. Lonnie called me while I was in route and explained what the issue was but that parts would not be available within the time frame that we were under to get back to TX. C & A is one of the Uhaul dealers in town and when he learned of our circumstances, helped us get a truck at a greatly reduced rate and would not take a dime for the work he had already performed on the car! We then had to revise our hotel schedule at the Hampton Inn as we needed to get on the road earlier than expected. I had booked the rooms using travel points and would have had to forfeit them without the help of KJ. He called Hilton hotels and explained our circumstance and they agreed to refund our points. I would publicly like to thank Lonnie and KJ along with their respective businesses for really showing us what compassion and courtesy are all about!!

Scott Gipson