The Kindness of Strangers
The stranger’s name, however, was a
mystery. That is until last year, when Afif
set out to thank him.
The younger Ghannoum knew the
details by heart. It was 1990 and Saddam
Hussein had just invaded his family’s
adopted home of Kuwait, leaving his dad
out of a job and money. When a trip to
Washington, D.C. to find employment
went awry, a local travel agent helped
Ghannoum rearrange his travel plans for
free and even gave him $80 out of his
own wallet.
Afif Ghannoum had
heard his father,
Dr. Mahmoud
Ghannoum, tell
the story countless
times: how a
stranger’s kindness
set in motion his
family’s fortuitous
journey to the
United States some
30 years ago.
It was just what Mahmoud Ghannoum needed to set a
pioneering career back on track. He got a professor’s post at the
University of California, Los Angeles, and eventually worked his
way to Case Western Reserve University.
Ghannoum later tried to thank his good samaritan, but
discovered the travel agency had closed. And he didn’t know the
man’s name.
Fast forward to September 2019. Afif decided to post his
father’s story on Facebook, hoping that someone could identify
their benefactor. They didn’t
have much to go on. Mahmoud
remembered roughly where the
agency office was located and that
the man was African American. But
then interest in the story spiked on
social media and it got picked up by a
columnist in the Washington Post on
September 16.
Within days, Afif was getting
leads pointing to one man: James
Dorsey. “It was surreal,” he says.
However, the eureka moment
quickly gave way to sadness. Dorsey,
Afif learned, had died of cancer just
months before at age 69.
Soon Afif was talking to Dorsey’s
widow, Elaine. It turned out Elaine still
remembered her husband telling her the
same story so many years before. Dorsey
had told her he might get fired for what he
Mahmoud Ghannoum in
1990, when he met the
mystery stranger at a
Washington, D.C. travel
agency. (Family photo)
had done, but he also knew he couldn’t turn away someone in need.
“Jimmy was always willing to help someone out. It was just
how he was,” Elaine Dorsey says. Case in point, if someone at
the local store didn’t have enough cash, Elaine says her husband
wouldn’t hesitate. “He would just take the money out of his
pocket and say, ‘I’ll pay for it.’”
Afif’s search had unveiled a man not much different from
his own father. While Dr. Ghannoum was doing groundbreaking
science at CWRU, Dorsey – a Vietnam veteran – was breaking
barriers in Leesburg, Virginia, as the city’s first African American
volunteer firefighter.
In a surprising twist, they also had
a city in common. Jimmy and Elaine
are Cleveland natives and graduates of
John Hay High School, just blocks from
Dr. Ghannoum’s office in University
Circle. Jimmy’s daughter, Michele
Maynard, still lives in Cleveland just a
few miles down Euclid Avenue in the
Collinwood neighborhood.
The story of her father – and
lengths Afif went to find him – amazes
Michele Maynard. “I never knew
anything about it,” she says. “But I can
honestly say that’s the man my dad was.
My dad is my hero.”
In December, Mahmoud, Afif, and
Afif’s wife and children visited Elaine
and family at her home in Leesburg.
“It was just like family getting together
who hadn’t seen each other for a
while,” she says. “It was like we had
known each other for years.”
The Ghannoums surprised Elaine by
creating the James R. “Jimmy” Dorsey
Memorial Scholarship at CWRU with
$25,000 in seed money. Since then,
others touched by the online story have
added to that total. The scholarship
will target undergraduate students in
financial need, says Dr. Ghannoum.
“That experience with Jimmy has
made it very clear that one incident can
impact your whole life,” Afif says. “We
all have to pay it forward, because you
never know the impact you could have
on someone’s life.” SL
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