A Timeless Lesson For Life Learned from a Diary by David Reel  

A recent chain of events led me to think about another chain of events during World War II for a young girl who once aspired to be a famous writer. 

She ultimately achieved that goal, but not in a way that she had ever dreamed about or ever aspired to do.

Her name is Anne Frank. 

Anne died at age 15, along with most of her family, in a Nazi concentration camp. 

Before she and her family were sent to the concentration camp, they spent two years hiding from the Nazis in a secret sealed apartment in Amsterdam. During that time, Anne kept a written diary now known as The Diary of Anne Frank.

Her diary was published posthumously in 1947. Translated into almost seventy languages it is one of the most widely read accounts of the Holocaust. 

I had largely forgotten about Anne Frank and her diary until a series of unexpected events unfolded during a recent weekend. 

On a Saturday afternoon, my wife and I drove to St. Michaels to enjoy a beautiful early spring day. It was a by all measures, a perfect day.

The next morning was far from perfect. 

It started when my wife launched a frantic search for her wallet. Like most wallets, it contained her driver’s license, credit cards, and health insurance cards. It also included a substantial amount of cash for a Monday bank deposit to be used to pay for a long-planned and much-needed home improvement project. 

After retracing all her Saturday steps, we concluded her wallet likely fell out of her back pocket while we were sitting on a park bench in St. Michaels. 

I called the St. Michaels police to ask if anyone had turned in a lost wallet. The answer was no, not yet. The officer volunteered to go to the park and search for it. When he called back, he told us there was no trace of it. He also told us some who find lost wallets take the cash and throw the wallet into a trash can. He was kind enough to search the trash can in the park, but with no success.

Once we accepted that reality, I started to write a list of all the onerous tasks that follow the loss of a wallet. 

Angry and frustrated, I said to my wife, “This is what the world has come to. No one cares anymore except about themselves. You lose a wallet, and no one turns it in. Worse yet, they probably took your cash and credit cards with no remorse telling themselves it was an unexpected stroke of “good luck.”

Minutes later, there was knock at our front door. A couple from Washington DC whom we had never seen before told us they were also visiting St. Michaels on Saturday. They discovered her wallet. Using the address on my wife’s driver’s license they drove to our house on their return to Washington and delivered it.

They refused any reward other than accepting a heartfelt thank you.

As I reflected upon that unexpected random act of honesty and kindness my thoughts turned to Anne Frank and words Anne she wrote in her diary.

With a wisdom and eloquence well beyond her years she penned “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

With all due respect to the memory of Anne, I cannot fully embrace her thinking that people are truly good at heart. Many are, but some are not and never will be. This was confirmed by her death, the deaths of most of her family (all but her father who saved her diary) and at least six million other innocent people who perished in concentration camps during the holocaust. 

That said, our experience with a lost wallet was a reminder the best way to honor the legacy of Anne Frank is simple. Not always easy but a most meaningful way. 

In difficult times like these when dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality; we can and we should strive very day to be people who are “truly good at heart.” 

David Reel is a public relations and public affairs consultant who lives in Easton.