When we moved to Bristol in 2001, I asked our new neighbor Joe Scanlan a very important question: Where should I bring my 1994 Ford Escort wagon with well over 100,000 miles to be serviced? Joe told me he was a Packard enthusiast and had recently been up at the little red garage on Metacom inquiring about a part for his beloved antique.

“They have every part you could imagine. They know what they’re doing. I would go to them.”

With my husband working a two-hour drive away, I arrived for my first appointment at Leffingwell Garage prepared to wait it out with small toys and books in tow to entertain our 15-month-old son.

“Where can we drop you?,” George Leffingwell asked.

Drop me?

“We’ll give you a ride and bring the car down when it’s ready.”

Instead of having to spend that rainy fall day in the small garage, he dropped us at Rogers Free Library, where my son and I would spend the morning in the Children’s Reading room. I would discover that the offer of a ride was not unusual of George, his wife Kathy or “the boys” Roy and Eric.

To a new mother in a new town, this gesture of kindness reflected the very feeling of community which my husband and I had hoped to experience in Bristol where we planned to raise our family.

It was there in the little red garage with the faint hint of cigar smoke in the air, I learned from ‘the boys’ of George’s death a few days earlier.  A humble, decorated Korean War veteran, George Leffingwell embodied to me what it means to be part of a community. I will forever be grateful for his friendship and his kindness.

Nina Murphy

Bristol