JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at the Hidden Brain podcast. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. Today's story comes from Jake Berry. About 25 years ago, when he was a freshman in college, he received bad news. One of his oldest friends, Jack, had been rushed to the hospital. Jake Berry lived in Boston, a little more than an hour away from his hometown, where Jack was receiving care. And he didn't have any way of getting home.
JAKE BERRY: This was, you know, in the early days of texting and whatnot, so I was really waiting on phone calls to get updates on Jack's condition and what was happening. And as a number of our - my friends back home in New Hampshire kind of gathered together to be together during this really hard time, I found myself feeling even more isolated and more lonely without any car or any way to get back up to New Hampshire. So that night, when a bunch of my college friends and roommates head out on the town, I opted to stay back alone in my dorm room in what quickly became one of the longest and loneliest nights in my life.
That is, until after a few hours. Some friends came home from the bar, wherever they had been out that night, to stop by and check on me. This was my friend, Jess, and she happened to have two friends, Kim and Corey, who were in from out of town that night, visiting campus. I'm not sure I had ever met them before, but they saw how I was doing and immediately jumped into action. They went, got their car from the parking garage, picked me up, and next thing I know, we were flying north on the highway. About an hour later, they dropped me off at a friend's house where all these others had been gathering, and I was able to spend the night there crying, commiserating with these friends of mine.
I'm glad to say that Jack survived that night. We got to spend another year together before he ultimately passed, lost his battle to lymphoma. And looking back on that night, you know, I really see those friends that I gathered with that night. They were - you know, now they're my brothers. We have been through the highs and lows of life together. Many of us are now living back in New Hampshire in the same town where we grew up in. We're raising our kids together.
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BERRY: I think back to how much I would have missed if I hadn't been there that night, how I wouldn't have been able to share that experience with them. And I have Kim and Corey and Jess to thank for that.
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BERRY: I hope this generosity has come back to them tenfold. And I really think of them often and the impact that they have had on my life.
SUMMERS: Jake Berry lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. You can find more stories of unsung heroes at hiddenbrain.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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