Memories of PercyAugust 1, 2016ListenAHis gifts didn’t prove that he was rich. His gifts proved that he cared. And the smallness of his gifts proved that I could afford to care, too.My long friendship with Percy began exactly 30 years ago when I saw him on the cover of a magazine as it lay on a coffee table in a friend’s house. He was a smiling gentleman sitting on a desk stacked with bags of money. The headline read, “Why is Percy Ross Giving Away $20,000,000?”In the feature story, author Steven Kaplan explained how Percy Ross employed a small team of people to read the 4,000 letters he received each week asking him for financial help. A few of these letters got published each week – along with his response – in the 800+ newspapers that carried his syndicated column, “Thanks a Million.”Paragraph 38 quoted Percy as saying that he had engaged two large advertising firms to help him turn his column into a radio show only to be told by each of them that it wasn’t feasible.The week after I read that story, his readers had to plow through 4,001 letters because I decided to add my own letter to the pile.Mr. Ross, I don’t want or need any of your money, but I read in Robb Report magazine that you wanted to syndicate a daily radio feature. I’ve done this 4 times already, so I’m familiar with the problems your people ran into and I know the ways around all those problems. Give me a call at your convenience and I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I look forward to hearing you on the radio!”I received a phone call and a plane ticket to Minneapolis. Percy picked me up at the airport, and as we were walking shoulder-to-shoulder toward his car I said,Mr. Ross, in about an hour and a half you’re going to know absolutely everything you need to know to get “Thanks a Million” on several hundred radio stations for free. As a matter of fact, you should be able to make a few tens of thousands of dollars a month from it. What I need you to understand is that I’m fully aware that I’m about to make myself obsolete. Not only will you not need to hire me to help you, you won’t need to hire anyone else, either.“Why would you do that?” he asked.“If this was the only valuable idea that I was ever going to have, I’d do my best to monetize it. But it seems to me that each of us will encounter more valuable opportunities in a single day than we could possibly pursue in a lifetime. But today isn’t work. Today I’m just helping you help others.”Five, six, seven, eight, nine steps and still Percy hadn’t said anything. So I looked to my left.And he wasn’t there.Spinning around I saw him standing quietly in the parking lot, staring at me. He had stopped in his tracks while I was talking. We stood looking at each other a few moments, then he said,How old are you, son?”“Twenty-eight, sir.”“I was fifty years old before I figured that out.”About 90 minutes later Percy said with a smile,Roy, I’m really glad you told me what you did in the parking lot of the airport because if you hadn’t, right now I’d be thinking you were the most naive and careless young man who had ever lived. You were right! I don’t need anyone’s help to do this. Not even yours. You have given me something I tried to buy and could not. And that doesn’t happen to me very often.”Within 6 months, Percy was on 584 radio stations for free, including WNBC