We Called Her the Water Heater Lady

One of my truest friendships was with a little old lady that I only met once

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash

It was an extremely unlikely friendship. She was at least 60 years my senior. 

We only met once face to face. Still, I consider her one of the dearest friends I’ll ever know.

When I started my radio career nearly 40 years ago, I quickly learned the difference between listeners and fans. Listeners were mostly indifferent but my fans actually knew my name.

Within a year of being on the air, I had a small but growing fan club I would hear from regularly.

Of course, since the music format I was playing consisted of adult standards like Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Bobby Vinton, my fans tended to be on the mature side.

One of my regular callers was an elderly woman that the other disc jockeys had dubbed the Water Heater Lady. Whenever she called in to request a song, she would often mention that her water heater wasn’t working properly. 

Calls from the water heater lady tended to go on for a while and it was difficult sometimes to get her off the phone. 

She liked to visit.

Over time, I came to realize that her almost nightly calls had less to do with my on-air popularity and more to do with the fact that she was alone. 

With this realization, I stopped simply tolerating her calls and started to actively listen to her.

Her name was Virginia and I learned that she originally hailed from Missouri and was a widow twice over. 

She was a huge fan of Ronnie Milsap and every time I played one of his songs she would call to thank me. She loved to laugh. 

I actually began to look forward to her calls.

I didn’t realize how much our chats meant to her until the night I told her that I would soon be leaving to serve a two-year mission for my church. 

Her reaction surprised me. 

Far from being happy with my good news, she became distressed and begged me not to go.

I assured her that my decision to serve a mission was important to me and I promised to write to her while I was gone. 

She eventually became so upset that she said: “You can just go to hell!” And she angrily hung up on me.

I was stunned.

The next night I saw the studio phone line begin blinking and I answered. A quavering voice asked, “can you ever forgive me?”

 

I gladly forgave her and from that moment on, Virginia was a staunch supporter of my decision to serve.

About a week before I left, I had the chance to meet her in person. My mom accompanied me as I went to meet the Water Heater Lady in person.

She turned out to be a tiny octogenarian with a huge smile and she was overjoyed that I would take the time to say goodbye in person.

She wished me the best of luck and I left for Oklahoma.

Over the next two years, Virginia was one of my most reliable correspondents. Every other week I would get a letter from her with either a five-dollar bill or a book of stamps tucked carefully inside.

Because of her failing eyesight, her handwriting was shaky and often difficult to read. But she always offered me encouragement.

Virginia and I corresponded faithfully for the entire time I was on my mission.

As my homecoming drew nearer, I wrote to her and told her how I was looking forward to seeing her again. 

But with a month to go, I received a letter from my parents with Virginia’s death notice enclosed.

Her family graciously sent me a note thanking me for befriending her and staying in touch while I was away. I don’t imagine it was easy for them to understand the dynamic of the friendship that she and I shared.

There are two lasting lessons that I learned from this experience.

The first is that there are a great many “water heater ladies” among us who live with crushing loneliness. Not all of them are ladies but they are all well acquainted with how it feels to lack association with others. 

Many are out of sight and therefore out of mind but they would be greatly blessed by our friendship–if only we would notice them.

They need to know that they matter. That someone cares.

Someone near you needs your company. 

Are you willing to invest some of your precious time in order to seek them out and provide it?

The second lesson is that few things are as precious to individuals who are far from home as a handwritten letter. The postal service gets picked on a lot these days, but to a person who is lonely, an actual card or letter in the mailbox is a godsend.

Whose spirits might you lift with a bit of personal correspondence?

The beautiful thing about letters and cards is that they can be revisited again and again as a tangible reminder of our love for those who wrote them.

The Water Heater Lady may have passed away in 1988 but I still have some of her letters as mementos of one of my most unlikely and dearest friends.

Everyone deserves the blessing of having a friend like her.

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