News - Local/State - Andrew Dys

Saturday, Jul. 26, 2008

Thanks to deep kindness, by George ... Tommy's got a new bike!

First from the back seat of his mother's Buick -- the car had barely stopped -- came the freckled legs. Then the rest of Tommy Kimble, 33 years of Tommy Kimble, arms pumping in full gallop through the grass and down the strange driveway. Down syndrome couldn't hold back the smile or this guy on this Friday.

The crowd urged him on. His parents, sisters, cousins. His "girlfriend" named Chrissy Covington, and other friends of the family. In that driveway of a stranger named George Totherow.

"Go, Tommy!" shouted out the cousins.

Tommy rushed forward to the three-wheeled cycle. Technically a tricycle, but a bike in real words that real people say on a Rock Hill summer driveway where strangers meet. The new bike was black. His old one was red. Tommy rang the bell, just like the one on his red bike that was stolen last week. That this bike was black made no difference to anybody. Especially Tommy.

Tommy got right up on that seat. The driveway had a little valley in it, so he needed to rock the cycle a bit to get it moving. Then, without anybody's help, his toes just reaching the pedals, he shot right up the driveway.

"Yay, Tommy!" came the sound.

If cars hadn't been there to block the way, Tommy may have ridden all the way home to York.

The crime and stories in this newspaper about Tommy and his bike sent shock waves through not just that small city of York, but all of York County. Squads of volunteers combed the neighborhoods around the Kimble house for the bike. York police sent out a detective on the case, and the word to look out for Tommy's bike reached the courthouse on the other side of town, the post office, the car dealerships, the restaurants and bars, the firehouse. Dozens of people -- "Might be hundreds by now," Jean Kimble said Friday -- offered to send money or buy new bicycles.

But nobody found Tommy's bike.

Tommy, a York icon known for his hugs, moped around for days. That bike was his independence.

Finally, Jean Kimble had to act. She called back George Totherow, who had worked in the same General Tire factory as Tommy's older brother, who had fitted and painted the original bike that was stolen. Totherow had a three-wheeler just like Tommy's and from the first morning after reading about the theft had offered the cycle to the Kimbles.

The Kimbles offered money. Totherow, a quiet man with the thick fingers and rough hands of a lifetime of labor, a grandfather, flatly refused from the jump.

"Gosh, what a world of good people we live in," Jean Kimble said Friday. She said it for Totherow, and so many others who asked to help.

Lester Kimble, Tommy's father, walked up to George Totherow and introduced himself. He said, "I thank you," in a way that is almost gone from America. It was meant, and the two men looked each other square in the eye. That handshake was so much more powerful than any world leaders you will ever watch on TV. They looked like Titans.

Totherow tried to be invisible because he wants no recognition. But a billboard couldn't hide that heart of his.

Tommy rode some. He mugged some. He hugged George Totherow, twice, and said as clearly as he can what he knows from Elvis: "Thank you very much."

Then a bunch loaded up that cycle in the back of Bob Covington's truck. He is father of Chrissy, Tommy's "girlfriend," a lady who also has Down syndrome.

Tommy climbed up in the bed of the truck. He got on the cycle for the ride home.

"No way he's leaving that bike," his mother said.

But it would have been unsafe for Tommy to ride home like a Roman emperor atop that cycle, right there in the bed of the truck. Tommy had to settle for the truck cab.

Then Tommy Kimble, sitting next to his best girl, smiling through the window for all to see, went home with his new bike.