I was a headhunter working in NJ in the early 2000s and was trying to convince the HR manager of a small community bank to work with me. After months of trying to arrange a meeting he finally agreed to spend an hour with me on the first Tuesday in June. In the US, that’s right after the Memorial Day holiday when many people, including me, spend the day at the beach. I decided to head south by about 60–70 miles to avoid some of the crowds and wound up in a small town at least 100 miles away from the area of my prospective client’s business.

As luck would have it, it was an overcast, rainy day, so spending it on the sand wasn’t appealing, so I began to tour some of the small antique shops with my wife. Not exactly exciting for me, but my wife loves that sort of thing so I went along. In one small store I saw a nondescript looking book with the name of an elementary school on the cover. I still don’t know why I picked it up, but upon opening it I saw pages of scrawled good wishes. “Have fun over the summer” “Let’s keep in touch” “I hope we see each other next year”. On the inside cover was written “My autograph book, 1947” along with the name of the man who I was meeting in a few days. I paid the $3 asking price for the book, even though I wasn’t sure it was my potential client’s. His name was fairly common so the odds were against the book being connected to him.

I arrived at the meeting and we had a nice moment sharing stories about how we spent the holiday, and then I told him about the autograph book. He was middle-aged, but not old enough to have been in elementary school in the 1940s. When I handed to him he looked at the cover, then opened it up and read through a few of the entries. Then the tears welled up and he explained that the book wasn’t his…it was his father’s. One of the autographs was written by his mother who had just passed away the previous year.

We did some business together, but the best part of the experience was his father calling to thank me. It was the most emotional conversation I’ve ever had with a complete stranger.