Kindness matters

She looked stunning in bright orange lipstick. That alone set her apart from most mortal women. Her name was Danja, and she mentored me when I worked for the Panama Canal Commission.

She grew up in what she referred to as a “tiny village” in the rainforest. When coworkers teased her about being “from the sticks,” she took it in stride and kept right on office-managing the nonsense out of us. She was gracious, capable, down-to-earth — a young woman to make her family proud.

In the early 1990s, my husband was stationed at Fort Clayton, a 10-minute drive from the Panama Canal. We attended chapel on base. Hugh, a department manager for the Canal Commission, was among the ex-pats who attended there as well. He and his wife took us out for dinner one night. Over ceviche, we talked about work. My last project had been to redesign, of all things, a client’s telephone directory for reprinting.

Hugh wanted to redesign, of all things, the Canal Commission’s telephone directory. I had a job.

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