Rick Badie's Gwinnett: Life works in mysterious ways

By Rick Badie

This is a story about love, luck, faith and fate. It’s about fortune cookies, property taxes and compassion.

It’s about Bill May of Tucker. He likes to say he’s the luckiest guy in the world.

Maybe he is.

Three years ago, May and his wife got a divorce. He doesn’t know if he heard it on Oprah, Dr. Phil or read it in a fortune cookie, but he remembered a saying that goes like this:

Say it’s two years to the date of your divorce and you still haven’t found Mr. or Mrs. Right. Maybe, the saying goes, the relationship that went sour is the one.

With that in mind, May phoned his ex-wife. The number had been disconnected to her home in Lawrenceville. Directory assistance gave a new number. Turns out, she’d moved to Jacksonville, Fla.

May called her up.

One conversation led to others, which led to visits on holidays and weekends. May let his intentions be known.

“All along I told her my goal is to remarry her,” he told me. “I kept telling her this was meant to be. The long distance made it rough, no doubt about it.”

May is sales manager for EA International LTD, a Lawrenceville-based manufacturer and distributor of vinyl packaging materials.

Nearly three months ago, he told his Florida broker that he wanted to relocate to Jacksonville. She, in return, mentioned May to a mutual customer. He waited for something to happen.

May grew up primarily in Kentucky, the son of very religious, conservative parents. They attended church on Sundays and Wednesdays.

“When you went to church,” May said, “you wore your best clothing. I remember on Saturday nights shining my shoes.”

As a kid, he remembers Mom and Dad dragging him on runs to help a needy family or assist with some cause. He didn’t like it.

“I was forced to go along, and I’d ask the typical question: ‘Why are we helping these people? They don’t even go to our church.’ ”

“We are a blessed family,” his parents would say.

So May learned early on: “Help can be in all kinds of ways — money, talking, listening, whatever,” he said. “There’s a commandment to help others. My parents were great examples of helping others in all kinds of ways.”

So when May read in this space about Numan Abdul-Latif — the Lilburn retiree who couldn’t pay his property taxes — he stepped up. He’s the anonymous donor who gave me a check last month to pass on to the Abdul-Latif family.

Three weeks after his compassion, his phone rang. A company that sells retail dry-cleaner supplies, and that May had done business with for years, was in search of a division manager.

“Within a week and a half, I talked, interviewed and accepted this position,” May said. “As I tell anyone who will listen to me, I am the luckiest guy in the world. I just don’t know why I have been selected, but my life has been good.”

By the end of today, May will be driving to Florida. He starts his new job Monday. He and his ex-wife plan to repeat their vows at some point.

Go ahead.

Pooh-pooh faith, karma, prayer or anything that acknowledges a higher order, authority or presence. It’s an easy thing to do.

But if you’re honest with yourself, you realize and surely know there’s someone or something grander than me, you, this planet. It reveals itself in amazing ways, sometimes to our benefit, occasionally not.

Either way, we need to listen.

Rick Badie, an Opinion columnist, is based in Gwinnett. Reach him at rbadie@ajc.com or 770-263-3875.