I hope you stay a while once again...I wish you excellent health and all very excellent days ahead.

How can we measure our impact on another person? A mother can assess what she means to her child when he tells her he loves her. A grandfather gauges his granddaughter’s love when he sees her listening attentively to his childhood reminiscence that she’s heard umpteen times. But we interact with dozens, even hundreds, of people every day without ever knowing our effect on them.

Measuring a broadcaster’s impact is uniquely challenging because we are separated from our audience by miles and even time zones. Ratings, social media comments and fan mail/hate mail give us only a broad picture.

Recently, I got a glimpse into a listener’s heart and mind via a handwritten letter. It’s a rarity to receive anything written by hand in our increasingly digital world. More unique than the letter’s old-fashioned medium is its startling honestly.

In all those letters I wrote to you in thos letters that your personality and your character and defined you as a very able person to whom I could easily look up to.

This is an exact transcription of the writing. Grammatical, spelling and syntax errors are original.

A stranger whom I presume to be elderly has been sending me handwritten letters for nearly a decade. After a three-year hiatus off air, I recently returned to anchoring our weekday evening news magazine All Things Considered.

I could hardly believe my ears when I heard your voice on the radio and before you announced your name, I recognized that there is a very distinct and familiar voice which I recognized from years past. I never thought that I would never hear of your voice once again.

The letter is one part “welcome back” and another part “I missed you.” It’s a touching measurement of my impact on a man who is a stranger to me.

It’s also extremely intimate. I’ve been entering this man’s home via the radio on and off for nearly 10 years. He knows my voice before I say my name. He knows me well enough to confide his joy and pain.

To me you are like a Elixir in which I shall never experience depression again. I know I shall still experience depression but is more dim.

Radio is intimate. Listening is personal, like the granddaughter who shows love for her grandfather by letting him tell her stories. It’s a closeness that’s hard to measure. But it’s no less meaningful to the teller or the told.

This letter is a reminder to look for the little ways to measure one’s importance in someone’s life. Touching the life of a stranger is reason enough to go on air every day. But it’s the audience’s impact on me that I’m prompted to explore with more attention. After all, these 10 ten years on, I recognize this man’s handwriting on the envelope even before reading his name.

Here is the letter (and a scan) in its original transcription:

Tuesday, April 21, 2015
From: REDACTED – fan of youres in past of some years as you were a staff member of GPB.
Dear Rickey Bevington;
I heard you for the first time once again as on past occasions when you were very abley assisting your partner on past Pledge Drive for GPB. I want to note this occasion simply because I am (a these moments) after shortly after 10:00 p.m. I heard that very excellent voice of Rickey’s that is very occasion for me. So I do not have this moment slip to even a short time ago.
I could hardly believe my ears when I heard your voice on the radio and before you announced your name, I recognized that there is a very distinct and familiar voice which I recognized from years past. I never thought that I would never hear of your voice once again.
In all these letters I wrote to you in those letters that your personality and your character and defined you as a very able person to whom I could easily look up to.
When my mother died on December of 2003 I was a very lonely man. I guess the onset of events just has to dim the emotional loss, and grieve just has to appear less disabling has time goes on able to assume one’s household chores so that appears as insurmountable anymore.
I hope you stay a while once again. I have recounted I your Pledge Drive with a lady partner wherein you both do so extremely well. I wish you excellent health and all very excellent days ahead.
[WRITTEN IN THE LETTER’S LEFT MARGIN]
To me you are like a Elixir in which I shall never experience depression again. I know I shall still experience depression but is more dim.