They wrote about the presidential race in our “Weekly Reader,” the newsletter for kindergartners. It was complete with a ballot, which my 5-year-old brain processed as a simple multiple choice question. My answer to Reagan or Carter? Carter! I was very proud and on the way home that afternoon, beaming with accomplishment, I showed it to my dad. "That's great, Anna," he said, "But you got the answer wrong!"

So reading about him in a newspaper for kindergartners and interviewing him as a real, grown up reporter… it was a moment. President Carter laughed as I carefully told him the whole story (I’m sure he felt increasingly older with every word that came out of my mouth). We shared a laugh about it and it truly was a victory for the little girl from little ole Spartanburg.

The moment ended when I shared this great story with my family over Thanksgiving last year. Instead of joining in my joy of full circle success, my grandfather and one of his best friends started a very heated argument over Carter’s book, “Our Endangered Values.” It got so bad, everyone left the table! Happy Thanksgiving! This whole journey will be complete when someone reads this blog and e-mails me that as a unbiased journalist, I shouldn’t tell you who I voted for at 5-years-old. If that happens, I'll gleefully publish it!

But meeting presidents isn’t the half of it! People always tell me that being a reporter must be so glamorous and exciting; an endless supply of celebrity moments that you string together at the end of your career and feel really, really proud.

Well, that’s not what it’s about at all. As a reporter, you enter and exit people’s lives at critical times for them. I am there when a mother learns her child was just killed in car accident. I am there when people lose their homes because they aren’t safe to inhabit. I am there when someone’s done something very, very stupid (and I’m usually there to ask them tough questions about it). I am in those chaotic moments to find out what happened and to report it. It can be demanding emotionally. You see the worst in people and you see their best.

And while I am there to report about what happened, sometimes what they give me is so special, so meaningful, so much more than meeting a president. And one of those moments arrived out of nowhere when I met J.N. Daniels in July 2005. You’ve probably never heard of him. He’s a regular, salt-of-the-earth, meat and potatoes kind of guy, but someone we should all be lucky enough to get to know.

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Mr. Daniels lives near Taylorsville in Alexander County. Twenty four hours after a tornado destroyed his home, I walked up to him and introduced myself. My photographer and I were sent to his house get the story.

The scene was incredible. Nothing was left, except for shredded wood, a photograph here and there and teeny tiny bits of a full life scattered across the debris field. J.N. lived on a beautiful piece of land way out in the countryside. To think that the day before, his home was filled with a lifetime of memories and possessions he’d worked extremely hard to acquire. He and his wife had just driven to town when the storm blew through. When they came home, drove down their street and up a long driveway, nothing was left.

J.N. said it best, “You'd have thought that the trailer might be tumbled up, turned over, or twisted around or something. But (it’s) blown up like a hand grenade hit it...there's nothing, nothing."

It took my photographer and I two hours to drive there. In addition to covering the tornado and storms that hit the Piedmont, we were also paying great attention to what was going on in London. While J.N's house was a target for a tornado, the London subways were targets for terrorists. Terrbile explosions there rocking that city. As the devastation unfolded, we listened to reports on the radio the whole way to Taylorsville. We slowly made our way through roads full of crews removing broken tree limbs and other storm debris. When we finally arrived, J.N. and I sat down to talk about how he was doing. And I’ll never forget his answer.

Twenty four hours after an F-2 tornado had taken everything from this man, he, too was listening to reports about what was happening in London.

He said, “The people that got blown up...some of them living...some of them ain't, and some of them are hurt real bad."

Okay, so here is a man, who doesn't have a roof to sleep under tonight. He was getting on in age and, at this point - The Golden Years - had limited to no opportunity to start over from scratch. He lives in a very rural part of our world, even isolated. And yet, he was deeply connected to what was happenign overseas. Not because he has family there, but because he cares. In fact, he was often moved to tears about the folks in London and what they were going through. That was his answer to the question, "How are you doing? What is going through your mind after a tornado destroyed your home?" It nearly knocked me off my chair.

J.N. went on to say, "we need to get to be more neighborly and find out who in the community needs help...and help him."

Neighborly? He wasn’t just talking about the other folks down the street who had minor damage to their homes. He was talking about his neighbors in London. That’s who he was praying for. In fact, J.N. told me that he was proud that his house was the one destroyed because he’s prepared to face it and with strength. He says other folks may not be as prepared as he, as strong as he, so give him the burden because he can carry it.

To sit down with him, to listen to what he had to say, it was an honor. By the end of the conversation, he’d taught me something so important. He taught me about love and about the grace with which you can face disaster. Here he was in a situation with no easy way out, no answers, no quick fix, a potential emotional pitfall with every lost object remembered... and yet he was thinking about what he had to give.

I have to admit it. There are days when I get completely bogged down with worry. I worry about making deadline, worry about beating the competition, worry about how I am telling a story, worry about the next step in my career, worry about my family. I worry about everything that crosses this little brain. And this man, J.N. Daniels, in what could be a very dark hour, was focused not on what he had lost, but what he still had to give. Amazing.

It's been a year since I met J.N. and I never saw him again. And, yet 12 months later, I still have so much to learn from that one conversation. So, to J.N., I say, 'Thank you.'

If you have questions, comments, story ideas (like what I should blog about next) or news tips, send me an email…acrowley@wcnc.com. I read each and every one of them!