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Keilhack is a graduate of Paseo High School and holds a psychology degree from Northwestern University. He’s a 71-year-old retired probation supervisor. He gets the biggest thrill engaging people of different races, ethnicities and nationalities. I’ve seen him do it.
That was after years of getting phone calls from him expressing doubts about the benefits diverse groups could get from engaging others who are different. He has changed.
Keilhack calls Wal-Mart a United Nations in Kansas City because of the different people it attracts. He is a believer in the power of one-on-one diversity to soothe, heal and bridge our many divides.
“I used to watch and notice there was this look of wariness,” Keilhack said of people he would see at the store. Many people appeared unapproachable as if they didn’t want to talk with anyone — especially someone they had never met.
“The rest of us don’t want to talk either,” Keilhack said. But then he began to pick out people who looked really angry and say: “Hi! How are you?”
“Almost every time they’d start talking,” Keilhack said. “They’d change from looking mad or like, ‘I don’t want anything to do with you’ to being totally social and wanting to talk or would talk.
“They’d switch so fast. It’s kind of interesting to me.”
We’re all human, and as people we have a great desire to connect with others, especially now under the strain of soaring gas and food prices. We want people to hear what we have to say. We want to listen to them and we want to care and know that others care, too.
Social engagement and three-dimensional conversations get lost in our accelerating, electronic, high-tech consumption and so does an open acceptance of others.
“It’s just so boring if you just come in here and look up and down the aisles,” said Keilhack, who used to be in the orchestra for Starlight Thea-tre in the ’50s. “I think they assume that you, the other, want nothing to do with them. It’s been going on for so long they never find out.
“But if you start a little back and forth then they seem so happy. There is an inherent need of people to want to be heard and treated like human beings.”
Keilhack says that beyond the icebreaker of hello, he talks about the weather, sports and show business.
It’s like the buttons SuEllen Fried pushes that say “Kindness is Contagious. Catch it!”
“Just think, rather than waste time staring at each other we just might start something if we just make the effort,” Keilhack said. “I’ve never had a bad experience.”
He said his acts of kindness benefit him, too.
“I think it changes the person who says hi,” Keilhack said. “I could be in a real bad mood, but I get into a conversation and I feel better. It changes my outlook quickly. I usually learn a thing or two from listening to people’s stories.”
Keilhack believes in the power of kindness and the value of diversity.
Everyone should try to engage people who’re different. “Just start with something simple – just a smile,” he said.
Such acts from everyone would make this city a much better place in which to live.
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