I enjoyed commentator Richard J. Cross III's remembrance of former Sun reporter and Maryland Congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley ("Helen Delich Bentley: tough, but compassionate," Aug. 6).
I crossed paths with Ms. Bentley in the mid-1960s when she was The Sun's maritime editor and I was an intern — in those days we were called office boys — in the newspaper's Washington bureau.
More than once I incurred Ms. Bentley's wrath and famous "saltiness," albeit never without cause. But, like Mr. Cross, I also remember her compassionate side.
In an office of high-powered Washington reporters, I was basically a non-entity, the not-too-bright college kid who answered the phone and ran errands.
On one of those errands, I was caught in a downpour outside the Justice Department. I returned to the bureau soaked to my underwear, a development that none of those busy reporters even noticed.
Except, of course, Ms. Bentley, who alone saw my drenched clothes and the growing puddle under my chair.
"You can't sit there in those wet clothes," she bellowed, ordering me back to her desk, where she insisted I strip to my underwear and put on an old raincoat she had hung in the corner.
Largely unnoticed by the other reporters, I wore the raincoat for the rest of my shift, by which time my clothes had pretty much dried out.
It was a small act of kindness that I'm sure Ms. Bentley quickly forgot. But I never did.
Art Jaeger, Linden, Va.