During World War II, Graham Lutz joined the Merchant Marine which taught him “to be nice to everyone.” Pictured right, Graham's wife, Martha.

Welcome to Graham’s world; kindly come in

Posted January 7, 2011

In true Graham style, after just three weeks of courting, he proposed marriage to his wife, Martha.

WHEN CUSTOMERS COME to the seafood department of Publix store #442 in Altamonte Springs, Fla., they aren’t always seeking a filet of sole. They often come in to spend a moment with the sweet soul of Graham Lutz, 88, who works part-time behind the counter. Graham has such a visible philosophy in the general goodness of people that he just expects and inspires other people to be good.

“He’s always got a positive attitude, even with all the challenges that have come his way,” says Publix store manager, Mark Witt. “It’s amazing how many people come in just to say ‘hey’ to him and how many people he touches. The interesting thing about Graham is that no matter what’s thrown at him, he has a smile and that gleam in his eye for life. I wish I could put what he has in a glass and give it to other folks.”

What Graham has is a commitment to “be nice to people,” he says, all people, and to thank them when they do something nice for him. He remembers every bit of magic in his long, interesting life and every bit of kindness anyone has ever given to him. He offers this accepting attitude to strangers, and he shares it with far-flung family members through weekly genealogical searches and his ongoing letter campaign to known and newly found relatives.

Presented with what he views as a unique opportunity to see the good in other people, Graham points to his disability. His right hip and right knee were not fully developed at birth and caused him to spend six months of the first grade in bed in an almost full body cast. When he did start school, he was and is still very grateful to his principal, who let Graham keep his dog at his desk; to the other children, who appointed him captain of the baseball team; to a school superintendent who sent him to a recreational camp to help him deal with his father’s death; and to the countless other people he has met all over the world.

“I never met a nasty, hurtful person,” he says.

When he went to the Navy recruitment office after the beginning of World War II but wasn’t accepted because of his disability, Graham went two blocks down and was signed on by the Merchant Marine. He served as an officer trainee in ships’ engine rooms, traveling to India, Australia, North Africa, South Africa, Greece, Italy, England, and other areas, where he even more fully developed his way of life.  He says people were kind to him wherever he went. When he saw a mother and father in Calcutta crying over their child’s injuries, he was struck by the fact that people, everywhere, were exactly the same. But his strong ties to family kept him from making a career as a mariner, and he says he decided that “I’ll just have to be nice to everybody back home.”

Graham isn’t naïve; he does go to work every day, and he, initially, had a difficult mother-in-law, but he has a philosophy for those situations too. If there is a problem, he tells people, “I think we ought to talk about how to fix it.” Then when they work out a potential solution, he tells them, “Everyone will be real proud of you.” He says, “I try to put it back on them.” After he got married, his wife’s mother “would walk out the back as I walked in the front door,” Graham says. Within two years, however, she had realized the innate values of her new son-in-law and took her daughter aside and said, “You be nice to him, you hear me?”

Graham met his future wife, Martha, during the beginning of his successful, advancing career with wholesale distributors to grocery stores. She was office manager at his local supermarket. They had dated three weeks and, in true Graham style, he just naturally expected love back when he gave love. “We didn’t ever talk about marriage, but one night I went down to the store and got a ring and gave it to her, and she said, ‘I’ll take it.’”

Wanting to extend their family feeling, the couple began a lifelong search for other relatives. When Graham says, “In North Carolina, we found cousins, and they were living down the street from another cousin, and they didn’t even know it,” you can hear the actual pain in his voice. The Lutzes looked through cemeteries and photographed gravestones, they sought out census records, but they did not rely on the Internet (“anyone puts anything on there and it may not be correct,” Graham says), and they became the keepers of a box of information that dated back to 1500 and included names of ancestors who had assisted Martin Luther with his new church. Graham and his late wife eventually planned a five-day, national family reunion in 1990 that 5,000 relatives attended.

“We’d stay up all night, talking, laughing, joking, and swapping information,” he says in his kind, refined Southern gentleman tone that’s as devoid of hard R’s and G’s as it is of hard feelings. You can just tell that is how he would like the entire world to be.

In his world, because he lives it and seeks across seafood counters and through genealogical libraries to find it, indeed it truly is that way.

GRAHAM LUTZ is a Regions customer.

Everyone has a story.