I am retired for five years.

When I have an appointment, I usually get there 45 minutes to an hour early. I always bring something to read or the crossword puzzle to pass the time until the other people come onto the scene.

We were having a belated Mother's Day celebration in Manhattan. It was the Wednesday after Mother's Day. "Better late then never" goes the old saying.

As I waited for my children and wife, all gainfully employed, I walked slowly down 23rd Street in the Chelsea section of the city, with my reading material tucked under my arm. A bearded gentleman in a Yankee's baseball cap spoke to me, a complete stranger.

"Are you Jewish?" he asked hopefully.

I looked above him and saw he was standing in front of a Shul. I answered him in my best Yiddish, "Du darfst a Taenter?" (Do you need a 10th man?)

"Yes" he nodded. Ten men are needed before a prayer can begin in a synagogue.

As I went through the door, he gave me a skullcap and ushered me into the sanctuary. Nine very impatient men were sitting and/or standing about. The services began immediately.

It was an Orthodox Synagogue and the reader had a Yiddish-Polish-Hebrew intonation to his praying that transported me back 50 years to the Bronx temple of my father and to Williamsburg, Brooklyn the "klein shillachle" (small shul) of my maternal grandfather.

The congregation of 10 was varied. It consisted of young bearded men under 30, smooth shaven middle-aged guys, but mostly older bearded gentlemen.

Trouble started when somebody stepped outside the sanctuary to answer a question during services. The Minyan had become dissolved and the count was nine. A man accosted the "outside" person and told him curtly to get back in the room so we could finish. He acquiesced, apologized and we finished Manhah and Ma'ariv in 35 minutes.

As I left Shul, there was a glow within me.

I was the 10th man.

I had allowed the completion of a quorum that permitted these men to honor their lost loved ones.

Good things occur when you least expect them.

In last week's column, the names of some of Stan and Lorriane's shipmates were spelled incorrectly. Rhoda Garfinkel, Alan and Addie Rotto, Roberta and Burt Burd, Pat and Seymour Rosman, Mort and Alice Steinberg, and Nat and Marcia Frankel all traveled with Stan and Lorraine.