Piano tuner Ron Kroenke inadvertently made residents of a nursing home unhappy. But one of them understood

This is Dave Isay, creator of StoryCorps, the project that records the stories of everyday Americans. StoryCorps airs each Friday on NPR's morning edition. Support for StoryCorps comes from AT&T, proudly bringing StoryCorps listeners America's past, present and future. The new AT&T, your world delivered.

Welcome to the StoryCorps podcast, I'm Michael Garofalo, producer here at StoryCorps. In this episode, story from Ron Kroenke. He is a professional piano tuner in Omaha Nebraska, and here Kroenke remembers one December day when he was called to tune a piano at a nearby nursing home.

A group gathered around in chairs and they were all wearing their nice Christmas clothing. I thought, well, how nice. You know, they have no idea that I'm going to bore them to sleep with my tuning. And I’m kind of working alone happily and I’m smiling at people. A few of them were looking at me like, what in the world is he doing? One lady was just glaring at me. Another lady was given me sympathetic looks, her name turned out to be Rose. And then the activity director comes in and says“Ok, everybody, Ms Jennifer was here and she thought that the piano man was tuning the piano, so she’ll be back in January”. I didn’t realize they had a concert schedule that day, About a third of the people looked highly disappointed, and they were murmuring to each other, trying to tell each other what had happened.

There is an angry lady barked at me and said: "Haven't you ever heard if isn't broke, don't fix it?" and she stormed off. I had scooted it over on my seat out of the view of Rose because she looked so hurt, and suddenly, she touched my arm, and it startled me. And I looked. And she was very close to me and she told me very sincerely, I've been sitting here the whole time and I've been watching what you do and I can tell that you're the kind of person who would never walk away from this piano until everything was just so. That was a moment where someone did just the right thing, just out of the blue and it did mean something to me.

Ron Kroenke, at StoryCorps in Omaha Nebraska. You can find more stories like this one in the new StoryCorps book, “Listening Is an Act of Love”, available now at your local bookstore, also look for the companion CD, featuring stories recorded all across the country.

Major support for StoryCorps is provided by AT&T, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The StoryCorps archive is housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Tune in the StoryCorps broadcasts Tuesdays on NPR's news and notes and Fridays on NPR's morning edition. I'm Michael Garofalo, thanks for listening.