What was a special moment in your amateur radio career?

 Question posted at QRZ that I felt inspired to respond to.  I'll post in here; it may interest you and anyway, I don't want it getting lost to time.

Question was:

What was a special moment in your amateur radio career?

An excellent question with, I'm quite sure, a load of personal stories attached to it.

In my own case, my special moment came some 50 years before I was licensed for the Ham Bands.

I was out one summer afternoon, at about age 12, aimlessly riding my bike around my town. I happened to stop on top of a local hill, hoping for a cool breeze off the nearby lake.
When I got there, there was a car sitting in the parking lot of then local firehouse.Kind of battered, it had several antennas on it. He was chatting away on a mobile rig, which I now recognize as a Motorola low band unit with a modified control head.. I pulled up next to him and sat and listened intently to the conversation, since it didn't appear to be anything official. He looked over and smiled, and continued his chatting away.

After about 5 minutes or so, he asked me if I'd be interested in saying hello to his buddy on the other end. Being the curious lad I was, I lept at the chance. We chatted for a few minutes and concluded the (Apparently Simplex) contact.

It was Ham radio, of course. I've no idea who it was, what their respective call signs were, what their names were etc. Remember, this was 50 years ago.

But, as fate would have it, that memory stuck with me; I was hooked. And the truth is, I've always been on the air in some form or fashion for the 50 some odd years between then and now. I went through years of CB/SWLing, helped to build and operate a local FM broadcast station owned by the local school district, and because of that, went on to get my commercial ticket(s) Then I worked at several commercial broadcast stations both as air talent and as tech talent as well, eventually got my ham ticket a few years ago now. There was magic in the air for me in those days..... and you know what? There still is.

The lesson here is that you never know who you'll impress, whose life you will benefit. Even if the lives you come in contact with don't suddenly change direction, those impressions stay, and affect people in ways you might never realize. The intersection of lives is more than worthwhile. In my case, it made a life.