Big Brother Friendship Spans 30 Years

May 1, 2009— -- It was an unlikely friendship -- a 7-year-old-boy and a 65-year-old man.

But 30 years later, a relationship that started through the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America program, is still going strong, even though the "big brother" is now 95 years old.

"Being a big brother or being a big sister is not a one-way deal," Chester Ross said. " It's a two-way deal. Because you get just as much out of him as he gets out of you."

In 1979, when Ross was 65, he had to be convinced that he wasn't too old to volunteer. A few miles away, David Loughran, who was then 7 and being raised by a single mom, expected to be paired with a big brother in his 20s.

But when the two were matched up for the first time, they said, something clicked.

"I actually remember the day. I was sitting on the couch. And my mother and the social worker were chatting and so forth," Loughran, now living in Connecticut, said. "Chester was kind of looking at me and said, 'Let's get out of here.'"

"And believe me," Ross said, " for one hour, the conversation never, never stopped."

The pair hung out every Saturday for years until Loughran, then 12, asked Ross for a favor.

"He says to me, 'Chester, I want you to do me a favor.' What's the favor? 'I want you to take me out on Sundays instead of Saturdays,'" Ross remembered. "'On Saturdays when I go out with you, my friends are all playing baseball, and they're all together and they're having a good time. On Sundays, they're with their family. And I have no family, and I would like very much to be with you."

Their Sunday outings would sometimes be as simple as watching a ball game on TV or seeing a movie. Other times, Ross, who lives in White Plains, N.Y. gave Loughran experiences he would never have had otherwise, such as getting seats at a baseball game right behind home plate or tickets to a Broadway show.

"I can sum it up very easily," Loughran said. "The big brother relationship, my relationship with Chester, was probably one of the single most important relationships that I've had in my life."

They once took a weekend trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown N.Y. Ross made Loughran wear a dinner jacket to a fancy restaurant and taught him how to use a salad fork.