I spent very few Friday nights at home during my AP career. So, when I did manage to get a free Friday, Judy and I always tried to find something fun or interesting to do - especially after the kids were grown and doing their own thing.

On one of those rare Fridays at home in 1981, we decided to make one of our infrequent visits to Temple Emanu-El for the Shabbat service. It was a fateful decision.

It was announced that night that the government in the USSR had opened the door for Jews living in the Soviet Union to emigrate to Israel and the United States. Those open periods were few and far between and generally lasted only weeks.

Our temple was one of a number in the U.S. and Canada that was willing to host the emigres and help them settle in.

The temple president asked for volunteers to meet the incoming immigrants at the airport, put them up for a night or two and then help them get through the tasks of getting their green cards, signing up for temporary coverage by Medicaid and getting settled into apartments being provided by Jewish Family Services and other Jewish organizations.

I was just about to start a few weeks of vacation and we had no plans to travel, so Judy and I volunteered.

A few days later, we were given the task of meeting a family named Gelfman at Kennedy Airport. We didn't know how many of them there were, if they spoke any English or had any background at all. What we did know was that their plane from Italy, where they had been living temporarily, was scheduled to land at 1:40 p.m. that Thursday.

I asked Judy how we would figure out who the Gelfmans were? Her eyes lit up and she said, "We'll make a sign."

Not knowing the Cyrillic alphabet _ a deficit she has since filled _ Judy enlisted the help of a Russian speaker at JFS to print out the name for us. She then copied it on a large piece of construction paper.

We headed to the airport on the appointed day not knowing how many people we were picking up or anything else about them, other than their last name.

We had been warned that it often took up to two hours for newcomers to pass through customs and immigration and arrive in the baggage claim area. But, not knowing when they would come out of those double doors, I stood dutifully holding up the sign while Judy sat on the floor next to me reading one of her texts and occasionally looking up to see if I was doing okay.

It was a long two hours before a disheveled woman and a rather large teenage boy walked through the double doors looking tired and a little scared.

By that time, the baggage claim was almost empty and they saw my sign right away.

They walked toward me and I asked, "Gelfman?" The woman looked leery, but nodded yes.

I had no idea if she or her son spoke any English, but I said, "I'm Mike and this is Judy. We're here to pick you up and take you to our home in New Jersey and help you get settled in America."

The woman nodded and said, "I am Rima and this is Eugene."

We managed to get the message across that they needed to get their one suitcase and follow us to our car.

It turned out that Rima spoke only a few words of English and Eugene even less. But, in the car, as I tried to point out a few of the sights to Eugene, sitting with me in the front seat, I heard a constant hum of conversation from the backseat, where Judy talked to Rima in English and Rima spoke to Judy in Russian and the two seemed to somehow understand each other.

Rima, who lived in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, grew up dreaming of coming to the U.S. She secretly listened almost every day to Voice of America. She missed one earlier window to leave because her mother was ill.

But, this  time, as soon as she learned the window was open, she applied for an exit visa. That meant she lost her job and her apartment as she waited several months for permission for her and her son to leave.

Finally, she was in America, and it was all a bit too much at first.

Our house in Westfield had a finished basement with a pullout couch and a bathroom. That's where Rima and Eugene stayed for their first two nights in this country. By the third night, they were in their own apartment in Elizabeth, NJ.

From the first day, it was as if Judy and Rima had a real connection. Somehow, they were able to communicate without language until Judy bought each of them a Russian-English dictionary and began to talk page numbers.

Eugene was an affable and smart young man and quickly began to pick up the language.

The two of them quickly became a part of our family.

To this day, we remain close friends with Rima and stay in contact with Eugene, who went on to graduate from college, got married to a Russian-American and has two children.

Through Rima, we met Lyuba and her family. Also immigrants from the USSR, they lived for a while in the same building as the Gelfmans.

Another couple we got to know in New Jersey were Adolph and Priscilla. Adolph ran a limo service and was often my ride to and from Newark Airport. He was a very nice man and a terrible driver, so bad that at times it was scary to ride with him.

But I felt he needed the business and I kept calling him, hoping that maybe this time his son, who worked with him, would show up.

We found out that Adolph and Priscilla also worked the flea market circuit on the weekends, buying odds and ends from wholesalers and reselling them.

One of the perks of covering the racing beat for AP was that I was constantly coming home with baseball caps featuring a wide variety of logos. I rarely wore a hat in those days, but I brought the hats home and tossed them into my closet. Petty soon, I had a huge garbage bag full of them.

I asked Adolph if he would be interested in trying to sell them at the flea markets and he was very pleased - especially when I gave them to him for free.

We lived in Westfield for 15 years and wound up with some very nice friends, including the Russians and Adolph and his wife. It all came to fruition in 1995 when we decided to sell our house in Westfield and move to North Carolina.

We had a decade and a half of accumulation in our house and decided to hold a yard sale to get rid of as much as we could before the move. Of course, we had no experience with doing a yard sale.

Adolph and Priscilla, veterans of the yard sale wars, volunteered to help us get set up and another friend, Elaine Tibbott, came by to help us price everything.

Then Rema and Lyuba announced they too were going to help with the sale.

On the big day, with early rain turning to bright, clear skies, Adolph and Priscilla helped us fend off the early birds ("vultures who try to cherry pick your best stuff before anybody else can see it.")

Once the sale started, I took care of the cash box, Judy circulated and made decisions on lowering prices and the Russians and Adolph and Priscilla worked the crowds, selling like crazy.

I had put three suits into the sale, all of them altered to fit my fire hydrant build and at least five years old. Lyuba walked up and asked me, "How much the suits?"

I shrugged and said, "If they actually fit somebody, just give them away." Lyuba looked at me like I had slapped her in the face and waved at me, dismissively.

Moments later, she came back all smiles and plunked down cash on the table: "Fifteen, fifteen, fifteen," she said proudly.

This may have been the most successful yard sale in New Jersey that year. We came away with over $2,000 without selling any really big ticket items. But, more than the money, the memory of our friends pitching in and all the fun we had that day, is what lingers in the mind.