From the outside, Roman Butzlaff looked like any cheerful four-year-old — the kind of kid who waves at everyone and yells “hey!” across the yard without a second thought. What most of his neighbors in Concord, North Carolina didn’t know was what was behind it.
About a year earlier, Roman’s parents had separated. His father moved to Florida. His grandparents lived out of state. For a four-year-old, that’s a lot of the people who are supposed to be closest to him suddenly living far away — and by his family’s account, Roman was carrying a quiet loneliness that his daily wave routine didn’t fully hide.
So he waved anyway. Every day, to whoever was outside.
One of those neighbors, Wade Fulgum, lives across the street. What started as a small kid’s habit of waving and saying hello turned into an actual friendship between Fulgum and Roman’s family — and then it kept spreading. Neighbor by neighbor, Roman’s wave became the reason people who’d lived on the same street for years finally started talking to each other.
By the time CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman told the story, around a dozen neighbors credited Roman with connecting them — people who, by their own admission, would have stayed strangers on the same block if a four-year-old hadn’t decided to say hello every single day.
**A village, built one wave at a time**
Roman’s family has described it simply: he lived in a neighborhood, but what he actually needed was a village. Without meaning to organize anything, that’s essentially what he built — a loose network of neighbors who now check in on each other, in part because a small kid refused to stop waving.
It’s a reminder that connection doesn’t always require a plan. Sometimes it just requires showing up in the same spot, every day, and being the one who says hello first.
*This article is based on reporting by CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman. Read the original report [here](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/roman-butzlaff-loneliness-north-carolina-community/).*
Photo by tinou bao, licensed under CC BY 2.0.