(NEW YORK) — In 2009, when Dashauna Priest was just 9 years old, her third grade class project was to write letters of gratitude to military veterans. Priest’s letter was sent to Frank Grasberger, a World War II veteran, and he’s kept it ever since.

“It meant so much to me and touched my heart so much,” Grasberger told “Good Morning America.” “Keeping it with me made me feel like I was with her, protecting her.”

In addition to the note of thanks, Priest drew a helmet with flowers coming out of it and an American flag on the letter, which Grasberger said “really touched” him.

“I felt like how could such a young girl understand what war was and how could she be so kind writing to someone she didn’t even know?” he said.

Grasberger knew he wanted to meet Priest immediately after reading the letter but was unable to find her, he said. Jill Pawloski, an employee at VITALIA Senior Residences in Strongsville, Ohio, where Grasberger lives, stepped in and tracked Priest down on social media.

“I reached out and sent her a private message explaining the situation,” Pawloski told “GMA,” adding that Grasberger was unaware that she was searching for Priest on his behalf. “I then asked her if she’d be interested in coming to our community to surprise Frank and without hesitation she said yes. I was thrilled and so full of joy that I could do this for Frank. He has such a huge heart and I knew this would fill his heart up.”

Priest, now 21, told “GMA ” that Pawloski’s message went to the requests folder on Instagram, which she “usually doesn’t open” but for some reason did that day.

“It’s so ironic because two weeks before I had opened up my memory box and went through it and I actually picked up [Grasberger’s] letter and read it,” Priest said. “So when she had messaged me, I had opened it around 12 at night and I actually cried because it was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy I just read the letter.'”

In response to Priest’s original letter, Grasberger wrote her a letter back in 2009, but he said he “never knew if she ever received it.”

After 12 years, the pair were able to finally meet on July 23 of this year. With the help of Grasberger’s family, Pawloski was able to keep the meeting a secret from Frank so that it could be a surprise.

“We told him that someone was coming in to interview him about his story,” Pawloski said. “We were all in tears watching [them] meet for the first time. It was beautiful and heartwarming and showed what a little act of kindness can do for two strangers.”

“Oh God, I was in shock like it couldn’t be the girl,” Grasberger said. “I never thought I’d find her let alone see or meet her. It was amazing. I went through a box of Kleenex.”

Priest said of the meeting: “It was amazing. He’s a very amazing person. He has a great personality. I was really thrilled to meet him. He was just full of life.”

Grasberger, along with his family and Pawloski, had another surprise waiting for them. In a full-circle moment, Priest arrived wearing her National Guard uniform as she herself has joined the military.

“No one had known I was in the military so when I showed up in my uniform it sparked something in everyone to start crying and it made me cry,” Priest said, adding that she’s not typically a crier.

“I’m so proud of her,” Grasberger said. “She’s like a third daughter to me. She has become such a wonderful nice girl. I hope her son knows one day what a difference she made in my life.”

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(WASHINGTON) — When Anita Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of unwanted advances and lewd comments when she worked for him, she says it changed “just about every aspect” of her life.

Thirty years after Hill delivered testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about Thomas, she is still a “crusader” — not just on the topic of sexual harassment but also on the larger issue of gender violence.

“I started out with sexual harassment and I thought that was the issue that I would deal with but I started hearing from people who had told me about intimate partner violence and then there are people who wrote me, [who] spoke about their experience with sexual assault and rape,” Hill told “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts. “And what I started to understand was that there was this connection and that you couldn’t really separate them, because at the heart of it was the same problem.”

Hill’s testimony in 1991 before a panel of 14 male senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee gripped the nation. The senator who led the hearing was President Joe Biden, who, in recent years, has publicly apologized for the treatment Hill received while publicly testifying against Thomas.

Hill told Roberts she feels that Biden’s personal apology to her “wasn’t enough.”

“I’m not sure that he quite understood how much harm the Senate hearings and his control, or lack of control, of those hearings did to all of us,” she said of Biden. “I think, unfortunately, the personal apology wasn’t enough. What I really wanted was somebody who was going to commit to doing something about this massive problem of gender violence that we have in this country that’s hurting everyone.”

Thomas would go on to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, a position he continues to hold.

Hill writes in her new book, “Believing: Our 30-Year Journey to End Gender Violence,” that her testimony against Thomas not only changed her own life but sparked a national conversation on gender violence.

The conversation has been propelled over the past decades by actions like the Me Too movement, founded by Tarana Burke in 2006, and Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in 2018 against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but much is left to be done, according to Hill.

“We can, first of all, change the narrative culturally and stop telling people, telling children, that what’s happening to them is ‘not so bad’ because that keeps people from coming forward,” said Hill, adding that more needs to be done to fix what happens once people come forward with allegations.

“I still am not at the point where I can say I advise everyone to come forward. I don’t,” she said. “What I advise people to do is understand the process that you’re coming forward into, because we still have processes that are not necessarily meant to solve the problem of sexual harassment, or rape or sexual assault. We’ve got to change the processes if we in fact want people to feel confident and trust that they are going to be treated fairly when they go into them.”

In the United States, 81% of women and 43% of men report experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

When it comes to domestic violence, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Hill, whose book goes on sale Tuesday, said she still believes “change is possible” 30 years later.

“I’m believing that change is possible. I’m believing that we deserve better,” she said. “We deserve better systems. We deserve better attention. We deserve leadership that will call out and acknowledge this problem for the public crisis that it is.”

“I’m talking about the president, as well as the president and CEO of every company and university,” Hill said. “Make that commitment to use your resources to stop this problem, and I believe that we can do it.”

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