The Power of Testimony

The Power of 

Testimony 

Memoir Sampler 

MemoirAddict.com 

You intended to harm me, but God intended 

it all for good. Genesis 50:20, NLT

The Power of Testimony 

Memoir Sampler 

Table of Contents 

The Tank Man's Son 

Mark Bouman with D. R. Jacobsen 

Saving My Assassin 

Virginia Prodan 

Ruined 

Ruth Everhart 

'Til We Meet Again 

Ray & Betty Whipps with Craig Borlase 

All But Normal: Life on Victory Road 

Shawn Thornton with Joel Kilpatrick 

The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, 

and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told 

Dikkon Eberhart 

MemoirAddict.com

1 

The oak tree stooda dozen feet taller than the top of my father’s 

tank. From where I was watching, I could feel the vibration rumbling 

up through the ground. Our eleven acres were peppered with trees, big 

and small, but ever since Dad had fired up his army tank for the first 

time, the number was steadily decreasing. Dad motored toward the oak 

at a walking pace. I could see the outline of his head sticking up through 

the driver’s hatch. He was making subtle course corrections to keep his 

right-hand tread lined up with the tree. The tank halted several feet from 

the trunk, and the noise of the engine lowered for a moment. 

Then a roar as the tank lurched forward. The tread hit the tree trunk 

dead center, and the tank climbed slowly upward. Foot by foot, with 

the engine snarling in time, the machine rose into the air. The tree 

strained against the increasing weight. It leaned backward, bending and 

shaking, and even above the noise of the tank I could hear groans and 

staccato pops from inside the oak. The tank pointed toward the clouds 

5

6 || THE TANK MAN’S SON 

as if launching from a ramp, and then, with a sudden crack, the oak 

died, its trunk shattering even as its roots were torn from the earth. The 

tank slammed down and rolled forward, pulverizing the branches into 

splinters and grinding the now- useless roots into the ground. 

I imagined taking my father’s place at the controls, lifting the tank 

up and over a mighty tree and forcing it to the ground just like he did. 

It would feel exhilarating. It would terrify me. But I would win. I would 

be the one in charge, the one with the power. Nothing could stand up 

to that kind of power. 

The tank turned toward me, continuing to roll. Ten feet before it 

reached me, its treads jerked to a halt. My father looked down at me 

from the hatch. I watched his lips move, scarcely able to hear him over 

the engine’s growl. It took me a moment to realize what he’d shouted 

to me. 

“Hey! Mark! Want to drive?” 

• • • 

Long before he became the Tank Man, Dad had been a kid, just like me. 

He had two parents and a little home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a 

finished basement and lace curtains and a set of Sunday china. He learned 

to ride a bike and write book reports and sweep the sidewalk. He grew 

taller and stronger and learned to swear and throw a punch. He taught 

himself to drive when he was still in middle school, pushing his dad’s ’39 

Ford van out of the driveway and then starting it once he was a block 

down the road. 

By the time he was thirteen, he was shuttling his mom to town so she 

could pick up groceries or supplies for the beauty parlor she ran in a small 

shop attached to the house. By the time he was fourteen and his parents 

sat him down to tell him that a divorce didn’t mean they loved him any 

less, he had already turned his gaze out to the world—past Grand Rapids, 

past Michigan, out toward the horizon where there might be something 

better, just waiting for him to discover it and make it his own.

MARK BOUMAN || 7 

When he was fifteen, he joined his father on a trip to “see the world”— 

or at least the world between Michigan and the Grand Canyon. It took 

them three days, sharing the driving along the way. On the second day, 

when his father was snoring in the passenger seat, Dad slammed into 

the back of another car. By the time the highway patrol officer left with 

his report, Grandpa Bouman had everyone convinced that he’d been the 

one driving while Dad rode shotgun. Whether they hiked down into the 

canyon or took pictures or just sat quietly at the edge, Dad never chose 

to relate. The only parts of the story he cared to tell were the long drive 

and the sudden crash. 

By the time he was sixteen, Dad talked his mother into signing a 

waiver that let him join the United States Navy. He said good-bye to her, 

didn’t bother saying good-bye to his dad or his dad’s new wife, Ginn, 

and hitched a ride to the Greyhound station. With his duffel bag slung 

over the chip on his shoulder, he stepped off the bus at the Great Lakes 

Naval Training Center outside Chicago, determined to make a name 

for himself. Next came Jacksonville, Florida, where he spent eighteen 

months discovering his knack for repairing engines on carrier planes 

like the T-34 and the F3D. That was the year the pilot of a twin- engine 

Beechcraft, a lieutenant, stuck his head in the maintenance hangar and 

asked for a volunteer to join him on a short flight to an air base up the 

coast. On the return trip to Jacksonville, the pilot asked if Dad knew 

how to fly. 

“Yep, you bet!” came the instant answer. Dad flew most of the way 

back before the pilot realized Dad was improvising. That was how Dad 

lived: ready to try anything, supremely confident—often with no reason 

to be so— and always able to let consequences slide off his shoulders like 

water off a duck. 

While waiting to turn eighteen, Dad struck up a friendship with 

Stew. Stew was Dad’s kind of guy: independent, bold, and unafraid to tell 

everyone, including his superiors, what he really thought. They talked 

about guns and fast motorcycles and made lists of the know-nothing


officers they’d like to teach lessons to. They spent their base leave in 

Jacksonville together, cutting up and causing trouble in the bars and 

pool halls. And it was sometime during their time together that Stew 

clued Dad in to the real cause of all the world’s troubles. 

The three of us Bouman kids—me, my older brother, Jerry, and my 

younger sister, Sheri— grew up knowing who Stew was. Dad would flip 

right to the picture of him in the photo album and tap his finger, and we 

would pretend to study the snapshot we’d already seen dozens of times. 

Stew sat ramrod straight in a wooden chair, wearing a crisply pressed 

Nazi uniform with swastika bands on each sleeve. His daughter stood 

behind him, one hand on her father’s shoulder. She wore a Hitler Youth 

uniform, and behind the two of them was draped a Nazi flag. 

“You kids know not to ask questions,” Dad would say and then close 

the album. 

Shortly after meeting Stew, Dad persuaded a squad of cadets to 

goose-step around the base, a stunt that earned him a trip to the psych 

ward for evaluation. In the early 1950s, so close to the end of the Second 

World War, the naval brass figured no one would be crazy enough to 

ape the Nazis unless he was actually crazy. My mother later told me 

that Dad was given a Section 8—that was how they discharged people 

judged unfit for military service, like homosexuals and the mentally ill. 

Dad’s version of the story was different: his naval career ended when 

he punched some know-nothing officer who had it coming. Still, an 

honorable discharge arrived in Grandma Jean’s mailbox, owing to the 

intervention of a family friend who happened to be a congressman from 

the great state of Michigan. 

Maybe Dad would have left the Navy on his own, even if he’d never 

met Stew. It wouldn’t have taken Nazi ideology to persuade my father 

to punch an officer—he would have done that on a dare. Either way, 

by age eighteen, Dad found himself out of the Navy, officially a man, 

and with no idea what to do next. If he’d been more driven and hardworking, 

perhaps he would have struck out on his own and moved to


Detroit or Chicago. He could have done what other young men did: 

find a job, make friends, date a local girl, and begin a new life. Maybe 

save up for a new sedan or a starter home. Join a bowling league or the 

local chapter of the Elks. Instead, he moved into his mother’s basement, 

avoided work, smoked two packs a day, and filled out his six-foot-two 

frame with another forty pounds of muscle. 

At the same time that Dad was lounging on his mother’s couch and 

reading anti-Semitic books and military manuals about how to assemble 

land mines, Mom was making a name for herself at Unity Christian 

High School. She played first- chair French horn in the school orchestra 

and edited the school newspaper. She represented Unity at the state 

debate championship and placed second. Her unfailingly honest and 

responsible parents were no-nonsense workers—her father a carpenter, 

her mother a nurse’s aid—who expected their children, Mom and her 

older sister, Janie, to take care of themselves and keep their heads down. 

They had moved the family from Arkansas to Michigan years before so 

the girls could attend a good Christian school. They never gave the girls 

birthday presents or celebrated holidays. Surviving the Great Depression 

had taught them that having fun was simply too expensive. 

One summer afternoon, Mom drove Janie to Holland Beach on the 

shore of Lake Michigan. They planned on spending the afternoon swimming 

and lying in the sun. It was a popular place to see and be seen, and 

it also happened to be free. That same summer afternoon, Dad took his 

mother’s car and drove to Holland Beach as well. Cruising the parking 

lot, he spotted two ponytailed teenagers sitting inside a Buick sedan. He 

eased his own car to a stop beside theirs. The girl in the passenger seat 

was cuter, but the girl in the driver’s seat was closer, and her wide smile 

revealed her perfect teeth, so my father decided to simply go with what 

was right in front of him. 

“Would you like to go see a movie?” he asked Mom. 

That was that. From then on they were a couple. At least that was 

the way Dad remembered it: simple and to the point.


Mom’s version was a bit different. They met at the beach, but it 

was Janie who first met Dad while they were swimming. She invited 

him back to shore to share their picnic, and Dad took the opportunity 

to suggest that the three of them see a movie together. Once they had 

eaten, Janie drove, with Mom in the middle and Dad on the outside. It 

thrilled Mom to sit next to Dad since it was Janie who always attracted 

the attention from boys. 

On the drive home, the warm summer air whipped through the open 

windows, swirling Dad’s thick black hair. 

“What did you think of the movie?” Mom ventured. 

“It was okay,” he quickly answered, “but I really prefer war movies. 

And Westerns. I try to catch a movie at least once a week.” 

“Really?” Mom was incredulous. “You must have a great job!” 

Dad hedged. “Actually I’m between jobs right now. I just got out of 

the Navy, so . . .” 

Mom found herself looking sideways, not for the first time, her eyes 

tracing his strong arm draped along the edge of the rolled-down window. 

“What did you do in the Navy?” 

“Aircraft mechanic,” he replied smartly. “I haven’t decided yet what 

to do for a job. I’m taking my time. Since I just got home, I’m not in 

any big hurry.” 

He grinned. Mom couldn’t believe it. No big hurry to work? Movies 

once a week? Free to do whatever he wanted—maybe even to put one 

of those arms around her shoulders while they drove through the back 

roads together? 

Dad looked at the sisters. He wanted to ask Janie out, since she was 

prettier, but that would have been awkward with Mom sitting between 

them. And here is where their memories come together, with Dad asking 

Mom if she’d like to go out to a movie again. Mom knew it was 

wrong to date, wrong to have fun, wrong for a high school student to 

cut loose with an ex-Navy man. And Mom knew just as surely that she 

wouldn’ t— couldn’ t— say no to the excitement Dad offered.


“Sure,” she said, hoping he couldn’t see the color rising to her cheeks. 

However it happened, the results were the same. As the summer 

ended and the school year began, Dad and Mom began dating in secret. 

To a girl who never went off script, Dad’s fearlessness and disregard for 

convention seemed like a godsend. Maybe life didn’t have to be as safe 

and boring as it had always been. Maybe her parents had been wrong 

about duty being the most important thing in life. Dad wanted to have 

all the fun he could at every moment he could, and that answered nearly 

every longing Mom had ever felt. She was newspaper, and Dad was a 

lit match. 

Mom’s decision to date Dad was the first crack in the facade of her 

exemplary life, and soon nearly everything crumbled. Dad stole money 

from his mother’s beauty parlor so he could show Mom the kind of good 

time they both deserved. They drove too fast and snuck into dance halls. 

They saw the latest movies and kissed by the lake. She was a sixteen- 

year- old kid who lived miles from town— a kid with parents whose idea 

of a fun Saturday was to go fishing and then return home to clean and 

salt the fish. It’s no wonder she felt free the moment she hopped into 

Dad’s front seat and roared down the country roads toward anywhere 

but home. 

Dad became Mom’s only friend. More than that, he became her 

world. Her homework sat untouched for days at a time, and she dropped 

out of the school play. Her French horn gathered dust beneath her bed. 

When she heard about a job answering phones and filing documents 

for an insurance company, she dropped out of school, because what was 

the point in pretending? All she wanted was to be with Dad, and he’d 

take care of her as long as they stayed together. He picked her up from 

work every evening, and every morning she counted the hours until she 

could see him again. Her father was angry, but her mother was more 

than happy to save the school tuition every month. Mom overheard her 

mother telling her father, “If she wants to ruin her life, at least it won’t 

cost us anything.”


Mom smiled to herself. The only thing her mother seemed to care 

about was saving money, but Mom had found a way to make money and 

have fun at the same time. There was so much more to life than what 

her parents had allowed her to experience, and if she had to leave them 

behind, she would. She’d found her future in my father. 

Several months later, Mom walked out of the bathroom she shared 

with her sister and blurted out, “Janie, I’m sick.” 

“What do you mean? Sick how?” 

“Pregnant sick,” Mom groaned, feeling the urge to vomit again. 

Her parents knew Mom had a secret life, but they didn’t know the 

half of it. Mom’s questions spilled out as tears streamed down her cheeks. 

“Now what am I going to do? What will Mom and Dad say? What’s 

going to happen?” 

“You’ll need to tell them soon,” Janie said. “It won’t help any if you 

wait.” 

A few hours later, her father arrived home from his construction job. 

He sat down at the kitchen table, reading the paper while he waited for 

his wife to finish making dinner. Janie and Mom entered the kitchen. 

“She needs to talk to both of you,” Janie announced, then stepped 

out of the way. 

Her father lowered his paper and peered at his younger daughter 

over his thick, black reading glasses. Her mother stopped midturn on 

the linoleum, holding a plate of pickled beets. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked in a low tone. 

Mom couldn’t speak, so her sister spoke for her. “She thinks she 

might be pregnant.” 

Mom burst into tears, her head bobbing up and down from the great 

heaving sobs that swelled inside and threatened to overwhelm her. 

“Well,” pronounced her father, “that’s a fine mess you’ve got yourself 

into.” 

“I’m so sorry,” Mom managed, finding her father’s eyes. 

“Sorry doesn’t solve the problem, now does it?” he said.


Janie moved to put her arms around Mom, hoping to console her. 

“You’ll have to marry that boy,” her mother said as she resumed her 

dinner preparations. “If you’re pregnant, then you’re on your own. You 

know that. You’ve brought this on yourself. Don’t expect us to help.” 

A child choosing to ruin her life was nothing an upstanding parent 

should stand in the way of. Mom stared at the floor, hearing the newspaper 

crinkle as her father went back to reading, hearing her mother at 

the chopping board, feeling her sister’s arms. That’s when Mom realized 

two things: that she’d have to marry Dad, and that it was the last thing 

she wanted to do. 

Not that she had a choice. Ending her pregnancy wasn’t an option 

for her, and her parents were kicking her out, so keeping the baby at 

home wasn’t an option either. In 1958, in rural Michigan, independent 

single mothers simply didn’t exist, especially ones without a high school 

diploma. Over the years, her parents had made sure Mom knew that 

good and honest people never became pregnant out of wedlock— and if 

they did, God forbid, they got married immediately. 

That advice would have been easier to follow if her parents hadn’t 

made such a point of convincing her that Dad would never make a good 

husband. 

Mom was trapped between truths, and the only way forward was a 

wedding. Except a wedding was impossible. None of the parents would 

attend or help pay for it. Mom didn’t have the emotional strength to 

organize even a civil marriage ceremony, so Janie took it upon herself to 

arrange things. She was the only one present when Dad and Mom stood 

in front of a justice of the peace at the courthouse in Grand Rapids and 

promised to love each other for better or worse, in sickness and in health, 

until death parted them. 

Dad’s mother couldn’t bear the thought of the couple starting their 

married life living in a car, which is exactly what Mom and Dad would 

have been forced to do, so she bought them a trailer—a steal at $250 

because it had been damaged in a flood and the previous owners had


moved out. After the ceremony at the courthouse, Dad’s stepmom, 

Grandma Ginn, hosted a reception at her place: a simple cake, some 

photos, and an hour of awkward small talk. Then the happy couple 

drove back to their water-stained trailer to begin life together as man 

and wife. 

That was late winter 1958. Dad was nineteen, and Mom was seventeen. 

Jerry was born just over six months later. I was born two years after 

that, and Sheri two years after me. We were the Boumans, a clan of five 

crammed into a trailer in Cannon, Michigan, trying to make our way 

in the world.

2 

There wasn’t a single daywhen Mom and Dad didn’t loathe their 

moldy trailer, but it was their only option, year after year. It was already 

a pit when Grandma Jean bought it for them— it had electricity at least, 

but no running water—and adding one, two, and then three children 

didn’t improve it. Neither did Dad’s habit of burning through whatever 

meager pay he earned. Dad was working a string of dead-end, nonunion 

jobs, then cashing his checks so he could treat himself to dinner and a 

movie. When he got fired from one job—for lying about his qualifications, 

for insulting his boss, for bringing a pistol to work and threatening 

someone— he’d just move on to the next. 

Mom, meanwhile, was in survival mode. Besides scrounging food, 

lugging water, washing diapers by hand, and trying to keep track of us 

kids, she had her husband to care for. Since he was out winning bread, 

he expected Mom to keep him clothed and fed. He made rules on the 

fly, which she was expected to follow—no matter how unreasonable—or 

face the consequences. 

15


Early on there was often little or no food at the trailer, so Dad and Mom 

would drive to Grandma Jean’s house for dinner. Dad would usually disappear 

into the basement by himself while Mom helped prepare the meal. 

“I bought you some food,” Grandma Jean said once. “It’s in the entryway 

near the door, and you can take it with you tonight after dinner.” 

“I don’t understand him,” Mom said, struggling not to cry. “He won’t 

get a job. I work all day, and he just sits around and plays. He’s either 

eating out or running around with his friends.” 

“Well, I thought he might have some trouble being a good husband. 

He never learned to work hard. When he was living here, after the Navy, 

I told him to save money for a rainy day, but he wouldn’t listen. And 

now it’s pouring.” 

“I wish I knew what to do. He won’t listen to me.” 

“Well,” Grandma Jean said, “he didn’t listen to me much either.” 

• • • 

Despite his habit of spending his time and money however and wherever 

he wanted, Dad must have sensed that he needed to get his family out 

of that trailer— or at least get himself out. He hated it every bit as much 

as the rest of us did, and so he schemed his way toward a real house. 

His plan started with empty land, which was all my parents could 

afford on his typical fifty-dollars-a-week pay. After asking around for a 

few months, Dad was able to get eleven acres outside town in Belmont, 

nearly every square foot of which was covered in sand. Other than growing 

oak trees and a type of weed with heavy, barbed burs, the sand 

was useless for almost everything else. It couldn’t be cultivated, it made 

a poor foundation for building, and it was crisscrossed by constantly 

shifting ruts, dunes, and ridges. Still, land was land, and by the time 

Sheri was toddling around and Jerry was starting school, Mom and Dad 

owned eleven acres of it. Dad paid a man to jack the family trailer off 

the ground and tow it the fifteen miles to their new homestead. Same 

old trailer, same young family, both in a brand- new setting.


At first, it was an even worse setting for Mom. Not only was she 

farther from town, but the land had no running water, and she was 

immediately forced to ask the closest neighbors for help. Apparently 

water wasn’t something Dad had considered before relocating the trailer, 

or else it was something he simply assumed Mom would take care of. 

And she did. Dressed in slacks and a light blouse, her long, dark hair 

swaying behind her, she marched down one sandy hill, up another, and 

through a collection of cars in need of repair, until she found herself at the 

front door of a typical Michigan split- level home. 

“Come on in,” said the woman who answered. “Name’s Emmy. Emmy 

Dietz. Sit down for a minute and have a cup of tea.” 

“That’s okay, I just came over to see if I can get a jug of water from 

your spigot. We don’t have water yet.” 

Emmy gave Mom an evaluating once-over. “Of course you can use 

our spigot, sweetie, but first come in for a spell.” 

Emmy held open the door until Mom entered, then gestured toward 

the kitchen table. “Just pull up a chair there and push that stuff out of 

the way until you can sit down.” 

Mom moved a pile of magazines and some dish towels, clearing a 

place for herself, and Mrs. Dietz set a mug in front of her with a tea 

bag in it. 

“The water will heat up in just a minute,” Emmy said as she cleared 

another place at the table, causing a few of the magazines to tumble to 

the floor. “So how’s things going, living out here in the boonies? It’s a 

bit too far from town for most people, but we like it that way. Nice and 

quiet.” She smiled. 

“It’s quiet all right,” Mom agreed. “It’d be a whole lot easier if we had 

water and a phone. My husband says he’s going to get a well drilled, but 

we don’t have the money yet.” 

“Aren’t you building a house? How do you build a house without 

water?” Emmy chuckled. “I thought you’re supposed to put in a well and 

then a house. What’s that husband of yours thinking?”


“I don’t know,” Mom admitted. She stared at her cup. 

“Ah, he’ll figure it out!” Emmy added, rising to take the hissing kettle 

off the stove. She poured hot water into Mom’s cup, returned the kettle 

to the stove, and took a framed family photo off a shelf, placing it in front 

of Mom. Everyone in the picture was dressed in plaid. 

“Take some sugar,” she said, plopping two cubes in the hot tea. Then 

she pointed with her fingertip at the children in the picture. “This is 

Darwin, our oldest. Then this is our daughter, Judy. Here’s Tim, and then 

Mike. Want a cookie?” 

Mom shook her head and took a sip of her sweet tea. “You have a 

wonderful family,” she ventured. “Your youngest looks about the age of 

my boys.” 

“We’re not rich, that’s for sure, but we’re a good family! We’re just 

trying to pay the bills like everyone else.” Emmy leaned back in her chair. 

“Les never finished school, so he can’t read, but my kids are going to learn 

and stay in school, or I’ll let them have it.” She shook her fist for emphasis. 

When Mom’s tea was gone, she stood up to leave. “Thank you, but 

I need to get back to the house with the water.” 

“No problem at all. Our well is only sixty-five feet down, but it has 

lots of water.” 

Mrs. Dietz walked Mom to the door, then watched as she carried 

her plastic jug to the spigot and filled it. “You come over any time you 

need water, honey,” she called. 

Mom offered a grateful smile and then turned to the task of carrying 

her sloshing, forty- pound load back to the trailer. 

While Mom didn’t care for this new arrangement, Jerry and I loved 

our new land. It was a vast, sandy playground, and our favorite thing to 

play was army. Dad had given us a large bucket brimming with green 

plastic army men, and the sand made the perfect battlefield. Before each 

battle, we’d divvy up the soldiers. Some tossed grenades, some crouched 

behind machine guns or aimed rifles, and some held pistols, but my 

favorite was the grunt with the bazooka on his shoulder.


Once, as we dug walls and pits in the sand to protect our armies, 

Sheri announced that she was going to play with us. I stopped digging 

and looked up at her. A doll dangled from one hand, and she was 

scratching her hair with the other. 

“You can’t play,” I informed her, returning to my important work. 

“You’re a girl.” 

“I’m telling Mom!” 

Jerry and I looked at each other and shrugged, then resumed our battle 

preparations. Once our fortifications were complete, combat consisted of 

lobbing rocks, one at a time, toward the other person’s army. Any soldier 

knocked over or buried by a rock was considered dead, and the battle continued 

until one side was completely out of commission. We had learned 

that it was best to spread our armies out across a wide swath of sand, thus 

eliminating the chance that a single well- placed rock could end the battle. 

Minutes later, Mom arrived. Hands on her hips, she declared, “You 

boys need to include your sister when you play! She has no one else to 

play with out here.” 

Sheri stood defiantly by Mom’s side, glaring at us. Jerry and I both 

sighed. 

“Oh, all right,” I relented, motioning her over. “Come on.” 

Mom left as Sheri skipped over to our battlefield. “What do I do?” 

Jerry explained the game to Sheri, step by step, all the while redividing 

the plastic soldiers into three piles. I ground my teeth in frustration— 

how could he be so patient? She stared at the little green men, turning 

them over in her hands until Jerry reached the end of his explanation. 

“So what’s this guy?” 

“He has a grenade,” Jerry answered. 

“What’s that?” 

I couldn’t take it anymore. “Don’t you know anything?” 

She threw a question back at me. “What does he do?” 

“He throws it, duh,” I said, as if every preschool girl should know


about grenades. Was she going to ask about every single weapon? “Just 

put them in the sand so we can start our war!” 

Sheri knelt down, and after scooping out some low depressions in the 

sand, she placed her men in neat little rows, shoulder to shoulder. 

I snorted, and she looked up at me. “Just a minute— they all gotta 

stand up straight!” 

When she was finished, Jerry announced that he would take the first 

turn. He grabbed one of our stockpiled rocks, took a step back, and 

pitched toward my base. His opening salvo took two of my riflemen 

out of action. 

Sheri went next. She could hardly lift her stone, and her first throw 

landed harmlessly in the sand, well short of either opposing base. She 

stamped her foot. 

“My turn,” I said, choosing my favorite rock. It was smooth and had 

the ability to roll after it landed, causing collateral damage. I took careful 

aim, wound up, and lobbed a perfect bomb into the heart of Sheri’s 

base. Her entire army fell like dominoes. 

“Aaand . . . they’re dead,” I announced. 

She stamped her foot again. “Not fair! You knocked ’em down all 

at once!” 

“I guess you shouldn’t have put them so close together,” I said. 

“But I didn’t know!” 

“Well, now you do.” 

“I don’t want to play your dumb army game anyway!” Sheri stormed 

off. I was glad to see her go, and Jerry didn’t seem to mind either. 

Without a word, we drafted her fallen soldiers back into our armies, 

preparing for the coming fight. 

• • • 

All three of us were united in our hatred of the sandburs, however. 

No matter what we did outside and how careful we were, they were 

like evil Velcro, attaching themselves to our shoelaces, socks, shorts,


and even the backs of our shirts and our hair. Once latched on, they’d 

worm their minuscule hooks deeper and deeper, irritating our skin. Our 

shoelaces became so intertwined with clumps of burs that we could no 

longer untie our shoes. Removing the burs with our fingers was painful 

and usually pointless. Few came out, and more would quickly take 

their place. 

While Jerry and Sheri and I were dealing with the burs, and Mom 

was lugging water up and down the sandy hills, Dad plunked down a 

good-sized chunk of his paycheck for private flying lessons. 

When his desire for a real house became strong enough, though, it 

overpowered many of his lazier instincts. Dad already had plenty of land, 

and he struck gold at a county auction when he was able to purchase two 

entire houses for a grand total of two dollars. They were being torn down 

to make room for a new highway that the state was punching through 

a section of Grand Rapids. Dad picked those houses clean like a crow 

on roadkill: lengths of lumber, partial sheets of plywood, cinder blocks, 

cabinets, bathroom fixtures, pipes, and even the occasional straight nail. 

Soon, atop one of our sandy hills nearest the road, there was a pile 

of building material bigger than our trailer. Over the days, weeks, and 

months that followed, we watched Dad slowly transform that pile into a 

new house. It was a simple rectangle built from cinder block, twenty feet 

by forty feet, set lengthwise where the driveway ended. He mapped out a 

kitchen, a living room, a laundry room, one bathroom, and three small 

bedrooms, all of which he framed with the scavenged wood. While we 

continued to live in the cramped trailer, the Bouman residence steadily 

took shape, and with each completed step came a bit more of the feeling 

that better things were in store for us. 

• • • 

“Dad, is our new house ready yet?” 

I was trying to keep still so as not to bother Dad while he was working, 

but the sand and burs in my shoes made me shift from foot to foot.


Our new house wouldn’t have sand in it like the trailer did, and now 

that the construction was almost done, I was starting to think about it 

more and more. I’d never lived in a house, but I could imagine what it 

would be like to live somewhere without mold growing on the walls, 

somewhere with a room big enough that I wouldn’t bump into my 

family whenever I moved. I could also imagine my own bed. Jerry and 

Sheri and I were all crammed onto a single mattress, and between Jerry 

elbowing and kicking me and Sheri wetting the sheets, there weren’t 

many nights when I got enough sleep. 

“About a week,” Dad answered. 

Dressed as always in black leather shoes, white socks, khaki pants, 

and an untucked white shirt, he was working in front of a cinder block 

wall, just below one of the square window openings. I’d watched him use 

a trowel to smear wet cement in a line around the edge of the opening, 

and now he was holding a pane of glass in a thin frame. He lined up 

the glass with the opening and then pressed it against the wet cement, 

which oozed out around the edges like jelly from between two slices of 

Wonder Bread. 

“There’s another one done. I gotta finish a few things before we can 

move.” 

Dad turned to look at me. He seemed like a giant, building a house 

by hand and carrying windows as if they were one of our plastic dinner 

plates. Then he turned back to his work, lowering himself to one knee and 

pulling off his elastic silver watch with a single motion and slotting it in 

his pocket. His hands worked down in the cement bucket, kneading, then 

returned to the water bucket. When he drew them out, I watched water 

run down through the black hair on his powerful forearms. His wrists and 

hands were huge. Dirt and grime marked the creases of his fingers and the 

lines of his hands, and the edges of his fingernails were wide, black arcs. 

More cement, another window, and no further conversation. 

I thought about the room behind the window Dad had just finished. 

It would be dry and warm and full of space. Dad continued to work in


silence, and I watched. As he worked, his arms swung heavy and slow, 

slightly away from his body, as if they were too muscled to swing where 

everyone else’s did. He walked differently than others did too—he’d pick 

a point ahead of him and march toward it without slowing. Tagging 

along in his wake at a store or a gun shop or a swap meet, I had watched 

people step aside for him, parting like grass in a strong wind. When I 

walked behind him, when I watched him work, his smell was a mixture 

of machine oil, sour sweat, and sunshine. 

The gusting breezes ruffled Dad’s hair, up and down and up again, like 

a bird’s wing. When Mom called from the trailer behind us, it didn’t seem 

like Dad heard. He switched on the outside light he had recently wired 

up and continued to work. I waited a minute longer, feeling the wind 

pick up speed. I could hear grains of sand spattering against the wall of 

the house and on the new windows. Then I turned my back on the house 

and walked home to the trailer. 

• • • 

When Dad came back from building, he yelled at Mom. “Potatoes? 

Again? Why can’t you cook some real food?” 

“Because you spent your paycheck on movies in town!” she yelled 

back. 

Jerry and I were sitting on our bed, playing army men in the mountains 

and valleys of the blanket, and Sheri was lying beside us, sucking 

her thumb. I thought about how cool it would be to go to a war movie in 

town with Dad, but he always went to movies alone. When Mom stuck 

her head in and told us to get our jackets on, we knew all of us would 

be eating dinner at Grandma Jean’s. Dad’s mom had pointy eyeglasses 

and a house full of curtains and carpet. On the drive over, we rode in 

silence, and I saw lightning flash in the distance. 

By the time dinner was over, rain was beating down on Grandma’s roof 

so loudly that we had trouble hearing one another talk. By the time Dad 

had polished off the apple pie and decided it was time to brave the storm,


rain was pelting sideways against the windows. Our car swerved and shook 

as we drove back to the trailer. 

We turned off the gravel road. “I hope you can make it up,” Mom said. 

Deep ruts cut back and forth across the sand driveway as if a giant 

crayon had scribbled them. The torrential rain had gouged them even 

deeper, and the car lurched back and forth as Dad tried to steer around 

the worst of them. The headlights, when they were pointed at the 

ground, showed us a driveway that looked more like a muddy river 

than a road. An occasional flash of lightning revealed oaks waving and 

bending all around us. One of Mom’s hands was pressed to the ceiling, 

and in the backseat we bounced crazily into one another. It might have 

been fun if it hadn’t been so frightening. 

There was a sudden pitch forward and the engine died, and in the 

second or two of relative silence that followed, I could hear gasoline 

sloshing in the tank. Dad opened the door and stuck a leg out, announcing 

as he did that we’d just walk the rest of the way and get the car out 

in the morning. But his instructions were interrupted by Mom’s near- 

hysterical voice. 

“Wait, the light! Why can’t we see the light up at the house yet?” 

As rain poured in the open door, Dad squinted through the windshield 

into the darkness. The car headlights were aimed too low to help. 

The only thing we could see ahead of us, up the driveway, were raindrops 

and blackness. Dad turned to face Mom. “Don’t worry. The house is 

still there.” 

Dad stepped out into the night, leaving the driver’s door open. He 

trudged up the driveway, spanning the ruts without breaking stride. Lit 

by the headlights, he turned back to the car, cupped one hand around his 

mouth and shouted, “The power is probably out! Stay here while I get a 

flashlight!” Then he disappeared into the storm, and we were alone in the 

car. Mom’s breath came faster and faster. 

Several minutes later Dad’s white shirt floated down toward us out 

of the darkness. He climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.


Raindrops ran out of his hair and down the back of his neck. He put 

both hands on the steering wheel. 

“We’re going back to Grandma’s,” he announced. 

He cranked the engine once, twice, and when it caught the third time, 

he yanked the gearshift into reverse and floored it. There was a moment 

when nothing happened, and then the wheels found just enough traction 

to propel us backward down the hill. Dad spun the wheel hard right, and 

Jerry, Sheri, and I were smashed into one another in a pile against the 

door. Then we were bouncing down the driveway, sliding out onto the 

road, accelerating. 

Mom stared at Dad. In a voice barely loud enough to hear, Dad 

answered her silent question. “It’s gone.” 

Mom began to cry into her hands. I grabbed the back of the front seat 

and levered myself to my feet, ready to shout one of the dozen questions 

I’d just thought of. Jerry did the same. Dad killed our questions before 

they could begin with a single gesture, his right hand coming up into a 

fist below the rearview mirror. We plopped down and closed our mouths. 

We drove back to Grandma Jean’s through the black night. The 

drone of the car was interrupted only by Mom’s sobs in the front seat. 

When Grandma opened the door, wearing her nightgown and holding 

a flashlight, she didn’t seem surprised to see us. 

The next morning, Grandma’s voice woke us, calling us to the 

kitchen for oatmeal. 

“Where’s Mom?” Jerry asked. 

“She and your father went to look at the house,” Grandma answered, 

setting three steaming bowls in front of us and handing us silver spoons. 

“But is Mom okay?” Sheri worried. 

“She’ll be fine,” Grandma answered. “And you’ll be fine if I get you 

some milk, hmm?” She poured it from a tall porcelain pitcher that 

matched our bowls. 

Jerry lifted his bowl slightly off the table, examining the delicate 

designs traced around its rim. “Where’d you get these, anyway?”


“From England,” Grandma replied. “Aren’t they nice?” 

“They look like they could break.” 

“Yes, they could,” she agreed. “So we’ll be careful, won’t we?” 

We nodded, Grandma nodded, and we ate the rest of our oatmeal in 

silence. It wasn’t until lunchtime that Mom returned. Her face was still 

puffy and streaked with red. Sheri ran to her. 

“Mom, are we going home now?” 

“Yes, we’re going back. The trailer is okay.” 

Jerry frowned. “The trailer! But what about the house?” 

“It will . . .” Mom tried to answer, but stopped speaking until she 

could battle back a fresh round of sobs. Eventually she was able to finish. 

“It will be a while before we can move into the house, kids. There was 

a tornado.” 

Grandma walked us to the front door, and while we sat to tug on our 

shoes, she pressed a wad of money into Mom’s hand. 

“It’ll be okay,” she offered. 

Mom nodded, but didn’t speak. Grandma watched from the front 

door as we climbed back into the car and pulled away. 

Back at home, we managed to inch our way up the driveway. There 

was the trailer, right where it always was, looking no worse than it always 

did. And there, at the top of the hill, perched jumbled piles of cinder 

blocks, topped with splintered wood. The walls had all been blown out, 

as if scattered like one of the sand castles Jerry and I liked to build and 

then destroy. The roof was lying in the valley behind the house. 

Dad was still too stunned to say much. He kept walking around 

the pile of rubble, stopping now and then to touch a cinder block or 

a length of pipe. 

“Mostly intact,” he said more than once. “Mostly intact.” 

We kept living in our trailer. Dad had a deep well drilled near the top 

of the hill. And three months later, Dad announced that he was finished 

rebuilding the house and we could move in. The trailer stayed where it 

was. Dad tried to get rid of it, but no one would take it, even for free.

3 

In one way, moving into our new home drew a sharp line— on one side 

were our cramped, primitive trailer days, while on the other stretched a 

future filled with luxuries like our own beds, running water, and a living 

room where we could lie on the floor and play games of Monopoly 

by the woodstove. In other ways, however, life went on much the same 

as always. A different dinner table, maybe, but the same chronic shortage 

of food—and the same wandering days filled with exploration and 

battles and boredom and sand. 

When Jerry started school, I didn’t think much of it. While he was 

gone, I played by myself—except when Mom forced me to play with 

my sister—but since I slept late and the bus brought him back early, my 

routine remained much the same. 

I had a vague sense of the year passing by and summer arriving— 

then Jerry and I both slept in—and suddenly it was time for me to start 

school as well. From what Jerry had told me, school wasn’t anything 

27


much: just somewhere you had to go, and when the bell rang, you had to 

come back home again. Lunchtime sounded like one of the only bright 

spots. You could get a hot meal with fish sticks and Jell- O in a little cup 

and mashed potatoes that they slopped onto your tray with an ice cream 

scoop— for free. Recess didn’t sound bad either, since you could play on 

a field of grass so big that it took a whole minute to run across it, with 

not a sandbur to be found. 

Our refrigerator at home never had more than a few things in it: 

milk, a tub of leftovers from the night before—nearly always potatoes 

and some dry, flavorless meat— maybe some eggs, and a stick or two of 

butter. When Mom wanted to make us a treat, she’d use a boxed mix to 

bake a cake in a low, wide pan. She’d slide it, unfrosted, onto the bottom 

shelf of the fridge, and we’d use forks to scoop out however much we 

wanted to eat. I couldn’t wait to try the cafeteria Jell- O. 

On that first day, Dad didn’t send me down the driveway to wait 

for the bus with Jerry. Instead, after I dressed in the same thing I always 

wore—brown corduroys, brown leather lace-up shoes, and a dirty 

T- shirt— I climbed into Dad’s pickup truck. When we arrived at school, 

Dad led the way to my classroom, never turning to see if I was following. 

He walked directly to the front and interrupted the teacher, who was 

talking with another parent. 

“If you have any problems with him, let me know. I’ll take care of 

him when he gets home.” 

The teacher stammered that nothing like that would be necessary. 

“Well, if you need to slap him upside the head, that’ll be fine too. 

You won’t hear any complaining from me.” 

The teacher looked past Dad and found me. Then a quick glance 

back to my dad. “No, no, that won’t be needed, Mr. Bouman,” she managed. 

“Ah, thank you anyway, but . . .” 

Dad, without saying good-bye, was already out the door, forcing 

the incoming kids to step aside. I found my desk and sat down with


my arms crossed. Then I found the wall clock and tried to count the 

minutes until lunch. 

• • • 

Despite starting school, though, the eleven acres of sand on Blakely Drive 

remained my world. Apart from school, we rarely left home, and if I wasn’t 

doing a chore, and if there wasn’t a blizzard or an ice storm, I spent almost 

all my time outside, usually with Jerry and sometimes with Sheri tagging 

along. Mom had a stock response to our complaints of boredom— 

complaints that only increased as we grew older and the shine of living 

alone in the boonies faded. 

“Go outside and play,” she’d always say, looking up from her laundry 

or her pressure cooker or her dustpan. “And take your sister with you!” 

Jerry and I would slouch out the door, and nearly every time Sheri 

would ambush us. 

“Where ya going?” 

“Nowhere.” 

“Well, can I come?” 

“We’re just gonna walk around.” 

“But I wanna come too!” 

Jerry and I would stand there, hoping she’d disappear. It wasn’t that 

we didn’t like our kid sister— it was that she ruined our fun just by tagging 

along. 

“You know,” I’d say, “we aren’t even going anywhere.” 

“Yes you are! You already said so!” 

“Fine. Fine. We’re going to walk up that hill, through those thick, 

scratchy bushes.” 

We’d set off at a fast walk, and Sheri would have to pump her shorter 

legs to keep up. It didn’t take long for the whining to start. 

“Wait!” we’d hear from behind us. “Wait!” 

“We’re going exploring, Sheri, and if you want to explore, you have 

to keep up!”


“But where? I’ll meet you!” 

“We don’t know where— we’re exploring! Come on!” 

“Forget it!” she’d yell and tromp back toward the house. Jerry and I 

would shrug, watch her go, and return to our exploration. 

It didn’t always happen like that, of course. Sometimes she managed 

to keep up with us for hours. She was a tough little kid, and she knew 

better than to try for sympathy from Jerry or me when she acquired a 

new scrape or bruise. Other times we managed to leave her at home by 

just sitting around outside until she became so bored that she wandered 

back inside, at which point we’d race into the woods without her. If she 

suggested a game, we’d ignore her, even if it was what we already wanted 

to play, like hide-and-seek. And when Jerry or I suggested a game, we 

tried to pick one she wouldn’t want to play, like exploring or staging yet 

another skirmish in the sand with our army men. 

Sheri’s face was covered in freckles that stood out against her red 

cheeks whenever she worked hard or stuck her tongue out at us. Her 

toes had always pointed inward, which didn’t so much slow her down 

as make her look like she was about to fall over when she raced ahead 

of us across the dirt or through the oak trees. She usually wore plaid 

pants— dirt- and- sand- colored plaid— and Mary Jane shoes, along with 

a white shirt, also stained. 

Mom sometimes brought home toys Sheri could play with by herself, 

like an Easy-Bake Oven or small pieces of plastic furniture for 

her dolls, but Jerry and I made most of our own toys out of whatever 

grew and whatever we could scavenge from the junk Dad was always 

bringing home. 

Jerry and I knew our property by heart, as if we’d built it for one 

of our miniature battles. From the street, our driveway lanced directly 

uphill for about a hundred yards, and at the top of that first hill sat 

our house. On one side of the house was the well pit, and on the other 

side was Dad’s shed—which he had covered with a generous supply of 

tar paper. Leaning up against the shed were piles of hoses, pipes, and


unfinished projects. Next to that, a broken generator perched atop its 

trailer, the trailer’s tires long since empty of air. Wedged between the 

generator and the shed were large piles of rusted steel that had been lying 

there long enough that weeds grew up around them. 

Next to the house was a level area where we parked Mom’s Ford 

Custom and Dad’s Ford pickup. There were two small valleys behind 

the house, both of which Dad figured out uses for. The first was our personal 

garbage dump, while the second was where he tossed or dragged 

his ever-growing collection of discarded vehicles. One, a rusting VW 

minibus, was filled with old tires, as well as what seemed like a million 

dead leaves that had blown in through the open windows. Beyond that 

rusted a motley collection of other equipment he’d acquired at swap 

meets, auctions, and estate sales. 

The rest of the eleven acres was mostly rolling hills covered in trees 

and scrub, although there was also one noteworthy hill, a short jog past 

the edge of our property, that was covered in a thick grove of oak and 

maple trees. At the foot of the hill was a pond. Years before, whoever 

owned the land had attempted to dig a basement for a home, but it had 

filled with water, so he abandoned the whole project. It was deep enough 

that we had our own private swimming pool, as long as we didn’t mind 

trespassing, swimming in cold, dirty water, and then hoofing it the half 

mile or so back home. 

Even better, someone had tied a rope to one of the highest branches 

of the biggest oak atop the hill. We would grab the rope and walk backward 

until we stood on tiptoe with our arms stretched above our heads. 

Then we would race forward and leap, white-knuckled when the rope 

took our weight, watching the ground drop away below our windmilling 

legs as we swung, laughing, far into the air. 

• • • 

We couldn’t spend all our time outside, of course, and although we 

had officially moved into the house soon after the tornado, Dad never


properly finished it. The list of what was broken, unfinished, or ramshackle 

was nearly endless. Maybe he’d been building things more carefully 

at first, but after the tornado, he cut corners with a will. He even 

had a go-to response when an issue came up. It didn’t matter whether 

the trouble was a missing chunk of drywall, an electric outlet that didn’t 

work, or a door that wouldn’t shut all the way—when a concern was 

brought to Dad’s attention, he would fire back, “You know good and 

well I’m no finish carpenter!” 

One night after Mom complained about something and Dad fed her 

his line, Jerry asked Dad exactly what he meant by the finish carpenter 

part. I was on my stomach in the living room, drawing with Sheri, and 

I looked up in time to see Dad slap Jerry across the face. 

“I mean what I said, you imbecile!” 

Jerry ran to his room and Mom raced after him while Dad went 

outside, slamming the door behind him. When Mom came back to 

the living room, I went to check on Jerry. He was on his bunk in the 

bedroom we shared, staring at the wall. 

“Hey,” I said. “You okay?” 

“Yeah. Forget it.” 

“All right.” 

With nothing else to do, I lay in my bunk and looked around the 

room. The ceiling was bare Sheetrock, with the brand name and dimensions 

still stenciled on its peeling, yellow surface. When I was bored 

enough, I counted the hammer marks on it. Our closet was a single 

length of steel pipe held parallel to the wall with two brackets, and our 

dresser drawers fell onto the floor if we pulled them out past halfway. The 

window, like all the others I’d seen Dad install before the tornado, was a 

single pane of glass set against the cinder block wall with a flimsy frame 

and no insulation. When a really strong wind howled up, flakes of snow 

would eddy through the gaps around the window and float down to our 

floor, where they would slowly melt on the flower-patterned linoleum. 

In other words, our new room was a million times better than the trailer.


With Dad already outside, I hoped it would be a night we wouldn’t 

be called upon to fix the pump in the well. Dad had cut a rectangular 

hole into the dirt around the well and installed an old pump and a reservoir 

tank. It was insulated so poorly, however, that the pump often 

seized, and Dad liked to say that Jerry and I were “just the right size” to 

climb down into the well and bash an old hammer against the side of 

the pump until it began running again. 

When the well was first drilled, we were all grateful to have running 

water. However, the water contained so much iron and other metals and 

minerals that we could almost feel the grit between our teeth. Mom spit 

out the first sip she took, declaring it unfit for humans. 

Dad must have tasted it too, because he didn’t seem surprised when 

a salesman came a few days later to tell us about the latest in water- 

softening technology. We watched with interest as he collected water 

from our well in a small vial, then added drips and drops of various 

chemicals, periodically checking tables of colors and numbers in a three- 

ring binder. Then he announced that we had some of the hardest water 

he’d ever tested and that we’d need two complete filtration and injection 

systems, along with double the normal amount of salt. 

We bought a single system. Jerry and I were supposed to add salt 

to the machine each week, but that lasted only until the initial supply 

of salt ran out, because when we told Dad it was time to buy more, he 

shrugged. From then on our softening system simply served as a conduit 

for our freakishly hard water. Mom still had to walk to the Dietzes’ for 

drinking and cooking water every few days, taking Jerry with her to help 

lug it back. Dad had found an orange five-gallon plastic cooler, and it 

lived on the kitchen counter next to the sink. For the washing machine, 

however, Mom was forced to use the well water, and everything she 

washed turned yellow. T- shirts and underwear were the color of lemons 

after one wash, the color of urine after two, and a ruined, rusty orange 

not long after that. Evidence of the hard water collected all over the 

house: an orange stripe ringed the toilet, the water that came out of the


showerhead turned two of the bathroom walls orange, and beneath each 

faucet that dripped— which was every faucet— there was a dark spot the 

size and color of a penny. 

Dad looked at his honey-do list, looked at the condition of the 

house, and decided the next logical step would be to obtain a luxurious 

bathtub. One day he marched into the bathroom with a saw and cut a 

rectangular hole in the floor. He sawed right through the floor joists as 

well, and soon we could see clear down to the sand beneath the house, 

several feet below. 

“I got a deal” was all he’d tell us. 

When Mom got wind, she crossed her arms and declared, “This is 

going to look absolutely ridiculous— a sunken tub, in this house?” 

Dad grinned like she’d walked into a trap. “You know, lots of the 

finest homes have sunken tubs.” 

The following day a man drove up in a truck and helped Dad unload 

the tub and muscle it into the bathroom. Dad took over from there, 

sliding it into place with pry bars and lowering it into the hole he’d cut. 

The top of the tub stuck up about six inches above the floor, creating a 

serious tripping hazard. The length, however, was an even bigger problem. 

The hole Dad had cut was about a foot too long. 

“Not my fault,” Dad grumbled. “They gave me the wrong dimensions! 

Jumbo tub, my ass.” 

There really wasn’t a good way to cover the hole back up, given that 

Dad had removed all the joists, so he simply gave up on the entire project, 

leaving us with a semi sunken tub and a one- foot gap. 

• • • 

The hole in the bathroom floor wasn’t a problem for us kids. We loved 

it. One of our never- ending chores was to sweep up the sand that seemed 

to multiply in the house, and the hole made a perfect place to dump it 

without going outside. 

The sand bothered Mom the most, and she got it in her head that


a cement front porch would make a good place to kick off our sandy 

shoes, thus keeping the floors clean. Dad refused to pour one. 

“Why don’t you do it yourself if you’re so fired up about it?” he griped. 

The next day Mom called a cement truck. She scrounged some old 

pieces of wood from the yard and nailed them into rough forms around 

the front door. When the driver arrived, he took one look at the forms 

and refused to pour. He knew Mom’s handiwork would simply buckle 

and allow the wet cement to ooze across the sand. After he and Mom 

just stood there for a minute, the driver asked Mom for Dad’s toolbox 

and rebuilt the forms himself so that he could pour the cement. Since 

Mom didn’t have any cash, she raided Dad’s stash of ammunition and 

gave the man a few boxes of shotgun shells. 

Two days later, when it dried, we had a real porch sure enough— 

although if it made any difference in the amount of sand inside, 

I couldn’t tell. 

The constant sand invasion was the reason for our excitement when 

a traveling salesman stopped by to demonstrate a Kirby vacuum. We 

actually dared to dream that our sweeping days would be over, since 

the vacuum, we were all assured, could run on both carpet and hard 

floors. We gathered in the living room, Dad in his armchair and Mom 

on the couch with the three of us. The salesman stood in the center of 

the room, talking about its wind- tunnel design and lifting capacity and 

precise manufacturing tolerances, after which he made eye contact with 

Mom and asked, “Ma’am, would you like to see a demonstration?” 

He unwound the power cord with a practiced flourish and plugged it 

into the wall. On the way back to his machine, he made a show of walking 

slowly over our carpet, studying its gold, scarlet, and green designs. 

Then he clicked on the vacuum and ran it over a particular spot, back 

and forth, back and forth. By the third pass, the vacuum was leaving a 

thin but clearly visible line of sand in its wake. When the salesman ran 

the vacuum back across the trail of sand, the vacuum sucked it right 

up— and then deposited a fresh line of sand in a slightly different spot.


Jerry and I elbowed each other and counted our lucky stars—this 

was one time someone else would get the blame for not cleaning up 

all that sand! The salesman was visibly withering. With each pass of 

the vacuum across the carpet, his shoulders slumped a bit lower. His 

forehead wrinkled. He pushed and pulled the vacuum more and more 

frantically, and I could see his lips moving silently. 

Suddenly, he turned off the vacuum. For several seconds he stared 

at it, and we stared at him. Then he crouched down and plucked some 

sand from one of the long lines marking the carpet. He rubbed his fingers 

and the sand fell back to the carpet. 

“Well,” he said, “what in the heck?” 

“I’m sure—” began Mom, but the salesman interrupted her with a 

quickly raised hand. 

Without speaking, he flipped the vacuum upside down on the carpet, 

unplugged it, and began taking it apart, all the while muttering 

about what might be ailing his incredible machine. As soon as he had it 

all put back together, he turned it back on and tried again. The vacuum 

traced the same lines of sand across the carpet with each pass. In desperation, 

the salesman pulled the collection bag off the back of his machine. 

He unfastened the clasp, unrolled the top of the bag, and reached his 

hand in. When his hand came back out, it was full of white sand, which 

ran through his fingers and down onto the carpet. The bag looked like 

it was already more than half full. 

Mom started to laugh, her hands floating up to the sides of her 

mouth, and her laugh was like the first rock in an avalanche. Soon all 

of us were laughing, even Dad and the vacuum salesman—laughing so 

hard our sides hurt. 

“You know,” chortled Dad, “that fancy vacuum of yours actually 

works pretty good. Just look at all the sand it picked up!” 

And so as the laughter died away, we resigned ourselves to ongoing 

sand duty—part of what Dad called “policing the place,” though we


had no clear idea of what that meant—each time carefully pouring the 

collected sand into the hole beside our sunken bathtub. 

• • • 

Our house was too far out in the country to have garbage pickup. There 

was a municipal dump, of course, but Dad decided that driving our trash 

to the dump would be a waste of effort when we had a perfectly empty 

valley right behind the house. Each time a trash can in the house filled 

up, one of us would dump it outside—which meant that every so often 

Dad would notice the trash pile was getting out of control. 

“You boys go out back and get some burning done.” 

We always tried not to smile when Dad handed down that particular 

task, fearing he’d decide to do it himself or even give the job to Sheri. 

Compared to sweeping the never-ending sand in the house and our 

newest chore—filling the ruts in the driveway—burning the trash pile 

was nearly a treat. 

We had a routine. On the way to the garbage pile, Jerry and I would 

each grab a long, sturdy stick. Then as soon as we reached the pile, we’d 

look for something like a frayed tarp or a garbage bag, which we’d divvy 

up and wrap tightly around the ends of our sticks. A flick from one of 

the Zippos we both carried and—fwoosh—we were explorers, holding 

aloft our torches. Flames ready, we’d clamber to the center of the pile, 

holding the torches well away from our bodies, since more than once a 

blob of molten plastic had dripped onto our exposed skin, searing us for 

an instant before sputtering out. Once we were in the center, we worked 

our way outward, touching our torches to anything that looked flammable: 

phone books, shredded shirts, the odd scrap of lumber. All the 

while, our plastic- fueled torches burned a bright, nearly neon blue, even 

in the sunlight, and the sound of their flames—ship ship shiiiip— became 

a private language, telling where to step and what to burn. 

After we set fire to everything that wasn’t wet, metallic, or made of 

glass, we would retreat to the edge of the pile. Still holding our torches,


we’d stand and watch the flames spread in fits and starts across the discarded 

landscape, sometimes stepping back into the pile to prod or 

relight some object. I could imagine I was a giant, watching an entire 

countryside burning, from the rotting valleys all the way to the peaks 

of rusty iron. 

Dad’s chore was pointless. The flames never consumed the pile— 

there was far too much that couldn’t burn—and over time it grew and 

grew. The valley was glutted with garbage, trash so damp and compacted 

that no burning short of an explosion could have altered its shape. Dad 

must have understood that. He knew the trash pile as well as anyone 

in the family, and he knew the shape of fire even better. Yet every few 

weeks he sent Jerry and me back to burn. And so my brother and I would 

stand, shoulder to shoulder, and watch flames become embers become 

smoke and ashes, and then we’d walk back up the sandy hill to the house, 

content for a moment that we’d done exactly what our father required. 

• • • 

Once, when Jerry and I were trudging back from the trash pile at dusk, 

Dad barked at us to get some two-by-fours from behind the shed because 

he had something to unload from his truck. We knew the drill. Dad 

came home with strange objects all the time, and more often than not 

we had to help him transfer whatever it was—nearly always something 

mechanical and too heavy for one man and two boys to move safely— 

from the truck to the yard. We had no idea what this particular item 

was, but we could tell Dad was excited about it. 

“This baby was on a destroyer in dubya-dubya-two, boys,” he said. 

“Got ’er off a guy near Detroit for a song, and I’m about to get ’er working.” 

“But . . . what is it?” I asked. 

“A searchlight, Mark,” he answered, motioning us to come closer. 

He unbolted something on the back of the thing and pulled off a hatch, 

pointing to a deeply concave mirror. 

“This reflects the light and concentrates it.” He stopped to look at


us, savoring the moment before adding, “Concentrates it enough to see 

things two miles away.” 

He nodded happily as we gaped at the mirror. “Yep, two miles. Don’t 

look into it or it’ll blind you. It gives out as much light as one hundred 

twenty thousand candles.” 

Jerry and I both blurted the obvious. “When are you gonna turn it on?” 

“I’ll hook it up and we can try it out,” he answered. I’d never heard 

him happier. As he began to fiddle with the searchlight, Sheri wandered 

out to watch. 

“What is that?” 

“It’s a searchlight from a destroyer!” I bragged. 

“What’s a destroyer?” 

“A ship,” I said impatiently. “Now let Dad work.” 

It took Dad a while to get everything ready. He never seemed in 

doubt about what to do but moved around the searchlight quickly and 

purposefully, adjusting and tightening and lubricating, ignoring our 

questions until we stopped asking. 

Finally it was time. Dad had run a thick cable from the searchlight 

to a nearby generator. 

“This’d be useful on a ship—it’s what it was made for, after all.” 

He looked at his audience, winked at Mom, and flicked a switch on 

the back of the searchlight. 

“And . . . There. It. Goes.” 

We stared, stunned. It was brighter than the sun—the brightest thing 

I had seen in my life. The beam of light was like a solid thing, like a 

bridge of brightness you might be able to walk on wherever it pointed. 

No object was too far away for Dad to touch: the bottom of the driveway, 

the stop sign down Blakely Drive, the radio tower on the far hill. 

“Don’t get in front of it,” he warned. “You will get burned.” 

He spun a small wheel with a handle attached to it, and the eye of 

the searchlight narrowed to a small hole. Then he spun the wheel the 

other way, and the light expanded.


“Amazing,” I sighed, pulling the word out across the seconds while 

I followed the beam. 

I heard Mom snort behind me, and then I heard the door open and 

close. Dad knew he still had an audience, however, and he pointed the 

searchlight at the ground, then suddenly flicked it up toward the sky. 

The beam lanced through the night, up and up until it lit the underside 

of a cloud. 

A cloud. I could scarcely understand what I was seeing. 

That night, as I curled beneath my blanket in bed, I remembered 

what I’d seen. The searchlight seemed part of my father, as if he were 

really the one illuminating the distant trees. Tall and proud— taller than 

nearly every other man I knew—Dad could force the world to bend with 

his bare hands and wide shoulders. 

• • • 

That was how time passed. Week in, week out, month in, month out. 

We panted through the summers and shivered through the winters. 

When the weather was bad enough, we drew or played board games or 

stared at the fireplace, and we always did whatever chores Dad assigned 

us: taking out the garbage, watering whichever plants were currently 

surviving near the house, sweeping, washing and drying dishes, washing 

and folding laundry, and shoveling ruts in the driveway. He assigned jobs 

that even we, inexperienced schoolkids, could tell were baloney. More 

than once he looked at Jerry and me and growled, “Get outside, and 

whatever’s out of place, put it back!” Since almost everything outside 

was either broken, messy, or out of place, and nothing we did could 

change that, we interpreted his instructions to mean that we should look 

busy until he stopped noticing us. Dad noticing us wasn’t something we 

particularly wanted. Better for him to do his stuff and for us to do ours. 

We bused to school and bused home, too, caring very little about 

what happened between the two trips. But apart from those minor interruptions, 

we wandered wild and free—with an emphasis on free. Mom


was always working at home or trying to work in town. She talked about 

making ends meet and scraping by. Dad seemed like he was always playing 

with guns and old vehicles at home, or working in town and then 

staying in town to play by himself. Almost none of the Bouman family’s 

meager resources of time and money trickled down to us kids. 

We lived hour by hour, not thinking about what might come next, 

doing as we liked and liking a decent amount of what we did. Somehow 

whole seasons passed that way, and I had little inkling that folks lived 

other ways, or that my own way of life was soon to change.

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Chapter 1 

Techirghiol, Romania 

1961 

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every 

experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. 

You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. 

I can take the next thing that comes along.” 

—Eleanor Roosevelt 

On Good Friday, it was customary for children to ask their 

parents for forgiveness and to kiss their parents’ hands— 

a tradition that I always found awkward and strange. Then 

we would go to the Romanian Orthodox Church so the 

priest could offer us forgiveness. Sometimes I didn’t even 

know what I was asking forgiveness for. But it was the rule. 

And in Techirghiol, you followed the rules or there were 

consequences. 

That day, I walked to the church with four neighbor girls. 

As we entered the building, two tall men dressed in black 

and sporting dark glasses blocked the doorway. One of them 

opened a notebook. “Names! Ages!” he barked. 

1

SAVING MY ASSASSIN 

“Securitate,” my friend whispered. Communist government 

agents. 

My friends offered their names. 

When it was my turn, I croaked, “Virginia Basta, age six.” 

One of the men stabbed his finger toward me. “You are 

now on the government’s black list as church people.” 

My friends rushed into the sanctuary. I followed and knelt 

on a small rug on the wooden floor. I bowed my head and 

prayed that God would keep me safe from those men. When 

I opened my eyes, my friends were gone. They must have run 

out the side door. I shivered. The church was cold, quiet, and 

desolate. The walls were draped with hand-painted icons of 

Jesus and Mary, and a serious-looking statue of Jesus seemed 

to watch me. I will be brave! I won’t run away because of those 

Securitate men. I stayed on my knees for a long time, just to 

show those men I was not afraid. Mother and Father always 

said we should be free in church. 

Two days later, during the Easter service, the priest sang in 

Latin outside the church. My stomach growled. We had fasted 

for a month. No meat, only vegetables. Easter was the only 

day my family attended church together. I wondered whether 

my parents were afraid of the Securitate men. I searched the 

crowd but didn’t see their dark coats and sunglasses. Finally 

the priest snuffed out the candles, and we went home for an 

Easter feast of lamb, stuffing, and lots of cakes and cookies. 

After Easter passed, the days grew warmer, but the 

Securitate’s hate-soaked words, church people, rang in my head 

for a long time. And though my family did not attend church 

2

VIRGINIA PRODAN 

on Sundays, sometimes on weekdays I’d slip through the 

doors and say a quick prayer on my way to school. Always, 

though, this came at great personal risk. 

During the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the 

most brutal and repressive regime—even by Soviet bloc standards—Communist 

Romania was a land of lies. Religion was 

tolerated only to keep up outside appearances, and internal 

dissidence was not permitted. Ceaușescu’s goal was to 

demolish the churches to make room for his palace—his 

earthly temple. Declaring himself a god, he decreed that he 

had brought about the “golden era,” and every citizen was 

required to agree with him. If you did not, you would face 

the full wrath of Ceaușescu’s secret police, the Securitate, one 

of the most ubiquitous and brutal secret police forces in the 

world. Simply put, Ceaușescu turned my native country into 

a prison land. 

Not only were we not free to confront the lies of the 

despotic regime, but we lived in a constant state of anxiety 

and mistrust, as anyone could easily and often arbitrarily 

denounce a neighbor, classmate, or family member for making 

“antigovernment” statements. The best way to avoid 

punishment, I learned early on, was to remain silent and 

blend in. 

Unfortunately, I did not blend in. And for that, I was 

punished. 

My mother always had plenty of chores for me to do 

inside, while my older sister, Alina, my younger sister, Oana, 

and my younger brother, George, were allowed to play 

3


outside. In the beginning, I didn’t pay any attention to this 

difference, nor to the fact that in the winter I had to wear a 

veil in public, and in the summer, a hat. 

One afternoon while I was doing the dishes, I stood on 

my tiptoes to slide a plate into the cupboard, and through 

the open window, I could hear singing. “The sleeping bear 

is starving. We will feed him with milk or honey or coffee.” 

I leaned into the sink and tugged the curtain aside. Alina, 

Oana, George, and their friends were gathered in a circle playing 

Ursual Doarme (The Sleeping Bear). I loved that game. 

My mother was asleep in the next room, and I knew that 

if I woke her to ask permission to play, she’d be as angry as a 

sleeping bear. But oh, how I wanted to join the fun! 

I carefully cracked the back door open, then looked back 

toward the bedrooms. No sound. Quietly, I closed the door 

behind me and rushed to the outer edge of the circle in which 

Alina sat blindfolded. I bounced on my toes, hoping they’d 

let me play. 

“See how her hair reflects the sun?” I turned toward the 

neighbor lady and her friend standing on the other side of 

the white wooden fence between our two yards. 

“She’s the only child in Techirghiol with red hair and 

freckles.” She motioned toward me. “Come, Virginia.” 

I glanced at my sister—still blindfolded—and ran over 

to the fence. 

The neighbor ran her fingers through my hair, then 

down my cheek. “Have you ever seen a child with so many 

freckles?” The other lady pulled a camera from her purse and 

4


snapped a picture. The neighbor pointed toward the other 

kids. “That’s her sister in the center, her other sister over 

there, and her brother sitting at the edge of the circle.” 

Alina, Oana, and George all had black hair and olive skin. 

I had red hair and white skin with lots of freckles. I didn’t 

know what to say in response to the neighbor’s comment, so 

I said nothing. 

“She’s so tiny compared to them, even her younger 

brother.” 

“Virginia!” My mother stood in the doorway, arms folded. 

My mouth went dry as my mind raced to think of an excuse 

about why I’d left the house. I was in trouble. She motioned 

me inside. 

After she spanked me, she went outside and collected 

fresh nuts and leaves, boiled them in a big pot, then rubbed 

the mucky black solution in my hair. 

Later that evening, a ghostly looking girl with black hair, 

a white face, and red-rimmed eyes stared at me from the 

bathroom mirror. I picked up the cream she’d made me rub 

all over my face. Mother said it would make my freckles 

disappear. The lady on the jar didn’t have one freckle on 

her face. 

I was sorry I’d gone outside and made my mother mad. 

Now I’d have even more house chores for weeks to come. 

I looked into the mirror again at the new me. Maybe if I 

looked normal like my sisters and brother, my family would love 

me more. I twisted the cover tight on the cream, put it on the 

shelf, and ran to the kitchen for dinner. 

5


“She still looks different.” Alina scowled, crossing her arms. 

My father’s place sat empty. He worked in Constanta, 

four hours away, and was rarely at supper with the family, 

which was a shame for me. When he was home, Alina and 

my mother weren’t nearly as mean. 

My mother set a platter of fish and fries on the table. 

“Maybe we should find a family to adopt her,” she said, looking 

at Alina. 

My breath caught. I slid into the chair, blinking back 

tears. What is wrong with me? Even with my red hair gone, my 

family doesn’t want me. I bit my lip. One adopted girl I knew 

in my class always cried during school and rubbed bruises on 

her arms. She’d fallen asleep in class once, and when I tapped 

her awake, she said she had been scrubbing floors all night. 

“Please, Mother, don’t send me away,” I begged. 

She placed a bowl of watermelon on the table. “A few 

families from the city are looking for a child to adopt. What 

do you think?” She looked from Alina to Oana to George. 

“Should we give her up for adoption?” She was serious. 

“Nooooo!” I cried. Tears flooded my vision. I set my fork 

down and sobbed into the crook of my elbow. A jerk on my 

arm landed me on the floor. I stood and put my hands on 

my behind, then quickly removed them before the crack of 

the belt hit me. 

“Go to bed!” Mother ordered, shoving me toward my 

bedroom. 

As always, I did as I was told. 

I climbed into my bed, rubbing my backside. Maybe I 

6


could run away, I thought. But what if those people looking 

for a child find me and take me away? They might beat me 

too. I flipped my pillow over because it was damp with tears. 

I buried my face in the fabric to muffle my sobs. Crying 

would only bring Mother back in with her belt. 

* 

I set the black hair dye packet on the sink’s ledge. For two 

years, Mother had been purchasing the store packets. She 

still occasionally threatened to put me up for adoption, but 

it never happened. I rinsed the sink, then shut off the water. 

The house was quiet. My family had left early that morning 

for summer vacation in Bucharest, where they would stay 

with my Aunt Cassandra. I hoped to meet Aunt Cassandra 

someday, but they never let me go with them, and questions 

or complaints would only earn me a sore bottom. Yet in 

my mind it didn’t matter. Mother must have had some confidence 

in me to leave me in charge of the house. None of 

my friends, at age ten, were given that much responsibility. 

Besides, I had to work and earn money for the family. 

Our town, Techirghiol, was famous for the supposed 

thera peutic effects of its lake and mud. An Ottoman commander 

visited in the 1850s, took several mud baths, and 

noticed amazing improvement on his ailing arm. By the time 

of my childhood, the waters brought a flood of summer visitors 

to town. 

My family, like many families in Techirghiol, would make 

7


extra money by renting out rooms in our home to visitors 

who came to take treatments. Most of these visitors came 

without reservations. Instead, when they arrived, they’d 

come to Dragalina Square, near the town’s monument to war 

heroes, and seek connections with families that had rooms 

to rent. 

Families in town would hire temporary workers to recruit 

these boarders. Usually the hired workers couldn’t hold jobs 

elsewhere because of alcohol abuse, criminal records, or a history 

of violence. As temporary workers, they received cash 

after each job. My family used them too—until I turned 

seven years old. 

Once I turned seven, I became the family’s recruiter in 

the square. Over time, my work was extended to recruiting 

for other families in town too. I had to compete for business 

alongside the rough and ruthless adults. Some made 

inappropriate jokes; some smelled strongly of alcohol—even 

in the morning—or became drunk as soon as they received 

their first payment of the day; others were violent. Over the 

years, I watched many bloody fights break out on the square. 

Why my family felt the need to take in boarders at all, 

I could not say. They didn’t need the money. I can only surmise 

that they simply didn’t want me around, and I knew 

enough not to ask questions or complain. They wouldn’t have 

listened anyway, and my life would only have become harder. 

One morning when I arrived at Dragalina Square, two of 

my competitors were having a fight, so I seized the opportunity. 

As the bus full of tourists pulled up, I quickly rushed up 

8


to the door, met the eyes of the first tourist to exit, and said, 

“Welcome to Techirghiol! My name is Virginia.” And then, 

grabbing his suitcase, “If you need a room I can take you to 

my house. My parents have a lovely room that you could use. 

Would you like to follow me?” 

“Yes,” he responded, motioning to his wife behind him. 

“Thank you.” 

Just then, one of the men who had previously been fighting 

rushed over, pushed me aside, and blurted out, “Can I 

help you find a room, sir?” 

“No, thank you. Virginia has already offered us a room.” 

“Well, I guess we can’t compete with her charm,” he said 

to his opponent, now standing behind me. 

“I’ll show her charm when she returns,” the other man 

grumbled in response. Both men sneered at me angrily. 

Walking away with my new clients, I tried to block out 

their angry words. I’ll deal with that later, I thought. Right 

now, I have to make sure this couple will take the room in my 

parents’ house. 

Actually, I enjoyed getting to know these visitors and hearing 

their stories. Some of them almost became like friends. 

In fact, sometimes when they returned for future visits, they 

would stop by Dragalina Square to see me and ask how successful 

I had been that day. 

Unfortunately, there were many days when I was not successful 

at all. Some days I stayed in Dragalina Square until 

ten at night hoping to find even one client. Eventually, hungry, 

sad, and exhausted, I would walk home, working on 

9


excuses for my lack of success that day—my failure, as my 

family would call it. As soon as I arrived home, I would try 

to go straight to bed, but always I was called to report. 

“Today I started my day around five thirty in the morning 

at Dragalina Square,” I would begin. “I took ten trips home 

with visitors, but none of them took a room. I also took them 

to the Popescu’s, Amanar’s, Enescu’s, and Zaituc’s houses, 

but none of them took their rooms either. And as you know, 

Popescu, Amanar, Enescu, and Zaituc all live far away from 

each other, so that took me some time also.” 

Mother looked neither pleased nor convinced. 

“In between,” I continued, “I stopped at the library and 

asked one of the workers, Maria, if she knew of any unhappy 

visitors who might be looking to change houses, and she 

assured me that she would send them directly to me if she 

heard anything.” 

Still nothing. 

“Also, today some of the buses had mechanical problems, 

and a few of them never even arrived in town.” 

More silence. 

I tried one last time. 

“You know, I heard that many visitors prefer to stay 

in surrounding cities because of the strong, salty smell of 

Techirghiol Lake.” 

Somehow all the arguments that sounded so good on the 

way home suddenly sounded lame. I knew what was coming. 

Mother would bring out her belt, and after a severe beating 

and no dinner, I would cry myself to sleep—silently into my 

10


pillow, lest I disturb my siblings, who were exhausted from 

enjoying a day at the lake. 

The morning after a failed day, I’d rise by five o’clock, 

grab a slice of bread and a piece of salami from the kitchen 

before anybody noticed me, and walk to the square hoping 

for a better day. 

Walking down the quiet, deserted street, I would imagine 

the city belonged only to me. I would open my arms 

to greet the new day and the rising sun. The sun’s warmth 

felt like the arms of a mother—not my mother perhaps, but 

what I always imagined a mother’s warm embrace would feel 

like. My body and soul would be reenergized by mornings 

like those, and in my hardest hours, I would raise my head 

to the sky and imagine somebody was watching over me 

from above—somebody who loved me, red hair, pale skin, 

freckles, and all. 

11

Chapter 2 

Bad times have a scientific value. 

These are occasions a good learner would not miss. 

—Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I vividly rememberthe first time I was left alone and in 

charge of the house. 

I was in first grade. 

“Have a good trip,” I said as my family departed. I acted 

courageous, but inside, my heart was aching. 

Must be nice to see the world, I thought as tears ran down 

my face. 

With the family gone from my view, I closed the gate, 

walked inside, locked the door behind me, and started putting 

all the dirty dishes in the sink. The house was quiet. 

Too quiet. 

Then suddenly, someone hammered on the door. “I need 

13


a cup of sugar, Elena! Why do you keep this door closed? 

Open the door!” 

Terrified, I dropped the dish I was holding, ran to the 

opposite side of the house, jumped in my bed, and hid myself 

underneath the blanket. 

The voice on the other side of the door grew louder, as 

did the hammering. “I need some sugar. I don’t want to walk 

to the store. Elena, open the door!” 

I thought the door would come down. I didn’t move 

underneath my blanket. 

Finally the house became quiet again. I pulled the blanket 

off my face and looked out the window facing me. All 

I could see were the branches of the tree out back swaying 

gently in the breeze. I started to imagine friendly faces in the 

branches—almost as though someone were watching over 

me. Strangely, I felt protected. From that day forward, imagining 

friendly faces in the branches became a game to help 

combat my fear and loneliness. 

I also discovered another way to escape and make 

friends—through books. 

One afternoon while the family was in Bucharest visiting 

Aunt Cassandra, I grabbed a book and stepped outside. 

Setting Brontë’s Jane Eyre down on the ground, I climbed 

onto a tree swing, pushed off, pumped hard, then tucked 

my legs underneath me. I leaned back and followed the 

path of an airplane cutting a line through the sky. Someday, 

I thought, I’ll fly away from here and travel the world. I closed 

14


my eyes. As I slowed, I imagined the swing was my mother, 

rocking me, telling me everything would be okay. 

I looked out beyond my front gate and thought, I could 

run away and be miles from here before they returned. It wasn’t 

the first time I’d fantasized about leaving. Many nights lying 

in bed, I’d plan my escape, but I would usually fall asleep 

before I formed a solid plan. I stared back up into the sky. 

But then again, I mused, where would I go? 

I was trapped. 

The breeze blew a leaf across my novel, reminding me 

that I wasn’t alone. My friends were in my books, and with 

them I could travel to wonderful places on my own vacations. 

I traveled to Spain with Ernest Hemingway in the pages of 

For Whom the Bell Tolls and witnessed the tale of a young 

American who fought and died there. I was transported to 

the American Civil War with Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little 

lady who—according to President Lincoln—started that big 

war. Her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, showed me the merciless 

reality of slavery. It also showed me how love can heal. Shogun 

introduced me to the Japanese culture and educated me on 

the Japanese art of flower arranging called ikebana. 

As each fictional character became my new friend, 

I took courage. I recognized that “the future belongs to 

those who believe in the beauty of their dreams,” as Eleanor 

Roosevelt said. 

I rose from the swing and picked up Jane Eyre. I’d read 

it twice already. I understood Jane. Her adopted parents 

detested her quiet but passionate character. They also hated 

15


how she looked. Yet she was hardworking, honest, patient, 

and passionate. Just like me. 

One day my life would be wonderful, like the lives of the 

characters in my books. I needed only to be patient, like Jane. 

My musings were quickly interrupted by a voice I didn’t 

recognize. 

“I’ll tell your past and predict your future for food, 

clothes, or money.” 

I raised my head from my book. Gypsies! The ladies in 

layers of long skirts carrying babies on their hips chattered 

quickly about how they could help me. Their big gold earrings 

wagged as they nodded their heads. 

“What do you know about my past?” I asked. Gypsies 

were known to steal kids, but maybe they only meant to help 

me. I gingerly approached them. 

“Go! Leave that girl alone!” A neighbor lady, coming 

home from the market with her daughter, quickly waved 

them away. Then she shook her finger at me. “You should be 

happy in your present. Nothing good will come from looking 

at your past.” 

The Gypsies shuffled on, jewelry jingling as they left. As 

the neighbor walked into the house, I heard her daughter 

say, “She doesn’t need a Gypsy to tell her she’s not a member 

of that family.” 

I gripped the rope on the swing. Heat rushed to my head. 

My heart pounded. I shook my head and hugged the book 

under my arm. Would I be surprised to find out I wasn’t a 

member of my family? Probably not. I didn’t look like any of 

16


them, and they didn’t treat me as though I belonged. I only 

wished I knew the truth about where I did come from. 

That night, I lay in bed, thinking about what the neighbor 

and her daughter had unknowingly revealed to me. A growl 

erupted from my stomach. There were only stale crackers in 

the cupboard. A real family would not have left me for weeks 

with little food and no money. 

A thud on the side of the house made me bolt upright 

in my bed. Was someone coming to kidnap me? The Gypsies? 

Were they back? I peeked out my window. Branches swayed 

and tapped the house. Not Gypsies. Maybe a limb had fallen 

against the house. I studied the shadows of the nearby trees. 

Those trees were strong, like a fortress. I need to be strong 

too. I sighed and slunk under my covers. I needed sleep and 

strength for work tomorrow. 

* 

Even though I knew them only through the stories I read, 

I knew a lot more about my imaginary friends than I did 

about my parents, Stephen and Elena. 

I knew that Stephen was much older than Elena and that 

sometimes he acted more like a grandfather than a father. 

He loved our dog, Azorel, so much that upon coming home 

from work, he would go to see Azorel first and then come to 

see us. He exercised his parental authority only if Elena was 

upset with us—otherwise she was the strong, powerful disciplinarian, 

especially toward me. Sometimes even an innocent 

17


question could result in belt whippings, spankings, or being 

sent to bed without food. She made it clear to me that I was 

there to serve her and to keep quiet, and nothing else. 

Stephen seldom punished me; on the other hand, I seldom 

got his attention or got to spend time with him. The 

only times I felt he acted as a father to me were the few times 

he received promotions and would come home tipsy. Then 

he was funny, and he played with me, gave me gifts, and 

made me feel like I was his daughter. 

For example, one afternoon I was cleaning the kitchen 

floor when I heard the door open so wide that it slammed 

into the wall behind it. Stephen appeared outside the door, 

hardly keeping his balance. He hesitated for a few seconds, 

trying to take his next step, and his arms were full of gifts. 

“Dad is home!” Oana screamed behind me, and she and 

George came running to the door. 

Holding on to the door for balance, Stephen handed out 

his gifts. “A new baby doll for Alina. A stroller for your doll, 

Oana; a fire truck for you, George.” 

And then to me, he said, “Bring me the baby doll I gave 

you last year, Virginia!” 

So I ran and brought him the doll. 

“Here is a new dress for your doll.” Stephen knelt down 

beside me and helped me dress my doll. His breath almost 

made me dizzy. With his big fingers he managed to close 

the baby doll’s dress. He tickled me as he returned the doll 

to me. 

“Do you like it?” he asked. “Arnel, my coworker, gave 

18


it to me for you. It is a dress from East Germany, from his 

relatives.” I looked up and saw an ocean of love in his eyes. 

Then Elena came in. “Did you get drunk with your 

friends again?” she boomed. “Get up and take a shower! 

You are disgusting. Stop being silly, playing with dolls like 

a child!” 

Then she grabbed me by the back of the neck. “Put that 

doll away,” she bellowed. “Finish the floor and set the dinner 

table!” 

I never met Stephen’s parents, but I had heard that his 

mother wanted him to be a tailor, so she bought him a sewing 

machine, which stayed in our house forever. He did not 

want to be a tailor, so to escape the training and without his 

mother’s permission, he joined the army and served in World 

War II. He rarely talked about his experiences there, but one 

night the rest of the family dozed off as we were watching a 

war movie on TV, and Stephen and I were the only ones left 

awake. As the soldiers on the screen dodged an explosion, 

sending blizzards of dirt into the air, he started to sob. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “If you don’t like this movie, we 

don’t have to watch it.” 

As I gently rubbed his back, he began to speak in a hushed 

tone. 

“I was in the battlefield, hidden with my battalion in a 

trench, when suddenly the world changed into darkness. 

A bomb exploded not far from us. Death buried me. My 

nose and throat were full of mud. I panicked. I couldn’t 

move. I could see my entire life playing out in front of me.” 

19


He stifled a sob. “Then came another explosion, and I found 

myself flying in the air. I landed hard on my back. Oh! It 

hurt so badly. Nevertheless, I felt free and alive. I could see 

and feel again. I looked around, but no one else was there 

with me.” He buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders 

began to shake with the memory of watching his friends die. 

That night I saw something sensitive and special in his 

soul. He had always been the calmer of the two. Perhaps his 

time on the battlefield had taught him to cope with stress and 

disappointment better than most. 

Elena, on the other hand, was very moody and quick to 

anger, and she easily found fault with others. According to 

her, something was wrong all the time. During every New 

Year’s party, while everybody else was happily celebrating, she 

cried for the lost year. Sometimes it seemed as though she 

cried constantly. The only time I did not see her crying was 

during the birthday parties she planned for Alina, Oana, and 

George. She would cook special meals, decorate the house, 

buy gifts, and invite all the children from the neighborhood 

to celebrate—for Alina, Oana, and George. Not once in 

eighteen years did she ever have a party or bake a cake for 

my birthday. She said that by January second, everybody was 

too tired from the holidays to celebrate anything else—least 

of all me. I always felt guilty for being born on that day. Most 

days, I felt guilty for being born at all. 

One afternoon as I was washing the dishes, Elena called 

out, “Everyone come to the dining room.” Alina, Oana, and 

George all came running from their rooms. I kept working. 

20


“Virginia, do I have to come and get you?” 

What? I marveled. Typically, the word everyone did not 

apply to me. I turned to look at her, and she released an 

exasperated sigh and waved me over. 

Alina, Oana, and George all took seats at the table. 

I remained standing, still clutching a dishcloth. 

“Today I visited my friend Mahala, the Gypsy fortuneteller,” 

she began. “She told me that Virginia—yes, you—” 

she said, pointing at me, “will acquire an indescribable inheritance.” 

She stopped and looked directly at me. I could feel 

my heart beating faster. 

“Mahala said that Virginia will live a long and happy life in 

a rich city,” she said, slowly emphasizing those final two words. 

My mind raced. What is she talking about? What shall I say 

to her? How can I get out of this unpunished? The tension was 

quickly broken by Alina. 

“Why Virginia? Why her? Who is she?” she whined. 

“What about me?” Oana and George asked simultaneously. 

“Nothing.” Elena shook her head, still staring at me. 

“We need to have a serious family talk, Mom!” Alina 

announced, clearly annoyed. 

“Go back to your chores, Virginia.” Elena brushed me 

away with her hand, but her eyes never left mine. 

Confused and frightened, I retreated to the kitchen. 

Moments later, Alina appeared in the doorway. “We are 

going out to dinner and to the movies with Mom and Dad,” 

she stated, still visibly annoyed. “When we return, make sure 

everything on your chores list is done.” 

21


“Yes, of course,” I immediately responded. At least for 

now I am safe, I thought. But what did the fortune-teller 

mean? Whom would I possibly receive a great inheritance from? 

Certainly not Stephen and Elena. And while Techirghiol was 

known for many things, great wealth was not one of them. 

But where else would I go? And how would I get there? 

The questions continued to play in my mind late into 

the evening and well into the coming weeks. Yet another 

reminder that I was different—that I didn’t belong. 

22

Chapter 3 

The bravest sight in the world 

is to see a great man struggling 

against adversity. 

—Seneca 

Summer’s end wasmarked by three events that I looked 

forward to each year: the end of my work on the square, the 

start of school, and the grape harvest. 

Around the west part of our house sprawled row upon 

row of vines heavy with black and white grapes, and every 

summer, my father’s extended family—cousins, aunts, and 

uncles—made the trip from Constanta for the harvest, and 

a week of fun began. 

I loved collecting grapes from the vineyard, putting them 

into the special machine, and seeing them changed into a 

sweet liquid. From the white and black grapes, my family 

made sugary grape juice for the kids and wine for the adults. 

23


The summer that I was seven years old, my family and relatives 

retired to the front porch after dinner to enjoy their last 

evening in Techirghiol. Around midnight, startling screams 

cut the still night. 

“That’s Anna,” Mother said. “Our neighbor’s granddaughter.” 

The screams continued from next door. “Nooooo! Don’t 

kill them.” 

Kill whom? I glanced toward my parents. Often our neighbor 

girl, Anna, screamed in the night, but I didn’t know why. 

She lived with her grandparents next door, but I didn’t see 

her often, and I was warned not to talk to her. Each scream 

cinched my heart and seared all the way through to my gut. 

I wrapped my arms around myself. I looked from my parents 

to my relatives, hoping for answers. 

Mother frowned and waved her hand like she was swatting 

away a mosquito. “Let’s go inside. That home is supervised.” 

She nodded toward the house, and everyone rose. 

Seated in the family room, my relatives shook their 

heads, but no one spoke or moved to help. One of my uncles 

mumbled something. My aunt, an attorney, put her finger to 

her lips. “Don’t speak. Too dangerous.” 

So they conversed in whispers. I heard bits and pieces about 

how just a few months ago, the Securitate had taken my aunt’s 

coworker to an unknown location for a month because he was 

accused of missing participation in a Party parade. When the 

coworker returned home, his health was visibly deteriorated, 

and he was unable to work or provide for his family. 

24


My nails dug into my hands. What is everybody so afraid 

of? Why do they speak in whispers? Why doesn’t anyone help 

Anna? Everyone looked toward the relatives who were lawyers. 

Did they know something? Two lawyers nodded, passing 

knowing looks. One said a fellow attorney who had 

expressed his concern about the new price on meat disappeared 

between the courthouse and his home, never to 

be found. His children would not be allowed to apply to 

law school. Instead, the Securitate required them to take 

construction jobs. 

Many of the adults, it seemed, carried secrets. I bit my lip 

to hold in the questions that ran through my mind. Does this 

have anything to do with the men who guarded the church years 

ago and called my friends and me “church people”? Were Anna’s 

parents church people? What happened to them? Why does she 

scream so often in the night? 

“Liars!” The voice came from the back bedroom where 

Uncle Carol was resting. 

My mother rubbed her temples. Uncle Antony, Uncle 

Carol’s son, groaned. 

I hustled to the back bedroom. My job was to take care 

of Uncle Carol, bringing him food and making sure he was 

okay. Everyone treated him like a sick person, but he seemed 

normal to me. 

“Criminals!” 

“Uncle Carol, what’s wrong?” 

Before Uncle Carol could answer, Uncle Antony stepped 

into the room, his face as red as the juice from the grapes 

25


we’d pressed earlier. “Do you want the Securitate to put you 

in the hospital again?” 

“At least there I will be free to speak my mind.” 

Uncle Antony knelt at his father’s feet and grasped his 

hands. “What about me? I don’t want to be confined in the 

psychiatric hospital. You know they will take me this time if 

you don’t stop talking.” 

Uncle Carol held his son’s gaze then lowered his head. 

“I will be quiet for you, but I will not be free.” I saw many 

emotions pass between them—cooperation and resistance 

mixed with love and hate. Why? 

Uncle Antony returned to the family room. I knelt beside 

Uncle Carol. “Do you want a drink of water?” He nodded, 

then another scream from next door reached our ears. He 

pressed his hand against his chest. 

I ran to the kitchen and poured a glass of water. Passing 

the family room, I stopped in the doorway at the mention of 

Anna’s name. Today was her birthday, my mother was saying. 

“She had her own wing in the family mansion across town 

long before her birth.” I had passed that home—a massive 

white stone mansion overlooking the lake—many times in 

my travels across Techirghiol. Although it was now a kind of 

hotel, I could not bring my clients of ordinary people from 

Dragalina Square to its doors. It was reserved for Communist 

Party leaders on vacation. 

From the conversation, I heard about Anna growing up 

with nannies, servants, a personal tutor, and a driver. I heard 

about her travels with her parents all over the world, until her 

26


tenth birthday. At that point in the story, my mother glanced 

up and frowned upon seeing me. “Virginia, sleep on the sofa 

in the room with Uncle Carol. Take care of him.” 

I returned to the bedroom. Uncle Carol appeared to be 

asleep. I set the water on the table by his bed and tucked 

myself into the sofa bed on the other side of the room. 

“Virginia, do you want to know the truth about Anna?” 

“Yes!” I tossed off my covers, switched on the lamp, and 

rushed to his side. 

Uncle Carol stared at the ceiling. “I will tell you, if you 

promise never to tell anyone you heard it from me.” 

“I promise.” 

“I was there at her house for her tenth birthday. She wore 

a long pink dress with many white roses down the front. Her 

small white shoes matched the roses. She was simply radiant.” 

Uncle Carol focused on the ceiling, but his mind was 

clearly at Anna’s party. “Her parents were so proud. They’d 

just returned from her first trip to Paris. What a dinner they 

had that night.” 

I wanted to ask him so many questions but was afraid to 

interrupt. 

“Afterward, Anna opened gifts, then began her piano 

recital. The chandeliers shed a bright light over the big black 

piano. Anna arranged her music, looked to her piano teacher, 

nodded, and began to play.” 

Uncle Carol sat up. “The music stopped.” His cheerful 

voice grew sad. “The giant ballroom doors burst open. 

Violent noises and angry shouts! The Romanian Communist 

27


armed military group pointed guns around the room. Their 

leader, a tall young officer, ordered Anna’s parents, John and 

Maria, to stand and follow him.” Uncle Carol put his hands 

over his face and sobbed. 

I sat beside him and hugged him. 

“Anna was scared because she’d never heard anyone give 

orders to her parents before. Her tutor touched her shoulder 

to comfort her, but she hurried to her parents, who were on 

their knees and had been handcuffed and brutally beaten 

by the two armed officers. Her older brother, Jim, was also 

handcuffed. The armed military officers dragged them away 

with much commotion but no explanation. When Anna 

asked why, a young officer slapped and shoved her, causing 

her to fall backward. He said, ‘This is how we treat our 

enemies. If you are not with us, you are against us.’ Then he 

claimed the house belonged to the government.” 

Uncle Carol rocked back and forth on the edge of the bed. 

“I was silent when they handcuffed and struck her parents. 

Too afraid to talk or move. I can never forgive myself.” Tears 

streamed down his face. “I was among the first to run when 

Anna’s parents and brother were dragged away. I returned 

later for Anna, but it was too late. Government officials had 

taken her to one orphanage after another, changing her name 

with each move so that it was impossible to trace her. The 

young Communist officer, Boris, took control of Anna’s 

parents’ mansion and established his residence there. I grew 

more afraid, thinking I would suffer the same fate as her parents. 

I took a long business trip to London. When I returned 

28


to my work at the bank, armed guards had threatened my 

trusted partner, Martin, and ‘persuaded’ him to turn over all 

of Anna’s parents’ bank accounts, safes, and valuables.” 

Uncle Carol turned to me. “What was I supposed to do?” 

How could I answer? 

“Boris returned to check on me. He even promised that 

if I collaborated with him, he would help me find Anna and 

her relatives. I felt so guilty, and I wanted to find Anna and 

her relatives, so I accepted his proposition.” 

I glanced toward the door, worried his raised voice would 

bring in Uncle Antony again. Elena would punish me for not 

keeping my uncle calm. 

“Liars, criminals!” 

“Shh! You told Uncle Antony you wouldn’t shout.” 

He nodded and lowered his voice. I held my breath, 

wondering why he was telling me this story, yet hoping he’d 

continue. 

“One day, as I confronted Boris about his lies, he picked 

up the phone, and soon his guards arrived and put me in the 

psychiatric hospital. That was the only place where I was free 

to speak my mind—until nurses drugged me. Many were 

not afraid to speak the truth there.” He shrugged. “But too 

sad there.” 

“How did Anna come to live next door to us?” 

“At each orphanage Anna was sent to, she spent several days 

answering questions from the police and other government 

authorities regarding her parents and other relatives and the 

type of safes, jewelry, and guns her parents had. Finally they 

29


must have gotten all the information they wanted, so Anna 

was sent to her grandparents’ home, next door to your house.” 

“Why doesn’t anyone help her now?” 

“Because they know the truth.” 

“I want to know the truth.” 

He patted my hands. “Go to sleep.” 

I rose, and he tugged my hand. “You don’t think I am 

sick, do you, Virginia?” 

“No,” I responded. “I think you are very healthy.” 

He smiled. “I don’t remember the last time my son said 

that to me.” 

I hugged him good night. He brushed my hair with his 

hands, looked into my eyes, and smiled. Then he reclined 

and closed his eyes. After a few minutes, a soft snore filled 

the room. 

I tucked myself back in my bed. That night I knew in 

my heart that I wanted to become a lawyer. I wanted to 

find out the truth—what had happened to Anna’s parents 

and why everyone was still afraid to help her. I also wanted 

to find out the truth about myself and who I really was. Of 

all our relatives, only Uncle Carol treated me like family, 

and everyone considered him a sick, crazy old man. Were 

my real parents taken away like Anna’s? I wondered. At least 

that would explain why I didn’t look like anyone else in my 

family—and why I was treated so differently from everyone 

else. Maybe Stephen and Elena were forced to take me in by 

the Securitate. Or maybe I was just crazy, like they said Uncle 

Carol was. 

30


For years those familiar screams—Anna pleading for her 

parents’ lives—carried into my bedroom. Her body grew, but 

mentally she remained a ten-year-old. 

People ridiculed her, but after hearing her story, I understood 

that she had to make her own world in order to survive. 

Fear, death, and suspicion looked at me through the bars 

of the iron fence that divided our property; they taught me 

about what Communism could do to a person. Sometimes 

I’d watch Anna, or wave, or offer a friendly word, regardless 

of the warnings. Like going to church, being friends with 

Anna would have meant I was an enemy of the government. 

Uncle Carol was put into psychiatric hospitals twice more. 

After the second time, he was released to his son’s home. He 

remained inside his room, refusing to eat and dying with the 

wish upon his lips that he would have spoken up for Anna. 

Although others knew him as the “crazy relative,” I believed 

him to be brave. 

* 

By the time I started my freshman year of high school, Alina 

had graduated from the University of Bucharest Law School. 

Soon after this, she married an engineer, moved with him to 

his hometown, and started to work there as a government 

attorney. 

When my family returned from Alina’s wedding, Stephen 

and Elena decided I would remain in Techirghiol to take care 

of them once I finished high school. 

31


When I heard this pronouncement, my stomach turned 

and my brain froze. While this decision that held my future 

captive frightened me, it made me all the more determined 

to go to law school. I suppose none of us know how high we 

can jump until a skyscraper obstructs our way, how fast we 

can run until a lion chases us, the value of our freedom until 

confinement restricts our movements, or how precious hope 

is until someone shatters our dreams. 

Even though I never accepted that future as my own, 

I decided to keep my mouth shut, avoid conflict with the 

family, do all my chores, and unwaveringly pursue every 

opportunity to study for my baccalaureate and law school 

exams. 

Methodically, as soon as I finished all my chores, I locked 

myself in an unused room in the house and studied until past 

midnight. When the time came, I filed for approval of my 

political file to pave my way into law school. 

Under the Communist system, students had to pass two 

levels of admission to get into law school. In the first level, 

my political file had to pass inspection. An approved file 

verified three things: 

1. The applicant and his or her parents had never 

expressed a critical attitude toward Communism. 

2. The applicant’s parents had never been questioned 

or arrested by the Communist government. 

3. The applicant’s parents were not Christians. 

32


The Communist regime selected loyal leaders via this 

process. The graduates of law schools became the attorney 

general, minister of justice, ambassadors, judges, or attorneys 

to advance and protect the Communist agenda and fight 

against those people called “dissidents.” 

For a few months, everything worked well, but soon Elena 

considered my study time a waste of electricity. So instead 

I got up every morning by five o’clock, before anybody else 

awoke, and studied outside. Bundled up with warm clothes 

and sometimes even gloves, holding my book and outlines, 

pacing in front of my house to keep warm, I meticulously 

and desperately studied; even the semidark, cold, snowy 

months of winter and the rainy mornings of spring did not 

deter me. 

Parents of my schoolmates and friends would pass by, see 

me hard at work, and admire my study habits. Unknowingly, 

I became a symbol of a hard-working student within the 

community. Little did they know the reasons behind my 

study habits. 

My final year in high school found me working hard with 

my teachers to prepare for law school entrance exams. Since 

I was the only one in my class aiming for law school, my 

teacher, Sherban, had spent many hours with me throughout 

my high school years making sure that I would be fully 

prepared for the exam. Sometimes he would surprise me by 

asking me to do an extemporaneous oral presentation on a 

subject he chose. To my amazement and joy, I could always 

answer the questions, give thoughtful presentations, and 

33


make good grades. That boosted my confidence and energized 

me to work harder. He also encouraged me to compete 

in academic decathlons. Under his supervision, I studied 

hard and won many of the competitions. Every time I won, 

I gained self-confidence. I was seventeen and a half, and I 

believed I could conquer the world. It was a great feeling. 

I knew everything—except how to exercise freedom of choice. 

All my life, either Elena or my teachers had told me what 

to do, and I had to follow their directions to a T. I always had 

to stay within the boundaries of my chores or homework to 

avoid punishment. I couldn’t choose the time or manner in 

which to do them. I had never had any occasion to decide 

for myself. 

Once, Sherban gave an exam unlike any we had ever experienced. 

Instead of assigning us a subject to write about or 

listing questions to answer, he asked us to choose our own 

subject from the class material. I found myself staring at a 

blank notebook, unsure of what to do. I knew the class material 

better than anybody, but that did not help. I had to 

choose, and I was not used to choosing. I rocked from astonishment 

to wonder to perplexity to fear. Why can’t he just tell 

us what to write about? It seemed as though an eternity had 

passed before I finally began writing. 

I chose to write about my hero, Mircea cel Batran, later 

known as Mircea the Great. Mircea ruled Wallachia, an 

important state of Romania, from 1386 to 1418. He was 

a wise and great military leader, and he was a fair ruler to 

all. Many Romanians consider Mircea to be the bravest 

34


and ablest of the Christian princes. Not only did he bring 

great stability to both the state and the country, he was also 

a strong supporter of the Church, building many beautiful 

churches in Romania, including one of my favorites, the 

Cozia Monastery. 

I don’t know what inspired me to write about Mircea that 

day. But there was one thing I did know for certain. I would 

have given anything to live under Mircea’s reign. What would 

it feel like, I wondered, to live in a society where people told 

and valued the truth? What would it be like to experience true 

freedom? As I reviewed my essay, I marveled at how much 

Mircea had accomplished—and my heart sank at the sobering 

realization of how much the people of Romania had lost 

under Communist rule. 

I could feel my resolve strengthening. I would become 

an attorney. And when I did, I would dedicate myself to 

the constant pursuit of truth and freedom—just like Mircea 

the Great. 

35


Saving My Assassin? 






Amazon Kindle

Part 1 

The Crime 

November 5–6, 1978 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the 

shadow of death, I will fear no evil. 

Psalm 23:4 

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, 

two and two do not make six. 

Leo Tolstoy

1 

It happened on a Sunday night, even though I’d been a good girl 

and gone to church that morning. 

My older sister, Mary Lynn, had picked me up and then dropped 

me off after the service. She went home with her husband and young 

son, but I couldn’t join them. I had studying to do. I was working on 

a paper about Buddhism for my World Religions class. The problem 

was that I couldn’t grasp what I was reading. At the center of all 

things there is a great emptiness? I could hardly conceive of such a 

thought. Wasn’t God at the center of all things? I’d been taught for 

as long as I could remember that God was sovereign— that nothing 

happened outside His will. I had no pocket in my mind that could 

hold a concept like Buddhism. 

I lived in a house off campus with five friends: Marty, Teresa, 

Cheryl, Karen, and Lisa—all of us seniors at Calvin College in Grand 

Rapids, Michigan. After supper some of us housemates sprawled 

across the living room, talking. Thirty-seven years later, I can’t say 

with certainty what we talked about. We may have ranged from 

Spinoza to Descartes, because Marty and Teresa loved philosophy. 

3

RUINED 

No doubt Cheryl talked rapturously about Spain, because she was 

planning to spend her spring semester in Seville. And I’m sure I at 

least mentioned the name Jim— casually—since I was trying to figure 

out if he and I were friends or something more. Karen and Lisa had 

each spent the weekend with their parents, who lived in the area. At 

some point that Sunday Karen returned, but Lisa called to say she was 

staying with her folks one more night and would see us on Monday. 

We were a talkative, opinionated bunch. We cooked and ate 

supper together most nights and discussed every subject imaginable. 

Could radical Christian community actually work? Would the Bob 

Dylan concert be worth the ticket price? What happened with the 

recent Camp David Accords anyway? And whose turn was it to buy 

groceries? 

On that particular Sunday night, in our house on Alexander 

Street, we must have talked about groceries, because our cupboards 

were bare, and that mattered. The intruders were hungry. But I’m 

getting ahead of myself. 

It was early November. I was the youngest of the group, not quite 

twenty-one. Graduation was still safely distant, some six months in 

the future. My main goal was to leave every door open. Everything 

seemed possible. 

w 

My bedroom, which originally had been a sunporch, was just off 

the dining room. Between my bedroom and the dining room were 

double French doors with window glass—the kind of doors you 

could throw open in a dramatic way if you were in the mood for 

that sort of thing. The room was small, but that was part of its 

charm. It was big enough to hold everything I needed and nothing 

more: hooks where I hung my second pair of jeans and a few tops, 

a desk where I stacked my textbooks, and a single bed with four 

posts, covered by a flowered yellow comforter. 

Best of all were the windows on every side. During the day they 

4


bathed the room in light, and every evening I pulled the shades closed. 

I never thought to be nervous about those windows surrounding me 

as I slept. All that breakable glass. Those flimsy window clasps. 

That night when I clicked off my bedside lamp, I had no idea 

that my room would never again feel full of light—not from the 

gooseneck lamp or from sunlight streaming through the abundant 

windows or from conversation and laughter drifting through the 

double doors. 

I was sound asleep when I heard Marty screaming. My first 

thought was that she and Teresa must be clowning around. I sat up 

in the dark. 

At the same moment, I felt someone beside me on the bed— 

a body pushing against me and pressing something cold and metallic 

against my temple. He was breathing hard and hissing words in a 

high- pitched voice. He sounded young and nervous and angry and 

black. I couldn’t comprehend his words, but I could comprehend 

the danger. 

A black ski mask covered the man’s head. The whites of his eyes 

glowed. His dark lips were visible through the mouth hole. 

“Get down, b—, get down!” 

Time stopped as I tried to think. This wasn’t a dream. This was 

really happening. This man had broken into our house. This man 

who had broken into our house meant to harm us. 

“On the floor, b—!” 

What was he saying? What did he want? 

Upstairs, Marty had stopped screaming. Someone turned on the 

kitchen light, which shone through the double doors into my room. 

I could see Cheryl standing there in the kitchen, all six feet of her. 

Her hand was still in the air, grasping the pull-chain for the overhead 

light. She must have heard the screaming and come up from 

her basement bedroom. Without thinking, I pushed the intruder 

away, scrambled out of bed, and ran to Cheryl. She hugged me as I 

let out a strangled cry, my voice high and terrified. 

5

RUINED 

The intruder followed me into the kitchen, yelling. He grabbed 

me from behind and shoved the gun into my side. The pull-chain 

was swinging wildly around our heads, and he cursed until he got a 

hold of it. He gave it a firm tug, and everything went dark. 

I heard, rather than felt, a sharp crack. It occurred to me, almost 

as if I were wrapped in many layers of gauze, that the sound had 

come from his gun connecting with my skull. 

“Get down!” He was furious. 

Cheryl and I dropped to all fours. We were both whimpering. 

He kicked us. “Move!” 

We crawled forward, shoulder to shoulder, like animals. My long 

flannel nightgown kept tripping me, and I had to pull the fabric 

away from my knees so I could keep crawling. At the doorway we 

jammed up, so Cheryl went first and I followed. We passed from 

the worn linoleum of the kitchen onto the rough carpet of the dining 

room. 

“Get down!” This command came from a different voice, one 

strangely low and rough. 

I looked up to see our other housemates—Marty, Teresa, and 

Karen—enter the dining room, followed by another masked man 

with another gun. The women looked ghostly in their nighties, 

barely visible in the faint streetlight that filtered through the curtained 

windows. The man was as dark as a shadow, dressed all in 

black, with a ski mask over his head. 

“On the floor! Face down!” 

My friends dropped to their knees. The two intruders moved 

around us, kicking our feet and bodies. They would yell “Move!” 

or “Stop!” at the same time—directions that were impossible to 

hear and comprehend and follow, so we crawled blindly around, as 

terrified as insects running from a boot. 

“Shut up!” they yelled over and over, even though no one was 

talking. 

When one of them pushed me down with his heel in the middle 

6


of my back, I crumpled where I was. I could hear my own blood 

pounding in my ears. I buried my face in the carpet, which smelled 

faintly like soap. We had shampooed the carpets with a rented 

machine just a month before, for our first party of the semester. 

I could hear ragged breathing beside me. We seemed to be lying 

in a row like sardines, alternating heads and feet. I thought Marty was 

on one side of me and Cheryl on the other, but I couldn’t be sure. 

The intruder with the rough, low voice said slowly, as if he were 

making an important announcement: “This is a robbery. We ain’t 

gonna hurt you.” 

When I heard those words, with my face pressed into the carpet’s 

worn nap, I was flooded with relief. They would take our money 

and leave. Before we knew it, we’d all be in the campus coffee shop 

telling the story. Everyone would say how lucky we were. 

Or maybe we’d never tell anybody. Not even the police. Why 

should we? So what if they took our money? We had so little—what 

would it matter? If they would just leave quickly, we could go back 

to sleep. We could pretend this never happened. Maybe this wasn’t 

happening. Maybe this was only a dream. 

w 

I’ve always been a dreamer—both daydreams and night dreams. 

I construct whole worlds in my head and live there. When I was 

seven years old, I had a dream that was so thrilling, and at the same 

time so comforting, that I cultivated it night after night. I assumed 

everyone did this— that this was why sleep was so wonderful. Each 

night I would breathe deeply and slowly until my sleeping body 

would rise and pass painlessly through the knotty pine ceiling of 

my bedroom. I would float above the housetops, gazing down at the 

lit-up boxes where people went about their mysterious lives. 

I would rise farther into the night sky until a genial older man 

appeared at the end of a long table, its gleaming surface stretching 

between us. The man was dressed like an old- fashioned theater 

7

RUINED 

usher or perhaps Captain Kangaroo, wearing a dapper suit with 

piping along the edges of the lapel. He had a quill pen, and in each 

dream, he wrote something in a ledger. 

Then I would rise still higher, to the rear of a great cathedral, 

where the dream deposited me onto plush carpet. I would lay there 

listening to magnificent organ music and feeling a sense of great 

peace until a kindly man in a black robe approached me and said, 

“My child.” When I rose to follow him to the front of the cathedral, 

I would invariably wake up. 

w 

As I lay sardine-style on the floor that night, I wanted nothing more 

than to rise out of my body and escape through the roof. But what 

about Marty and Cheryl and Teresa and Karen? Even if I could 

levitate, would I escape and leave them in jeopardy? 

The rough, low voice that had announced the robbery spoke 

again. “In case you’re wondering, it’s for real.” 

I heard shuffling movements, punctuated by thumping sounds. 

When it was my turn to have my head cracked with the gun, I was 

surprised how much it hurt. Maybe the shock was wearing off. 

Then the rough voice said, “You.” There was a stir as someone 

got up farther down the line— probably Teresa or Karen. 

“Don’t move, or she’s dead,” the low voice said. I scrunched my 

face into the carpet. 

Oh God! 

But I needed to do better than that. I needed to actually pray. 

I tried to construct a prayer, but the same words spiraled through 

my mind, down and down and down—a descent with no bottom. 

Oh God, oh God, oh God! 

It was a cry of terror and a plea for mercy. It was also wordless 

repentance for whatever I had done to bring this on. Oh God! As 

the minutes dragged on, I tried to think of other words and to force 

those words into order, into sentences. 

8


Oh God, no shots . . . God, please . . . Yea, though I walk . . . Oh God, 

please! . . . Yea, though I walk through the valley . . . God, where are You? 

I tried to focus on Psalm 23 and recite it all the way through, as 

if it were a key, a magic phrase, a talisman that would protect us. 

With an effort, I began at the beginning. The Lord is my shepherd, 

I shall not want . . . 

What came next? It was an act of the will to begin again, to keep 

trying to get through the whole psalm. I couldn’t do it properly. 

The words and phrases twisted out of order, and I felt no solace 

from them. He makes me to lie down. . . . Yea, though I walk through 

death . . . through the shadow . . . through death. 

The intruder still hadn’t come back with Karen or Teresa— 

whoever he had—so I tried again. If I could keep it up, surely all 

would be well. He would bring her back. Take our stuff. Leave. Any 

minute now. 

The Lord is my shepherd. The Lord. 

“You.” The voice was unexpected, loud. He kicked my shoulder. 

“In here!” 

I raised my head. It was the first intruder, the one who had 

accosted me in bed. I couldn’t see well in the dim light, but I could 

tell he was gesturing toward the open French doors, his gun glinting. 

Oh God. He knows this is my room. 

“Get up!” 

I got to my feet. He pressed the gun into my ribs and pushed. I 

walked backward through the dining room and into my bedroom 

until I was perched on the edge of the bed. He sat beside me and 

clamped his arm around my shoulders. The polyester fabric of his 

jacket was dark and slippery. There was a vaguely chemical odor 

about him that I didn’t recognize. When I shrank away, he tightened 

his grip. With his other arm, he pointed the gun at my friends on 

the floor in the other room. 

What does he want? 

9

2 

Growing up, I had very little contact with black people. My world 

was almost entirely populated by pale-skinned people of Dutch 

descent. Such isolation is astounding in any time and place, but 

especially so when you consider that I grew up in urban areas in the 

sixties and early seventies. 

My family lived in the Chicago area when I was born, and we 

moved to northern New Jersey just before I began fifth grade. 

In both places, we were part of a religious and ethnic subculture 

that revolved around the Christian Reformed Church. This small 

denomination is a Dutch version of Presbyterianism, with the same 

Reformed roots and Calvinist doctrine. Its forebears came to the 

United States from Holland beginning in the mid-1800s. They 

were staunch farmers who knew how to persist through difficulty. 

Running through their stoicism was a deep intellectual vein and 

the belief that faith touches every aspect of life. Accordingly, the 

denomination ran its own school system. These two institutions, 

church and school, were the pivot points of our family’s life. My 

parents both worked in the Christian school system— my father as 

11

RUINED 

a principal and my mother as a teacher— and my four siblings and I 

attended Christian schools from kindergarten through high school. 

In my graduating class of 120, there were only 2 black students. 

One was a girl who’d been adopted by well- meaning parents 

who spoke with a Dutch accent; the other was a boy with a single 

mother, another fact that highlighted how atypical he was. Most of 

my classmates had last names that showed Dutch roots, beginning 

with Van or De or ending with a (-sma, -stra, or -ga), as mine did. 

In my world, no one had trouble pronouncing Huizenga. 

The nearby city of Paterson was crime ridden, and on the local 

evening news I frequently saw mug shots of men who had been 

apprehended. Their faces were dark skinned and sullen. I was fascinated 

by the height markers behind them, which seemed to be 

forever taking their measure, and by their names, which sounded to 

me like strung- together syllables rather than proper names. 

The talk at our family dinner table often touched on various 

“home mission” efforts organized by our denomination. One church 

worked with ex-offenders, another with drug addicts. My father’s 

school, Eastern Christian Junior High, was located in Prospect Park, 

a community adjoining Paterson. He faced severe criticism for leaving 

the gates to the school’s parking lot unlocked after hours so local 

youth could play basketball there in the evenings. 

Dad told us, “People say they’re worried about security. But they 

wouldn’t complain if those boys were white. The fact is, they’re 

Negro.” 

“Don’t say Negro,” my older brother, Tim, said. “Say black.” 

“On the farm my uncles said much worse! They called them 

darkies, ’ coons—” 

“That’s enough, Nick!” my mother warned. “Don’t repeat the 

rest of that poison. There are big ears in the cornfield.” 

I remember watching these exchanges and taking in the power 

of language. But to me all the words—Negro, black— really meant 

the same thing: other. 

12


w 

The intruder and I were perched on the bed, one of his arms squeezing 

around me like a vise, the other training a gun on my friends. 

“Get your money,” he told me. “But no funny business, or one 

of them gets it.” 

My whole body was trembling. I pulled away from him and 

went to get my purse from the spot where I always kept it: hanging 

by its strap from the back of my desk chair. But it wasn’t there. 

Then it hit me: I must have left it in my sister’s car after church. 

My heart skipped a beat. 

“I don’t have my purse,” I told him. “I misplaced it.” 

“ F— what!” 

“I always hang it right here, on this chair. But it’s not here.” 

Through the eyeholes of the ski mask, the whites of his eyes followed 

me. “There wasn’t much money in it anyway,” I said. “A couple of 

dollars. I think three dollars.” 

He swore again, which frightened me. I wished I had a lot of 

money just lying there so he would take it and leave. 

His voice rose into a command. “Get your jewelry. And get the 

f— back here.” 

The miniature cedar chest where I kept my jewelry was on my 

desk. I grabbed it and brought it to him. With his free hand, he 

dumped the contents onto the floor, in a patch of street light. He 

kept the gun trained on the huddled figures in the dining room as 

he pawed through the little pile of necklaces and earrings. None of 

it had any value. 

I realized that he was distracted. Maybe I could get past him. 

How many steps is it to the back door? Does the dead bolt turn left 

or right? 

He finished rifling and said, “Get your pot.” 

“What?” 

“Get your pot!” This was clearly a command. 

13

RUINED 

“I don’t have any pot.” As soon as I said the prim words, I regretted 

them. 

His tone was suspicious. “You sayin’ you never smoked pot in 

your life?” 

“That’s not what I said.” 

He wasn’t listening. “I go out there and axe your friends, do she 

smoke pot? What they gonna say?” 

“I said I don’t have any pot.” 

“Booze then. Liquor.” 

“There might be a beer in the fridge,” I said, knowing there 

wasn’t. 

From upstairs I heard a thumping noise. The other one is up there. 

With the other gun. Suddenly the utter futility of the situation hit 

me. There was no way we could escape alive—not all of us, not alive. 

He jerked me to my feet and shoved me back into the dining 

room. The other intruder was returning, and I could see that he had 

Karen. He was pushing her from behind with his gun. 

In his rough voice, he yelled, “Why you got her up?” 

He’s the one in charge. The leader. 

“She ain’t got nothin’.” The one who was holding me spit out 

the words in disgust. “No money. No pot.” 

The leader shoved Karen onto the floor at the other end of the 

room. The other one pushed me down with a similar show of force. 

Then he kicked me, for good measure. My skin goose-fleshed. I 

wondered what else he might do to please the one in charge. I buried 

my face in the comfort of the clean carpet. 

“Get up.” It was that rough, low voice again. This time I thought 

it was Marty who moved. 

Oh God, not Marty. 

w 

Marty and I had a complicated relationship. We met in fifth grade 

when my family moved from Illinois to New Jersey for my father’s 

14


new job as a principal. Things didn’t go well for me in elementary 

school, with my Midwestern accent and outdated clothes. In contrast, 

Marty was one of the cool kids. She and her best friend had 

blonde hair that hung so straight it might as well have been ironed. 

They spent their summers in vacation cottages, waterskiing. After 

Christmas break they laughingly pushed aside those blonde curtains 

to display midwinter sunburns in the shape of ski goggles. I tried 

hard to be invisible— to them and to everyone else. 

In seventh grade my class entered Eastern Christian Junior High, 

where my father was the principal. I suppose I could have made this 

work to my advantage, except that I was hopelessly unsophisticated. 

During our eighth-grade year, my father disciplined Marty’s best 

friend for a minor infraction. Furious, the girl’s parents pulled her 

from the school. The loss made Marty hate my father and, by proxy, 

me. I might have sympathized with her if I’d known what was going 

on, but my father never said a word about such things at home. 

All I knew was that Marty bellowed “Ruuuth Mooose” at me during 

recess, the taunt blowing across the school yard as the winter 

wind wrapped my skirt around my legs. The nickname stuck. I was 

already the new kid, the principal’s daughter, a goody-goody. Now 

I became a pariah. 

In high school, Marty and I were both tracked as college bound 

and placed in all the same classes. We spent hour after hour together: 

algebra, history, English, Bible. But it was the easy class, typing, that 

brought us to a truce. We were assigned to the same double desk, 

each with our own manual typewriter. 

The typewriters had silver handles that we struck at the end of 

each line to return the carriage and begin a new line. The carriage 

made a thwack as it slammed across the page, and a bell dinged. It 

was obvious who was typing faster by the frequency of those dings, 

so the two of us had breathless races. But if we typed in a spurt, out 

of rhythm, the levers would sometimes cross paths and get hung up 

on each other. Then we’d have to pry the little hammers apart with 

15

RUINED 

our fingers in order to keep going. Sometimes we had to do goofy 

things like balance a sheet of paper on our knuckles to keep us from 

peeking at the keys we were pressing. Marty sputtered and steamed 

and cursed. I delighted in her invectives, since they were no longer 

aimed at me. My dings outpaced hers. 

The reason I was in the class was because my mother believed a 

girl should be able to earn her own living. “The world always needs 

a good secretary,” she’d say. “What’s good for the gander is good for 

the goose.” I repeated my mother’s words to Marty. We laughed at 

the funny phrase but analyzed it as our fingers raced beneath the 

fluttering edges of notebook paper. We agreed that we should be 

able to support ourselves. But should women be content to simply 

type words that were written by men? We both wanted more. 

w 

While Marty was gone, I gave up on Psalm 23 and switched to the 

Lord’s Prayer, which was easier to keep straight. Our Father which 

art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. 

I was always dutiful. Diligent. I did what was expected of me. 

In this situation, facedown on the floor, I knew praying was the 

expected thing, so I kept it up. I could do that for Marty. I could 

do that for all of us. 

Before long the leader brought Marty back, then took Teresa. 

The prayer is working. Just Cheryl now, right? Then they’ll have 

everyone’s stuff. They’ll leave. 

But Teresa didn’t come back as quickly. My prayer loop began to 

fray. Still, I kept going. I began to count the repetitions on my fingers. 

When I got to ten, I began tracking by tens. I was counting to 

stay focused. At least that’s what I thought I was doing. I realize now 

that I was doing something more complicated on that dining room 

floor. I was acting out a certain theology: God loves good girls, so be 

good. Even now. Especially now. Be good, and you will be rewarded. 

Eventually the other intruder—the one who had asked me for 

16


my pot—got tired of waiting. He asked Cheryl where her room was, 

and she told him it was in the basement. He yelled at us to get up 

and then marched us down the wooden steps, single file. 

The basement was unfinished except for Cheryl’s room. He 

made us lie down on the bare concrete floor, and then he went into 

the bedroom with Cheryl. The cold seeped into me through my 

flannel nightgown. I wished for the worn carpet from the dining 

room. 

It’s almost over. Cheryl is the last one. They’re almost done, and then 

they’ll leave. 

But they weren’t, and they didn’t. 

The intruder finished ransacking Cheryl’s belongings, but 

instead of marching us back upstairs, he had Cheryl lie down on 

the concrete floor beside me and Marty and Karen. Then he kicked 

my feet and told me to get up. He took me just inside the doorway 

of Cheryl’s room and had me stand next to him. He pointed the 

gun toward my friends on the floor. He slid his other hand up under 

my nightgown. His hand was hot and slick on my skin. My heart 

raced, and I felt bile rising in my throat. 

They said this was a robbery! 

He felt me all over, especially my breasts. He kissed the side of 

my neck and my cheek. The pillowy feel of his lips was foreign to 

me. I felt repulsed. I turned my body away even though I was afraid 

of making him angry. He hit the gun against my temple, a reminder 

of his power. 

I heard footsteps thumping down the wooden stairs—a hollow 

sound that made me both relieved and terrified. Relieved because 

the intruder pulled his hands from beneath my nightgown. Terrified 

because the leader was shoving Teresa in front of him. Teresa’s face 

was unreadable in the darkness. 

“What you doin’ down here?” the leader barked. I noticed that the 

rough tone of his voice sounded almost put on, like a kid in a play 

who was instructed to sound sinister. But none of this was pretend. 

17

RUINED 

The leader shoved Teresa onto the concrete floor. The one who 

was holding me followed suit, pushing me down as if I were a dog. 

The intruders exchanged words, but I couldn’t hear them. 

Maybe I’d ceased trying. What did it matter? I couldn’t do anything. 

None of us could. All five of us were prostrate on the dirty basement 

floor, cold, exhausted, and terrified. We were unable even to offer 

consolation to each other. 

Then they made us stand up again. They tied our hands behind 

our backs with some kind of cord—maybe a phone cord. As the 

criminals went down the line, I snuck a glance at my friends. Marty 

was visibly shivering. She didn’t have a flannel nightgown like I did. 

When we were bound, the leader pulled Karen out of the line and 

pushed her up the stairs. 

Karen again? What more do they want? Oh God! 

18

3 

When I was growing up, my father liked to teach us things. One 

time he took my younger sisters, Beth and Susan, and me with 

him when he was delivering something to a home-mission church 

in Paterson. It wasn’t far—less than four miles—but a world away. 

After completing the errand, he drove us to the Great Falls on the 

Passaic River. We got out of the car to peer over a rusted, wobbly 

railing. The churning water of the falls was so full of garbage and 

brown foam that it looked like sewage. I had never seen a natural 

site so defaced. The riverbank was lined with crumbling, graffiti- 

covered buildings, their broken windows like blank, blind eyes. 

“Girls, those are abandoned silk mills,” my father said. He went 

on to tell us about the silk industry and how it had once been 

Paterson’s economic engine. He described how “the Negro people” 

came up from the South to get the mill jobs, but the working conditions 

were terrible. There were strikes and picket lines and riots, 

but the city always sided with the mill owners. 

“What shut down Paterson’s silk mills wasn’t justice,” my father 

said. “It was polyester.” 

19

RUINED 

Then he drove into the inner city, detouring down side street 

after side street until I was nervous that we’d never find our way 

home. Did my father really know his way around these neighborhoods? 

Children playing ball in the streets had to stop so our car 

could pass. They watched us watch them, our faces separated by 

the car windows. 

“These children have nowhere to play,” my father said, his voice 

filled with emotion. “Look at all the broken glass in the streets.” 

During high school I learned more about the history of 

Paterson: that the people who worked in the silk mills represented 

many nationalities, including some Dutch people, and that it was 

rayon that replaced silk decades before polyester did. But even as 

a child, I knew that my father was trying to teach us something 

more than facts. Awareness. Compassion. Gratitude. I understood 

all that, but I also felt a vague sense of guilt. I wished the poor 

people would all just move away from that awful place. What was 

I supposed to do about it? 

As I got older, I began to understand that faith demands a 

response to human misery. To be a Christian, a citizen of the 

Kingdom of God, I must do my part to clothe people and feed 

people and help people. At the very least, I must love them— 

must keep my mind and heart open to them. The song we learned 

in Sunday school meant something: “Red and yellow, black and 

white, all are precious in God’s sight. Jesus loves the little children 

of the world.” 

All of this—as inarticulate and naive as it sounds—was part of 

the reason my friends and I had moved into one of the downtrodden 

neighborhoods in Grand Rapids. Not only was the rent cheap, 

but we had the hazy idea that our presence was somehow beneficial. 

We weren’t exactly the shining light on the hill that John Winthrop, 

our Calvinist forebear, extolled, but maybe we would be, someday. 

Meanwhile, our presence showed that we, white Christian college 

students, didn’t think we were better than our black neighbors. 

20


w 

The leader had taken Karen. The rest of us were tied together like 

prisoners, in one long chain. The other intruder marched us up 

the stairs. 

Our feet were bare, and the shuffling noises they made sounded 

piteous. I was almost glad to take my place in the dining room 

again, in sardine formation, on a carpet. This time I noticed how 

much floor space we took up. How could we be so many and yet so 

helpless? I also saw that the phone had been disconnected. I hadn’t 

even thought about the phone as an escape route, only the door. 

My foolishness pierced me. They had caught us unaware and unprepared. 

No wonder they could prey upon us as they liked. 

Events began to blur together. Over and over, one of the intruders 

would return to the dining room with the latest victim and 

choose the next. I could no longer catalog it all, like a dream that 

drags on. Each moment is so unreal, so intensely colored that you 

think you’ll never forget it. But that very intensity pushes the previous 

moment out of mind. 

My prayers lessened to a trickle. I could no longer hold everything 

in my mind at once. And what was the point? So I was a good 

girl. So what? 

At one point I smelled cigarette smoke and turned my head to 

watch a red circle of ash travel through the darkness. 

At another point an intruder brought Cheryl into the kitchen, 

saying he wanted a sandwich. I heard the refrigerator door open. 

Then came the angry shout: “You ain’t got nothin’!” 

“There’s peanut butter,” Cheryl said diplomatically. 

“I don’t want no peanut butter! Ain’t you got baloney?” 

“There’s no baloney in this house,” Cheryl said. “We don’t eat 

processed meat.” 

Decades later, I remember that line exactly, along with her prim 

tone of voice, because wouldn’t you? 

21

RUINED 

At some point the leader kicked my feet and said “You” in that 

creepy, rough voice. I was instantly alert. I got to my feet and followed 

the prodding of the gun—up the stairs and into the large 

front bedroom that Karen and Lisa shared. He asked me which bed 

was mine. When he finally understood that my room was downstairs, 

he sprawled out on one of the beds as if he were going to 

take a break. 

“What’s your horoscope sign?” he asked. 

“What?” I’d understood him, but I couldn’t believe what he was 

asking. 

He asked again, more forcefully this time. 

I told him: Sagittarius. 

His mask was still on, but I could see his lips protruding through 

the mouth hole. Then he pointed his gun at me and spit out one 

word: “Strip.” 

I pulled my flannel nightgown over my head and shivered. 

“The rest,” he said. 

I peeled off my underpants. 

He made me turn around. Then he told me to put my clothes 

back on and marched me back downstairs. 

w 

This is hard to admit. When he made me pirouette for him naked, 

I was overwhelmed with shame at the immodesty and utter violation 

of the situation. Still, I sucked in my stomach. That’s right. I 

held in my stomach so I could look more attractive to the man who 

might rape me. That’s how thoroughly I had internalized the fact 

that a woman should make herself attractive to the eyes of a man. 

This single fact haunted me for years, which is why I tell it. It’s 

a snapshot of the forces of submissiveness and shame and never- 

being-good-enough that shaped me, as they do so many women. 

It seems especially ironic that the pressure to look pleasing to 

a man was so deeply instilled in us, given that we girls were also 

22


taught not to be vain. Our church’s girls’ club had a motto that we 

chanted at each meeting: “Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain; but 

a woman that feareth Jehovah, she shall be praised. Proverbs thirty- 

one verse thirty.” 

No one explained what the Bible verse meant. “Beauty is vain.” 

I thought the word vain meant beauty pageants. Makeup. Gold 

jewelry. Fine clothes. Worldly things. 

But that isn’t the only definition for the word. Vain also means 

vanishing. Disappearing. Transitory. Fleeting. That night I learned 

about many things that are vain—things that vanish. Not just 

beauty, but also certainty. Hope. Faith. Even the future itself. 

w 

When I got back to the dining room with the leader, the intruders 

conferred. Then the other intruder marched me upstairs again with 

his gun in my back, this time to Marty’s bedroom, at the back of 

the house. He sat on the bed and pointed his gun at me. He said 

the same thing the other one had said: “Strip.” 

Somehow this time felt different. 

I took off my nightgown and underwear and waited, shaking. The 

shaking angered him. “Quit shaking, or I’ll blow your brains out!” 

“I can’t help it.” I couldn’t stop crying either. 

“Lay down on the bed,” he said. 

I crawled onto the bed, trembling. I couldn’t see him clearly in 

the dark, and I didn’t want to see him. I only wanted it to be over 

with. 

Was that the faint scent of blood? I remembered the two tampons 

I had inserted before bedtime. Hours ago. A lifetime ago. I had 

my period, heavy flow. Now I wondered where the tampons would 

go and if they could pierce anything, and whether that would hurt. 

He climbed on top of me. He had taken off his pants and jacket, 

but he was still wearing a pullover shirt and the ski mask. He moved 

awkwardly. I noticed the strange chemical smell again—a scent I 

23

RUINED 

couldn’t place. His skin was hot and smelled like sweat. It occurred 

to me that the intruders were wearing much warmer clothes than 

we women were. 

He kissed my breasts. “Do you like it when I do that?” 

I didn’t respond, so he repeated himself, more angrily. 

I shrugged, but knowing he couldn’t see me, I made some disgruntled 

noises. 

“I got the gun right here,” he threatened. “And I can let the other 

guy at you. I ast’ for you special.” 

Finally I forced myself to speak. “I don’t like it,” I said. 

“Why not? Don’t you like it when your boyfriend do this?” 

“I don’t have a boyfriend.” 

“How come a pretty girl like you ain’t got no boyfriend?” 

w 

Maybe I had a boyfriend. At least, I had a male friend who might be 

something more. His name was Jim. He was a funny guy, a drama 

geek. For the past year, he had spent huge amounts of time hanging 

around with me and my housemates. One evening six months earlier, 

right before our house disbanded for the summer, Jim and I had 

spent time together, just the two of us—an evening that included 

some sweet kisses. 

Then I went to Wyoming for the summer, to take a seasonal job 

at Yellowstone. I worked in a kitchen and was part of a volunteer 

team that conducted Sunday worship services at the Old Faithful 

Inn. While I was gone that summer, Jim and I wrote to each other. 

His letters confirmed that he was everything I hoped for in a husband: 

kind, funny, adaptable. And he was a Christian, but not a 

nut job about it. So if he wanted to take things between us slow, 

I wouldn’t push. Mostly because I didn’t want to jeopardize the 

relationship, but also because of my housemates. Everybody loved 

Jim. Our group had wonderful camaraderie. If a dating relationship 

went bad, that would botch things up for everyone. 

24


w 

My rapist was obviously enjoying himself, grunting repeatedly. 

“That’s good, that’s good.” 

I spent most of my energy trying not to think, but the slightly 

metallic scent of blood invaded my mind. Everything felt slick. I 

willed myself to float up, to hover in the air over the bed instead of 

having to lie in it. 

The rapist paused in the act, as if to prolong it, to savor it. The 

pause seemed particularly inhuman. I wanted it to be done so I 

could let out my breath and resume living. But I could only wait. 

I continued to hold my breath, but it didn’t stop me from crying. 

“Why you cryin’?” 

I ignored him. 

He stopped altogether and awkwardly wiped the tears from my 

cheeks. I couldn’t help but notice the pinkish underside of his hand. 

His strangely tender gesture intensified my tears, adding confusion to 

my anger and pain. Why was he doing this? Was I a person to him or 

not? I hated him. I wanted to feel nothing but hatred. I didn’t want to 

smell his sweat mingled with my blood. I couldn’t bear the vulnerable 

pink of his palm. I didn’t want him to be a person. To have a soul. 

I concentrated on the gun beside my head, lying on the pillow. 

Could I feel it, cold and metallic beside my temple? Yes, I could. I 

focused on that bit of steel, that immediate bit of metal just outside 

my body, and stopped crying. Everything slowly stopped spinning. 

It turned out that the fear of dying, not just in the abstract, but in 

an immediate, proximate way, focused my mind. 

I might die. I might cease to exist. 

These weren’t logical thoughts that my mind laid end to end. 

They were heartbeats, and each one held in itself the possibility of 

cessation. This one, right now, might be my final heartbeat. 

I breathed in and out so I wouldn’t float completely away from 

my heart. 

25

RUINED 

When he was finally done, he climbed off me. He sat on the 

edge of the bed and got dressed, the gun between us. Then he 

looked through Marty’s jewelry box in a desultory way and found 

some hard candy. He held a piece out to me, the plastic-wrapped 

globe in the center of his pink palm. 

For a moment I considered taking it. What would it matter? 

Sugar to salve the pain. It was Marty’s candy after all, not his. And 

then it hit me that everything in this room was Marty’s. I had been 

raped on her bed. It was a fact. Unchangeable. It had happened and 

could never be undone. None of this night could be undone. 

This was not how I wanted to be connected to Marty. This was 

not the bond we had cultivated. We were friends, a hard- fought 

friendship, already multilayered. What would our bond be now? 

Fellow victims? Perhaps I sensed, already, that this bond was too 

charged, that it would generate a rupture between us. 

The rapist unwrapped Marty’s candy and sucked on it. He told 

me to get dressed, watching my every move. I thought about the 

candy. I was thirsty. My mouth tasted bitter. 

26


Ruined? 






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1 

TOO NIMBLE TO DIE 

I lay stretched out on the limbs of a beech tree so solid 

I believed that even a tornado couldn’t shake it. Unlike the 

tree, though, I was small and light. Years later I would be 

glad that my thin frame and light bones made me quick on 

my feet, able to scramble out of harm’s way. But back then, 

all I knew was that while most of my friends would have 

thought twice about climbing quite so high, I had no fear 

of going as far and as fast as possible. 

My parents’ home was four houses away, but this tree— 

standing in the middle of a small strip of land between the 

end of the street and the railway line beyond— was mine. 

At least that’s what I said to the bare branches that filtered 

1

’TIL WE MEET AGAIN 

out the sunlight. The tree and I were made for each other, 

and nobody knew the routes up or down the way I did. 

It was a sunny winter afternoon in the final days of 1929, 

and even though the tree was bare, I knew I was almost 

invisible. Below me, the afternoon carried on as usual. In 

the distance, streetcars unloaded and restocked their human 

cargo, ferrying them in and out of downtown Columbus, a 

five- cent ride away. Every once in a while, trains passed on 

one of the two parallel lines that ran through town. 

Though it had been a month since the start of the Great 

Depression, I was almost totally unaware of what was going 

on in the world. For the eight-year- old me, perched above 

the street, everything was just as it was supposed to be. I lay 

back and stared at the sky beyond the branches. 

There was a breeze, but nothing like the kind of wind 

that sometimes blew through my Ohio hometown. On 

those gusty days, my friends and I would fashion paper and 

sticks into kites and then attach secret messages to the tails 

before releasing them to the skies. We’d let the winds take 

them higher and higher, eating up the string that unleashed 

from our hands until the kites were barely visible. When 

we’d had enough of watching the bird- sized dots wrestle 

in the wind, we’d begin the long task of reeling them back 

in. Finally, with arms and hands aching, we’d examine our 

downed kites, eager to see which messages had been taken 

by the clouds. 

Lying on the thick boughs of the beech, I thought about 

the skies. But that day I wasn’t thinking about kites; I was 

2

RAY AND BETTY WHIPPS 

contemplating a different sort of flying. What would it be 

like to be a fighter pilot? I wondered. How would it feel to 

sit above the battle, waiting and watching? I pictured myself 

swooping down from above, picking off the enemy planes 

one by one. Then I imagined the thrill of landing, knowing 

I’d done my duty, that I’d played my part. 

“Hey there, le Raymond!” The shout pulled me out of 

my daydream. It was my oldest brother, Bud, back from his 

Saturday job in the city. “And at which fine establishment 

will you be dining tonight, young sir?” he yelled. 

Bud was always talking like that, adopting a bank 

manager’s voice when he called me “young sir” and a 

French waiter’s accent when he said le Raymond. 

“Will you be joining us at home?” 

“Maybe,” I called as I slid from the thick branch. “But 

Goffie’s cooking roast beef, so I don’t know.” 

I edged along the limb as far as it would allow, just as I’d 

done a hundred times before, until the branches of one of 

the smaller trees were almost close enough to reach out and 

grab. Leaning forward, I let myself fall, pushing off from 

the beech with one hand while reaching out and grabbing 

onto the smaller tree with the other. It bent over gracefully, 

delivering me to the sidewalk in front of my sixteen-year- 

old brother. 

To my satisfaction, Bud gave a little whistle of appreciation 

when I landed. “Not bad for an eight- year- old.” 

“Thanks,” I replied. “Maybe I’ll just come back with 

you and see what Mom’s making.” 

3


Bud was twice my age and twice my height. I always 

had to skip along when I walked with him, frequently 

falling behind as he led the way past the timber houses with 

their wide verandas, filling up almost every inch of their 

narrow lots. At last we stepped off the street and onto the 

lane between two houses. To the left was 495 East Maynard 

Avenue, with the scent of slow-cooking beef coming out of 

Goffie’s kitchen. To the right, in 493, there was the familiar 

smell of oatmeal hotcakes warming in the pan, almost 

ready to be drowned in honey. It was a difficult choice for 

a young boy to make. 

✪ 

Ever since I was small— too young to really remember— 

I had been able to eat from whichever kitchen I chose. It 

was an honor bestowed on only me. My three elder siblings 

weren’t fed at Goffie’s table— not even Bud. And as the years 

passed and three more Whipps children were added to the 

clan, none of them was given the open invitation either. 

Goffie, a spinster of German origin who lived next door 

with her younger brother, had always had a sweet spot for 

me. She made me feel like her house was my second home. 

I had no way of knowing for sure, but perhaps the reason I 

was special to her was because she knew how lucky I was to 

be alive. 

In the summer of 1924, as I was approaching my third 

birthday, I fell ill. My body ached and grew stiff, and a 

fever raged inside me. I lay sick for days, and nobody knew 

4


what was wrong with me or, even more important, how to 

help me recover. When the doctor finally diagnosed spinal 

meningitis, the only thing my parents and my worried 

neighbors could do was to make me comfortable and pray. 

I don’t have any memories of this time, but I was later 

told that when the fever was at its worst, I grew delirious. I 

began calling out, my voice filling every room of the house. 

I’d been ill for weeks, yet there was no mistaking what I was 

saying as I lay confined to my parents’ bed: “I see Jesus.” 

Over and over I repeated the phrase. As I did so, the 

intensity of my parents’ prayers increased. Finally, several 

weeks after I fell ill, I made a full recovery. God had saved 

me, plain and simple. 

In time, Goffie’s generosity extended beyond the occasional 

free meal. I was seven by the time my youngest 

sister, Jeanie, was born, and the struggle to fit the whole 

Whipps family in 493 East Maynard Avenue became virtually 

impossible. My eldest sister, Rite, had a tiny room of 

her own, and the next two boys, Bud and Glenn, took 

the second bedroom. That left just one room for me; my 

younger brother, Carl; my younger sister, Lois; and baby 

Jeanie— as well as my parents. It was Goffie who came up 

with the solution. 

“Why doesn’t Ray come and sleep over at my house,” 

she said to my mom and dad. “He can have his own room, 

and we’ll feed him as well, if that helps.” 

Everyone agreed that it was the perfect solution, and 

that was that. Overnight I became a dual- home boy, blessed 

5


with a large and loving family, a room of my own, and the 

freedom to choose between what was being served by the 

two best cooks in the neighborhood. The only problem 

with the whole arrangement came on days when both 

oatmeal hotcakes and roast beef with mashed potatoes were 

served. Faced with such an impossible decision, I was left 

with only one option: I’d have to eat both. 

There was another advantage to moving next door to 

Goffie’s. As 1929 came to a close, the Great Depression 

began to squeeze our family’s finances. My dad, Carl, 

worked hard to provide for us, but it was difficult to raise 

a family on a machinist’s wage. The fact that Goffie didn’t 

charge my parents a cent made a small difference to the 

family budget, and in those days, small differences could 

have a big impact. 

Having dual residences meant that I was expected to 

do chores at home as well as chores next door. At Goffie’s 

it was my job to gather the eggs laid by her Rhode Island 

Reds, being careful not to get pecked. I was pretty good 

at it, and my ability to dodge the angry beaks led to my 

family’s nickname for me: Speedy. 

That was about all I liked of poultry care. I felt 

nauseous whenever Goffie or her brother Dutch took one 

of the birds down to the basement, chopped off its head, 

and dipped the pulsing body in hot water before pulling 

out the feathers. I tried to shield my eyes as much as possible, 

and when it was time to undertake the mighty task 

of cleaning up after the killing, I still felt the urge to run 

6


outside for air. But I have to admit: when I sat down at the 

table to eat the bird, it was all worthwhile. 

Apart from eating, sleeping, doing chores, and going to 

school, my life was centered on my family. Most Sundays 

we took the streetcar to the Baptist church downtown, 

where Dad was an elder. The only exception was when we 

were visiting with relatives in the Ohio farmland. On those 

Sundays we would visit my grandfather’s small country 

church, crammed into the pews beside my cousins, uncles, 

aunts, and grandmother as my grandfather preached. 

We weren’t rich, but we had enough to get by. Goffie’s 

generosity helped, as did the little plot of land we all 

worked to grow vegetables. I soon picked up both a paper 

route and a magazine route, and I started mowing lawns in 

the summer. I was busy, the way a young boy should be. 

Though we were cushioned from the worst of the Great 

Depression, we weren’t blind to it. The two railway lines 

that ran parallel to each other through town carried two very 

different types of passengers. One track hurried the wealthy 

all the way to New York, while the other limped along, 

hauling freight to and from Pennsylvania. As the boxcars 

rolled by, slowing down for their approach to the Columbus 

station, the stowaway passengers were in plain sight— 

sometimes inside the cars, other times on top of the train. 

✪ 

After I said good- bye to Bud and followed the smell of 

roasting beef into Goffie’s house, I went upstairs and peered 

7


out my bedroom window into the backyard. What I saw 

made me stop: there were unfamiliar people on the Whipps 

property. Tumbling downstairs and leaping across the yard, 

I found my second-oldest brother, Glenn, in the kitchen, 

staring outside. 

“What’s going on?” I asked. 

Now that I was closer, I could see that the three strangers 

weren’t entirely unfamiliar. I’d seen others who looked 

like them riding in the boxcars. Maybe they weren’t the 

exact same ones, but they were hoboes, all right. Their 

clothes were all ragged, and their faces— though clean 

shaven— were lined and tired. 

“I don’t know,” Glenn said. “They just showed up and 

asked Mom if she could feed them.” 

I watched as my mother moved among them. First she 

handed out plates and spoons, then she gave them stew 

from the heavy black pot that was always on the stove. The 

guests ate in silence. Once they finished, I heard them offer 

their thanks and leave. That was it. 

In the months that followed, these meals became a 

familiar ritual. Every couple of weeks there would be a 

thin- looking stranger or two at the back door, asking for 

food. Mom gave them whatever she had, while we kids 

stood and watched. And though we never knew what 

prompted those first visitors to knock on our door— 

or how others after them knew to stop—we became 

convinced that there was some secret hobo sign along the 

railway track telling the weary travelers that a free meal 

8


was available up ahead. Whatever it was that brought them 

to our home, Mom always made them feel welcome. She 

never said no. 

It wasn’t just hoboes who edged into my world through 

the cracks of a failing economy. Mom was a teacher before 

we kids were born, and then she stayed home to take care 

of us. But when I was little she took on part- time work as a 

housekeeper for the head trainer at Ohio State University. 

His son and I became friends, and I was soon invited to 

join the coach’s son in watching football games from the 

bench. Even though I was far too light to be a football 

player myself, watching the games unfold just yards from 

my eyes ignited something within me. I could see the way 

some of the smallest men on the field were able to dart and 

dive, avoiding the giants who thundered toward them. So 

from then on, whether I was playing football, basketball, or 

baseball with the boys in the neighborhood, I concentrated 

on moving deftly to avoid the tackle, hustling into perfect 

scoring positions, and scrambling to the base. I willed 

myself to be light and fast, as if somehow I could escape 

the basic rules of the universe. 

In some ways, I guess I was right. Not only had I pulled 

through my bout of spinal meningitis when the odds were 

against me, but I also managed to escape another potential 

brush with death a few years later when I was thirteen. 

I had taken on a little extra work helping Goffie’s 

youngest brother, Howard, with his milk deliveries on the 

weekends. Howard had started out with a horse and cart, 

9


but by the time I was ready to join him for a few cents a 

day, the horse had been replaced by a truck. Life was starting 

to move a little faster, and Howard always said that my 

quick feet and steady hands were a big help. 

Rain or shine, snow or gale, Howard made his deliveries. 

Whenever there was no school, I went along to help him. 

At first it wasn’t easy balancing on the running board on the 

passenger side, but I soon got the hang of it, jumping down 

before the truck stopped and then skipping off to deliver the 

milk. Howard barely had to idle the engine before I stepped 

back on and he drove to the next house. 

One Saturday I was too sick to join Howard on his 

route. That was the day something went wrong. 

I remember Goffie’s face as she walked into my room 

later that morning. I was half asleep as she entered, but 

by the time she reached my bed, I could see that she was 

upset. Her face was tight and pale, her steps heavy. I sat up 

straight, waiting for the news. 

“Howard’s in the hospital. He had an accident,” she 

said. “He had to swerve to avoid another vehicle and lost 

control of the truck. It rolled and ended up on the other 

side of the road.” 

I was silent, though I was a whirlwind of thoughts and 

emotions. I knew that if I hadn’t been ill, I would have 

been on that truck too. Would I have stood a chance on 

that running board when the truck rolled over? I couldn’t 

imagine a version of this scenario where I would make it 

out alive. 

10


I silently thanked God for keeping me home that day 

and saving my life. But almost immediately this thought 

came into my mind: What if I had been there to warn 

Howard? Could I have stopped him from rolling the truck? 

This brought me to the one question I could speak out 

loud. “Is he going to be okay?” 

“We don’t know.” Goffie stood to leave the room. I 

knew she loved her brother, but she wasn’t one to sugarcoat 

the truth. 

It turned out that the injuries were severe but not life 

threatening. Howard stayed in the Ohio State hospital for 

months, but the doctors said there was nothing serious 

enough to prevent a full recovery. 

I was profoundly affected by the accident, and every 

day I made the thirty- minute journey on foot from East 

Maynard Avenue to the hospital. Each time, I found 

Howard smiling at me as I approached his bedside. 

“You know you don’t have to visit me every day, Smiley,” 

he told me on more than one occasion. 

“I know,” I said. “But it’s the least I can do. Besides, I 

want to make sure you get better soon and start working. It’s 

not good for a boy like me to see his income fall like this!” 

✪ 

Most of my memories from my childhood were much 

less dramatic, however. I was just an ordinary kid growing 

up in an ordinary neighborhood, and my days were filled 

with the simple pleasures of being a kid. But as I look 

11


back now, I can trace some themes that ran throughout 

my childhood— themes that would collide and connect in 

years to come. 

As bare- kneed elementary school kids, my friends and 

I formed our very own marching band. I was often out 

front, assuming the lead as drum major while the rest 

of the crew marched behind, clanging wooden spoons 

on dented cooking pans. The adults leaned out the 

windows to clap and cheer, but I wasn’t paying attention 

to our audience. I was focused on the important task 

of leadership. 

A number of the members of the East Maynard 

Marching Band, as we called ourselves, were also members 

of the Knothole Gang. A group of ten of us guys would 

meet by the baseball stadium that was home to the 

Columbus Red Birds. We’d peer through the holes in the 

wooden fence so we could catch telescopic views of some 

of the legends of the game: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and 

others. At times we were allowed inside the gates free of 

charge, but even without our faces pressed against a rough- 

hewn pine fence, we were still the Knothole Gang. Back 

then, a gang wasn’t a group of troublemakers, and it was 

nothing to be afraid of. A gang was like a family, and family 

always stuck together. 

Every year the Ohio State Fair brought a touch of the 

exotic to Columbus. Lions with their tamers, elephants, 

trapeze artists, and clowns would parade through the city, 

drawing people to the circus tent. The crowds would exit 

12


wide eyed and open mouthed, already anticipating the 

circus’s return the next summer. 

But the circus didn’t impress me all that much. The 

animals were interesting and I appreciated the athleticism 

of the acrobats, but even when I was young, there was one 

sight that would steal my breath like no other. While most 

of my friends were captivated by the circus, in my eyes, 

nothing could compare to the marvel of flight. 

I’m sure my fascination with the sky was partially credited 

to a town that lay about a hundred miles to the northeast of 

Columbus. For it was up in Akron that America’s battle plan 

to dominate the skies was being put into action. 

The period between World War I and World War II was 

the golden age of airships, and when I was a child, these 

helium-filled whales of the sky were largely considered to be 

the future of air travel. And when the giant hangars at the 

Goodyear Airdock outside Akron produced the USS Akron, 

then the USS Macon, the world marveled. Human beings 

had never made something that could fly that was so large. 

But that wasn’t all: these airships were loaded with machine 

guns and four or five Sparrowhawk biplanes. What better 

fuel could there be to fire a young boy’s imagination? 

Yet while these behemoths grabbed my attention, they 

didn’t win my heart. I had no desire to climb into an 

airship and be so vulnerable to the elements or the enemy’s 

bullets. No, I wanted to be a biplane pilot, a flying ace 

who could thread his French- made SPAD fighter plane 

through the clouds to dismantle the opposition. On land 

13


I was lithe, agile, and able to twist away from any hands 

that would try to grab me as I played football on the street. 

Why wouldn’t I want to move the same way in the sky? 

It was my Uncle Daniels who undoubtedly— though 

perhaps unwittingly—played the biggest part in fueling my 

imagination. After he returned from the Great War— what 

many believed was the “war to end all wars”— my siblings 

and I peppered him with endless questions. 

“Tell us about the war again, Uncle Daniels,” we’d beg. 

“Yeah! Like the time you found Germans in a trench . . .” 

“And about how you’d take them prisoner . . .” 

“Or how you’d shoot them!” 

And so, without complaint, Uncle Daniels would 

drag his mind back to the muddy fields of the European 

countryside. He’d clamber back into the earth, into the 

filth and death of the trenches, and again face the horror 

of stepping out into no- man’ s-land. Sifting through his 

memories, he’d limp back to those times he’d stood face- to- 

face with an enemy soldier. None of it was appropriate or 

even possible for children to understand, but he humored 

us. Perhaps turning these traumas into children’s stories and 

comic book adventures lessened the pain a little somehow. 

I didn’t grasp the magnitude of what he had experienced, 

but there was still a lot I was soaking in. I liked 

looking at the scuffed helmet my uncle kept hidden in a 

box, and whenever he pulled it out, I pictured the Germans 

with their hands in the air, meekly obeying the orders to 

stand down and fall in line. 

14


But I also had a sense that war wasn’t quite like it was in 

the games I played with my buddies. There was something 

about the way Uncle Daniels looked just before he’d stop 

answering questions. I may have been young, but I could 

tell that there was a terrifying side to war. It wasn’t a game; 

it was dangerous and real. 

I couldn’t imagine ever having the courage to face war 

myself, but I figured I’d never have to. After all, we’d won 

the war to end all wars, right? 

15

2 

WHERE’S PEARL HARBOR? 

I sat in the passenger seat as my buddy and I followed 

the Olentangy River upstream. It was a December morning 

in 1941, and the car offered little protection from the 

cold. It had been twenty- one degrees the night before, and 

even though the sky was cloudless and the sun was clear 

and bright, our feet felt icy against the floorboards. Still, 

I was as happy as I’d ever been. What was a little cold to a 

twenty- year- old out for a drive in his best friend’s new car? 

Behind the wheel of the ’40 Chevy was my friend 

Forrest Day. He loved telling me about the grip of the 

whitewall tires, the length of the hood, and the quality 

of the engine that lay beneath it— except that his words 

17


were occasionally drowned out by a loud grinding noise 

as he struggled with the stick shift, which protruded from 

the floor like a bent broom handle. Behind us, sitting in 

the tan seats, were my sisters Lois and Jeanie. The girls were 

chattering away in the back—about what, I didn’t know. 

But it was good to be spending some time with them 

and the rest of my family. I’d been away too much lately. 

I needed this. 

I pulled my coat tighter around me and looked out the 

window. We were heading up to Antrim Lake, and it hadn’t 

taken long to leave the city behind. The road was now 

flanked by tall trees that stood guard by the river. Stripped 

of their leaves, stark against an endless sky, they looked 

even taller. If it had been summer, we’d have been going to 

the lake to swim, but since it was cold, we just planned to 

meet up with some other friends and shoot the breeze— 

and give Forrest a chance to perfect his gear changes. 

It had been a year or two since I’d left high school, and 

I’d done some maturing in that time. I’d found a job with 

Western Electric, and I’d grown accustomed to the rhythms 

of my new life. I traveled to different towns in Ohio, going 

from office to office and installing whatever telephone 

equipment my supervisor told me to. 

On top of the new job, I’d also found a new place 

to live. I’d left East Maynard Avenue and found a room 

downtown, and both the job and the relocation had come 

at just the right time. During my years in high school and 

just after graduation, I had made some choices I knew my 

18


parents wouldn’t approve of, and I sensed I was in danger 

of drifting. Not that I was doing anything too terrible— 

just pushing the boundaries. 

One of my first rebellions was smoking. I was sixteen 

and trying to look like a man, and my brother Glenn 

caught me. It wasn’t even a real cigar; it was something 

everyone called an Indian stogie— a catkin that grew on 

some of the local trees. I’d been trying to keep one lit 

one afternoon when Glenn, who had just returned from 

college, found me hiding out near the big beech tree at 

the end of the street. 

“I’m taking you home to Dad.” Without another word, 

he grabbed me by the shirt and marched me home. 

We both knew there was no way Dad would keep his 

cool, and as expected, the belt came out. I was left nursing 

tender skin and vowing to give up the stogies for good— 

or at least until I had my own place and could smoke in 

private. Once I had a job and a room, I got a pipe. I also 

quit reading my Bible and attending church. 

The smoking was never a serious thing; it was more 

of an outward sign of an inward struggle, and I never 

liked that I’d given in to a vice I’d always considered to be 

wrong— sinful, even. I also knew how disappointed my 

folks would be if they found out. It was just that my life 

was no longer making sense. For the first time in my life, 

God seemed far away. The Bible wasn’t speaking to me the 

way it once had, and prayers felt awkward on my lips. Piece 

by piece, I watched my faith begin to weaken. 

19


When I was a child, life had felt so safe as I jumped 

back and forth between Goffie’s house and my own. I 

remembered how certain I’d felt in my faith back then— 

how I’d vowed to follow God, resist temptation, and keep 

myself pure. Now life seemed a lot more complicated. 

What had changed? It wasn’t that God no longer 

seemed real; it was that I doubted whether the Lord was up 

to the job at hand. I wasn’t alone, either. For many of my 

peers, history was conspiring to make life even more turbulent. 

War— even if it was halfway across the world— was 

making everybody nervous. 

When I was in high school, news about the situation 

in Europe started taking center stage. Week after week, as 

conditions intensified overseas, I joined in the lunchtime 

conversations with my friends. 

“How could those countries get taken over so fast?” I 

would ask of no one in particular. 

My friends had their own questions. 

“Why don’t they just fight back instead of letting themselves 

get taken over?” 

“If Hitler was trying to invade America, he wouldn’t last 

five minutes.” 

But beneath the teenage bravado and cheap talk, we 

all knew the war was no joke. There was good reason to 

fear Hitler and Mussolini, and even if we didn’t voice our 

fears, we suspected that at some point America would get 

pulled in. 

And so, as the war progressed, our conversations became 

20


more specific, turning to what each of us would do to fight 

back against the German army. 

“US Army, all the way. Gimme a gun, and I’d mow 

them down in a heartbeat.” 

“Nah. I’d sign up for the Navy. I’d take out those 

U- boats and leave them to drown.” 

But neither of these got my vote. “I wouldn’t be 

anything other than a pilot,” I insisted. “You’d never catch 

me on the ground or trapped in a boat. Never.” 

✪ 

Back in Forrest’s Chevy, I thought about how much had 

changed since those conversations in the school cafeteria. 

The war in Europe had escalated, and I’d already seen families 

say goodbye to their sons who had chosen to go over 

and fight. Something had changed in me as I’d watched 

them go. In some ways this sobering turn of events had 

woken me from my stupor. Based on the way the war was 

going, I figured I would have to enlist or get drafted at 

some point, and I didn’t want to go through something 

like that without my faith fully intact. Lately I’d stopped 

smoking and visiting bars. I’d also started going back to 

church, and I was reading my Bible again. It felt good to 

have my life back on track. 

America was still technically enjoying peacetime, but that 

peace felt tenuous at best. It was no secret that each branch 

of the military was significantly increasing its troops and 

equipment. During this time of general unease, I found that 

21


my Bible was once more a source of real help. I’d turn to the 

thirty-seventh psalm and draw comfort from the declaration 

that the wicked and unrighteous would face their just 

judgment. This psalm also spoke to me of God’s faithfulness 

more meaningfully than ever: “The salvation of the righteous 

is of the Lord; he is their strength in the time of trouble” 

(verse 39). The words were like sunlight to my soul. 

As the war escalated, the story of Joshua took on new 

meaning for me. The Old Testament describes him as a 

warrior— both a great commander and a loyal follower. 

I appreciated that Joshua was both tactically astute and 

humbly dependent on God. If there was a model for getting 

through war with body and soul intact, surely it was Joshua. 

By Christmas 1941, war had edged its way into the 

Whipps family. Over the previous year, Mom had been 

working temporarily for the registration board, helping with 

the mammoth task of issuing the draft. She had signed up 

both Bud and Glenn as soon as they were eligible, and each 

time, the newspaper had sent a photographer to capture the 

moment. The press loved these patriotic stories. 

Signing up for the draft didn’t necessarily mean that a 

young man would get picked, but there was no surprise 

when, not long after their visit to the draft board, the 

postman delivered brown envelopes addressed first to Bud 

and then later to Glenn. We called these letters “greetings,” 

although thinking about it now, it seems like a more optimistic 

name than they deserved. Perhaps it was an attempt 

to soften the truth that the recipient was being sent to war. 

22


Whatever personal feelings the letters stirred, public 

support for the war was high. We all knew that the 

German- Italian alliance was a threat to the United States, 

and with France having already fallen to Germany, it 

was clear that the Allies had quite a fight on their hands. 

Signing up to do one’s duty, whether that meant fighting, 

taking a job in a factory, or serving in some other way, was 

an act of patriotism. 

As soon as Forrest pulled into the parking lot at the 

lake, I knew something was wrong. Typically people parked 

and then headed down to the water, but that day everyone 

was huddled together around the cars, talking over one 

another or leaning in to listen to radios. 

“What’s going on?” Forrest said as he pulled up alongside 

a Ford sedan. “Why isn’t anyone down at the lake?” 

“You didn’t hear?” A girl who looked to be about my age 

scrunched up her face in disbelief. “Pearl Harbor has been 

attacked.” 

Forrest pulled his head back into the car and repeated 

the news for the benefit of the girls in the back. Silence fell 

for a second, and then Jeanie spoke up. 

“What’s Pearl Harbor?” 

More silence. 

“I don’t know,” I said, looking at an equally confused 

Forrest. “But it doesn’t sound good.” 

It didn’t take long to find out, and before the end of 

the following day, the significance of the attack was clear 

to all of us. President Roosevelt’s voice boomed through 

23


the radio. There would be no more delay, no more doubt. 

America was at war. 

✪ 

We weren’t the only family in America who felt weighed 

down by a strange heaviness as Christmas 1941 

approached. It was as if all the trees and the presents and 

the food were somehow irrelevant— as if we were playing a 

game when there was far more important work to be done. 

All seven of us children were at home on Christmas Eve, 

and it felt good to be under one roof again, taken care of by 

Mom and Dad. For those of us old enough to understand 

what was going on, there was one unanswerable question 

hanging in the air: Would this be the last time such a 

gather ing would be possible? 

We sat in silence that evening, listening to the radio 

as it relayed a special broadcast that featured Girl Scouts, 

Boy Scouts, and eventually Winston Churchill. But what 

I remember most was when President Roosevelt leaned 

in toward the microphone and addressed the nation. His 

speech perfectly articulated the trauma, confusion, and 

anger felt by so many of us. Yet somehow he managed 

to move from empathy to exhortation, urging people to 

prepare for the year to come by preparing their hearts: 

Therefore, I . . . do hereby appoint the first day of 

the year 1942 as a day of prayer, of asking forgiveness 

for our shortcomings of the past, of consecration to 

24


the tasks of the present, of asking God’s help in days 

to come. We need His guidance that this people may 

be humble in spirit but strong in the conviction of 

the right; steadfast to endure sacrifice, and brave to 

achieve a victory of liberty and peace. 

When the draft had first been approved in September 

1940— the first in peacetime during the history of the 

United States— the age range was set between twenty- one 

and forty-five. Bud and Glenn had both been old enough, 

but I was only nineteen. However, in the days following the 

attack on Pearl Harbor, legislation was passed to expand 

the selective service system to cover all men between the 

ages of eighteen and sixty- four. Overnight I became eligible 

to fight. 

A few days after Christmas, on a Sunday afternoon, I 

picked up Mom and made the journey to the draft office 

that had been set up in a museum on the Ohio State 

campus. Having worked at Western Electric for the better 

part of a year, I’d finally been able to save enough money to 

buy my own car. I’d ended up with a Chevy sedan, similar 

to Forrest’s but a little older. I was intent on keeping it pristine 

and shining like a black beetle, and it felt good to be 

able to take Mom out like this, especially since my parents 

had never had a car of their own. 

I was just as well groomed as my car, wearing a dark, 

double- breasted suit and tie, and having taken extra care to 

slick my hair back to complete the Bing Crosby and Sam 

25


Edwards look. Once again, the reporter was there, asking 

questions and taking a photo. 

“Just be natural,” he said. “Pretend like you’re signing 

the bottom of the forms, okay?” 

Mom projected nothing but patriotism and pride, even 

managing to work up a smile for the camera, but I found it 

harder to hide my true feelings. 

Suddenly I didn’t feel quite as confident as my clothes 

suggested. My hands froze over the paper, my eyes looking 

directly at the camera. Was I ready for such a commitment? 

I really wasn’t sure. 

26

Fort George Wright 

Spokane, Washington 

November 10, 1943 

Dear Mom and Dad, 

Well, I made it! I’m here in Fort George Wright, and I 

couldn’t be happier. Everything’s going well so far. It’s wet, 

but that’s one thing about us Portland folks— we’re not 

afraid of a little rain, are we? 

What I’m not so used to is being in the Army. We’re in the 

middle of basic training right now, and all of it has been new 

for me. We’ve had two weeks of drills and classes, learning 

everything from military courtesy to how to put on a gas 

mask. We’ve hardly been near a patient, but after tomorrow 

we’ll start working at the wards for two weeks. After that, if 

all goes well, we graduate. 

Every day starts with an hour of calisthenics, then we 

march and drill and make our way around in formation just 

like regular soldiers. At first I found it hard not to laugh, 

but I knew I’d get in real trouble if I did. When they gave us 

fatigues to replace our traditional nurse’s uniform, it helped 

a bit. It’s a little easier to take things seriously when you’re 

dressed like a soldier. 

I’m surrounded by girls who are just like me. We’ve all 

finished our nurse’s training, and we’re eager to get out and 

serve. All of us want in so badly. 

I know that going to war is not something to be taken 

lightly, but even after being here just a few days, I know this 

is the right place for me. Before I found out I was being sent 

here, I was so frustrated that I had to stay home and that I 

couldn’t do anything to help when our boys were fighting. 

And when Chuck got in the Navy, it made me so cross. To 

have my little brother accepted when the Navy had turned 

me down seemed unfair. I wanted to be like Chuck and cousin 

Rog and Stan. I wanted to do my bit— I still do. 

27

I’ve been thinking about why I’ve been so desperate to 

sign up. I guess it’s partly because everyone else is pitching 

in to do their part, but there’s more to it than that. Ever 

since war broke out, I’ve been thinking a lot about Aunt 

Jo, remembering when she’d come back from Argentina full 

of stories about her life there. For so long I wanted to be a 

missionary just like her. I didn’t tell you this part, but I was 

sure I wanted to go to Alaska or Africa or somewhere else 

far away and do something that would help people. And I 

believed that was something God wanted me to do too. 

I’ve also learned a lot from both of you about doing hard 

things when necessary. I know it wasn’t easy when I was 

growing up and money was tight. Remember how I had one 

dress and one pair of shoes, and how in winter whenever my 

feet got wet you’d add another strip of cardboard into them? 

You didn’t complain about being poor; you just did what you 

had to do. I think I’ve learned some of that from you. I feel 

like there’s a need in the world that I can do my part to help 

with. It doesn’t feel like a sacrifice, and it doesn’t feel like a 

risk. It’s just something I have to do. 

I think that’s why I was so mad when the Navy turned me 

down. I felt as though this dream I’d had was being thrown in 

the trash. I should have trusted God though. He had a plan 

for me, and I know He’s placed me in the Army for a reason. 

Today during breakfast we were talking about which 

theater we’ll end up serving in. We all want to go to Europe, 

and I’m sure that’s because the news of what the boys have 

experienced over there has touched us all. But when it comes 

down to it, I just want to go where God wants me. 

I’m going to end now. We have to get our drills perfect 

tomorrow, and I need to be alert or I might turn right when I 

mean to turn left! 

Say hi to the boys and give them a hug from me. I know you’ll 

remember me in your prayers, just as I remember you in mine. 

Love, 

Betty 

28

3 

“DON’T SHOW ME UP, 

YOU LITTLE TWERP!” 

Even though I’d enlisted for the Navy Air Corps, I had 

to wait until there was room for me to begin the cadet 

training program. So that’s what I did. I watched as 1942 

edged by, one month at a time, and as I continued my 

normal routine of working at Western Electric, my fear 

of war started to fade. In its place, my mind was flooded 

with thoughts of what it would be like to become an 

actual fighter pilot. I had never once taken a commercial 

flight, let alone piloted an aircraft, so there was a lot to be 

excited about. 

It took almost a whole year before I was finally called 

to Ohio Wesleyan, thirty minutes north of Columbus. 

29


Wearing the officer’s uniform I’d been given— although 

one with a star on the sleeve instead of stripes— I joined 

the fifty other cadets in the mess hall as we listened to the 

briefing. A fit- looking man in his forties was at the front, 

explaining the aviation cadet course and what we’d be 

expected to do. 

“Landing a fighter plane on a moving aircraft carrier 

is one of the most difficult technical tasks anyone in the 

forces will be expected to accomplish. Cadets, this is the 

V-5 program, and you’re at the start of a long and difficult 

twelve months. You will be tested and observed throughout, 

and you’re going to need to study like you’ve never 

studied before.” 

The longer the officer spoke, the smaller the room felt. 

Months of fantasizing about being a pilot evaporated in 

seconds. 

“You’re here for the next three months. We’ll teach you 

the theory of flying, but not much else. After that, assuming 

you can keep up, you’ll be moved to two more locations 

for proper flight training. Pass those, and you’ll be tested at 

the new facility in Pensacola, Florida. At the end of all that, 

if you’re good enough at flying and you have an A average 

in math, we’ll give you your wings.” 

The officer kept talking, and I heard him say something 

about weekend passes, but I didn’t take in anything else. My 

mind was still stuck on the image of trying to land a plane 

on an aircraft carrier as it rose and fell on the ocean swell. 

I’d never thought about that before. In all my imaginings of 

30


myself as a pilot, I envisioned myself sitting eagle- like above 

the battle, swooping down to pick off the enemy before 

rising into the safety of the clouds. I hadn’t considered that 

I’d have to get the thing out of the sky, let alone make it 

land on a target as precise as a moving aircraft carrier. 

As the briefing wrapped up, the officer invited us to 

ask questions. This was all so different from what I’d 

expected. I thought that there would be red-faced drill 

sergeants forcing us to crawl through the mud, but if this 

meeting was any indication, that wouldn’t be the tone here. 

We weren’t being treated as equals to the officers, but we 

weren’t being shouted at like lowlifes either. 

My first impressions turned out to be correct. 

Throughout my time in the V-5 program, we were made 

to work hard but we were treated much better than the 

Army infantrymen, who were also being trained at Ohio 

Wesleyan. We were given better rations, and we ate the 

same meat and fish with fresh vegetables that the officers 

ate. The enlisted infantrymen got beans and not much 

more. And while they were crammed together in large 

dormitories, we were housed in smaller rooms, with only 

four or five men to a room. To my surprise, the infantrymen 

even saluted us V-5 cadets. I’d never gone to college, 

so I couldn’t say how life as a cadet compared, but between 

the rigorous study and the atmosphere of camaraderie, 

I felt sure this must be a pretty close match. 

Best of all, though, were the planes. Even though we 

had no time in the air at Ohio Wesleyan, just looking at 

31


the aluminum Luscombes on the ground was enough to 

fill me with a sense of freedom and excitement. I was sure 

flying would come easily, and I had no doubt my academics 

would fall into place too. As the first three months drew 

to a close, I allowed myself to dream a little more seriously 

about getting my wings. 

When nobody was dropped at the end of the first part 

of the course, I felt even more confident about the next 

phase. When it was time to move on, the cadets were 

scattered to a number of different locations across the 

country. I was sent to Washington State, where the Navy 

Air Corps had taken over Gonzaga University, an old Jesuit 

school in Spokane. I was excited to be heading to the West 

Coast—farther from home than I’d ever been before. This 

adventure had even more appeal for me because everyone 

knew Bing Crosby had a house that backed up to the 

grounds there. 

So far, my naval training was everything I’d hoped it 

would be. My new instructors told me I was doing well, 

and after a total of just eight hours of flying with an 

instructor by my side, I was allowed to fly solo— the first 

one in my group. Climbing into the two- seater Luscombe, 

with an empty seat to my right where there had previously 

always been an officer, I felt like I didn’t even need wings 

to fly this machine. 

As I taxied to the end of the runway and prepared for 

takeoff, my nerves kicked in. But it wasn’t long before 

they were left behind, along with the ground. Alone in the 

32


cockpit, alone in the sky, I was free. If it weren’t for the 

limited fuel, I could have spent all day up there. 

Back on land, there were congratulations to receive from 

the officers and the ritual dunking in an old bathtub that 

had been abandoned outside by some previous cadets. 

“Every time someone makes their first flight alone, 

they get thrown into a tub full of ice- cold water,” an officer 

explained as everyone gathered round. “But only those who 

have already soloed get to throw him. Whipps, you’re up.” 

With that, a handful of officers reached out and 

grabbed me, easily lifting this newbie pilot over to the 

bathtub. It was cold all right, but no amount of shivering 

could have wiped the smile from my face. 

✪ 

Flying wasn’t the only thing that was going well for me 

at Gonzaga. The demands of the physical training had 

increased, and I was thriving. The obstacle course was 

rumored to be the toughest in the whole Navy Air Corps, 

yet somehow I was able to scramble up the walls, sprint 

across the trails, and climb the ropes faster than most of the 

other guys. When a local newspaper came to take photos of 

the V-5 program in action, the officers gave me the nod to 

demonstrate for the camera. Whether I was hanging from 

ropes as thick as my wrist or swinging across the monkey 

bars set three feet apart and ten feet off the ground, the 

physical maneuvers just came naturally to me. It wasn’t 

flying, but it felt pretty close. 

33


Once the action shots had been taken, the photographer 

had us change into our uniforms and line up on the steps 

at the front of the college. 

“You sure this is going to be in the papers?” I whispered 

to a colleague as we shuffled into position. 

“That’s what the man said. Why?” 

“I want my parents to know which one’s me.” I pulled 

off my peaked cap and tucked it under my belt in the back 

of my trousers. When the photo came out, I discovered 

I wasn’t the only cadet with this plan. Three of us were 

without hats, eight were wearing the wrong color tie, and 

most of our uniforms were wrinkled and creased. On 

top of that, the majority of us were smiling and looking 

relaxed, making the V-5 program seem more like a collection 

of college grads at a theme party than a bunch of 

future fighter pilots. 

If the atmosphere back at Ohio Wesleyan had been 

relaxed, then Gonzaga was even more so. The university 

was run by Jesuit priests, and along with permission to 

rent the buildings, the Navy Air Corps had also been given 

the services of Father Duseau, one of the priests. He led 

us in morning calisthenics, and I loved every minute of 

those sessions. Father Duseau often picked me to lead the 

men out as we went for a run. Whenever we approached 

the edge of Bing Crosby’s property, we strained to catch a 

glimpse of him, but we never did. 

And when Father Duseau, whose second- floor room was 

just above the cadets’ quarters, was frequently awakened 

34


by the sound of my clambering in through the window 

at night, having returned from a not- quite- legal trip into 

town, the priest would only ever greet me the next day with 

a smile and the words, “Did you have a good time in town 

last night, Whipps?” I never drank or smoked on any of 

these trips; the camaraderie with the other guys was enough 

of a lure. 

When it came to flying, however, things were serious. 

We knew that landing on an aircraft carrier would require 

a high level of skill and would offer zero margin of error— 

we’d heard that so many times over the past several months 

that we could recite it in our sleep. But once we were at 

Gonzaga, we found out precisely how hard it was. The technique 

required the pilot to be able to approach at the perfect 

speed, stall the engine at the perfect time, and touch down 

at the perfect spot to allow the plane’s landing gear to catch 

on the cable strung across the deck. Once hooked onto the 

cable, the plane would be brought to a sudden stop a short 

way down the five- hundred- foot landing strip. If you hit the 

cable too fast or missed it entirely, and if you couldn’t get 

up enough speed to take off again by the time you ran out 

of strip, there was virtually nothing to prevent you and your 

plane from going into the ocean. With the carrier traveling 

at speeds of up to eighteen knots (twenty miles per hour), 

there was almost no way you’d make it out alive. 

The Navy Air Corps wanted its pilots to be skilled and 

bold and undeterred by fear, so as soon as we’d mastered 

the basics of flight, we were encouraged to experiment. 

35


Our instructors would send us out in our planes alone— 

with no instructor, no partner, and no radio. We had just 

a parachute and a whole lot of trust. And while sometimes 

the instructors would be flying nearby, they often just told 

us to head out five or ten miles and get to work. We had 

to learn how to put the plane into a spin and, more important, 

how to get out of it at just the right time. There were 

loops to master and turns to perfect— the tools we would 

rely on in combat. We had to learn how to control the 

plane the way we would control a fishing rod: by placing it 

exactly where we wanted it every time. 

Being able to stall the plane successfully was essential. 

By turning on the carburetor heat, we could keep the 

engine running while at the same time stopping the propellers 

to reduce speed. That meant we could put the plane 

into a spin to avoid enemy fire. It also meant that when we 

were trying to land, if we didn’t manage to hook the plane 

onto the cable that ran across the flight deck, we could kick 

the propellers back to life and fly off again before making 

another attempt. 

One day when I was alone in the skies above Washington 

State, I was practicing going from a stall into a spin. It was 

a move I’d carried out many times before, and since it was 

a clear day with good weather, I really had no excuse for 

doing something as foolish as forgetting to turn on the 

carburetor heat before disengaging the propellers. Yet that’s 

exactly what I did. Within seconds the engine stopped, 

leaving a strange silence that iced through the cockpit. 

36


Momentarily frozen, my body screaming with adrenaline, 

I realized what I had done. I was three thousand feet 

above the ground in an aluminum can without any power. 

Everything was silent for a few seconds as the plane gave 

in to the strong arms of gravity that were hauling it back 

down to earth. 

The nose of my plane was pointing straight up, leaving 

me staring at the faint traces of clouds high above. As the 

plane plummeted, a new noise began to fill the void left 

by the dying engine. It was the sound of wind. While the 

plane was sucked down toward the earth, the whooshing 

noise grew louder and louder. I seriously doubted I was 

going to make it. 

We had been taught in flight training that if ever we 

got into trouble in the air, we should try to find a spot to 

land. Straining my neck in both directions, I looked for 

somewhere flat enough and clear enough, but all I could 

see were five- thousand- foot mountains that were covered 

in trees. Twisting in my seat, I finally caught the faintest 

glimpse of a field. It was my only chance. 

Somehow, I wasn’t too worried about dying. If I 

crashed, I knew I’d go to heaven, which didn’t seem too 

bad. What made every muscle in my body clench was the 

thought of what would happen if I made it out alive. If I 

crashed the plane, I’d wash out of the program, and I really 

didn’t want that to happen. 

As I tried to bring the plane under control, it occurred 

to me that there was one more thing I could try. I’m still not 

37


sure whether it was something I’d heard in a lecture or something 

I’d been told by an instructor on one of my accompanied 

flights, but I figured I had nothing to lose. I threw the 

switch that turned the carburetor heat back on, swallowed 

hard, and pushed the joystick forward, sending the plane 

into a dive. Everything about the move went against my 

instinct for self- preservation, but it was my only hope. 

I stared at the propeller in front of the cockpit and tried 

to ignore the sight of the ground just beyond it. Then, 

almost magically, the propeller started to turn again. My 

ears filled with the sound of the engine charging back to 

life, and the tension that had gripped my stomach vanished 

in an instant. 

When I was sure I’d regained control, I pulled out of the 

dive and made the ten miles back to base. I landed carefully 

and taxied to the hangar. There was no need to tell 

any of the instructors, and as soon as I could, I lay down 

on my cot and thanked God for keeping me safe. You only 

make a mistake like that once. Even more than the formal 

lessons I’d learned about stalls and spins and how to keep 

an engine running, that was the day I learned not to let my 

mind wander. If I was going to survive the war, I would 

have to learn how to pour all my concentration into the 

moment in front of me. 

The three months at Gonzaga passed quickly, and while 

I was disappointed that a few of my fellow cadets were 

✪ 

38


dropped from the V-5 program, I was grateful to have 

passed. Now it was on to the third location for training, 

where we would perfect our flying and come to grips with 

the complex math required of pilots. This time I was sent 

south to Saint Mary’s College near Berkeley, California. 

For a boy from Columbus, the idea of being stationed in 

the beautiful hills near San Francisco sounded almost too 

good to be true— especially when I was told that the debutantes 

from Berkeley were going to join us for a dance one 

evening soon after we arrived. 

Tradition stated that one cadet from each class would 

lead the dancing, and somehow the honor that year was 

mine. Even though I was in the best shape of my life, this 

was one physical challenge I felt wholly unequipped to deal 

with. I’d never been much of a dancer, and the thought of 

being in the spotlight made me profoundly nervous. Still, I 

did as I was told and filled in my name, height, and weight 

on the card I was given. Apparently these cards would 

ensure that dancers were paired up correctly. 

What I didn’t realize until I stepped out onto the dance 

floor was that one of my colleagues had seen this as a prime 

opportunity to play a trick on me, and he’d made some 

significant edits to my vital statistics. So while my dance 

partner was expecting a six- foot- two, 200- pound specimen 

of male perfection, instead she got a gangly guy of five foot 

ten and 140 pounds who barely filled out his uniform. 

There was no hiding the disappointment in her eyes. 

“Why did you lie?” she whispered as we fumbled our way 

39


through a waltz to the sounds of barely suppressed laughter. 

All I could do was smile, shrug, and hope the moment 

would pass quickly. 

When it came to flying, life at Saint Mary’s was more 

competitive than it was at Gonzaga. Perhaps this was 

because the program was getting tougher, or perhaps it was 

simply due to the new mix of personnel, with personalities 

that often clashed. Either way, the officers had started 

reminding us how hard it was going to be to pass the 

course—as if we needed reminding. 

As I heard more about the demanding study requirements, 

I was growing increasingly concerned. And for the 

first time, I also found myself unable to get along with a 

fellow cadet. 

His name was Wetzler. Like me, he was from Ohio— 

only his part of town was far nicer than my neighborhood. 

Since our names were Wetzler and Whipps, we often found 

ourselves paired up for physical training. We had to pull 

each other out of the water for lifeguard drills, which was 

easy enough for Wetzler but a challenge for me, given 

that my partner had played high school football and was 

pushing 175 pounds. It was even harder when he wouldn’t 

cooperate. He’d just hang in the water while I tried to haul 

him out, a wise-guy smirk painted all over his face. 

Wetzler may have had it easier in the pool, but the 

advantage was mine when it came to putting on our tennis 

shoes, shorts, and T-shirts and heading out to run. 

As we lined up one morning, we were given these 

40


instructions: “Run a mile in six minutes, or you’ll have to 

do it again.” 

Wetzler leaned toward me as we prepared to start. 

“Don’t show me up and run fast, you little twerp.” 

I just shrugged and made my way to the front of the 

group, clocking the six minutes with a few seconds to 

spare. My partner was not so swift, however, and he didn’t 

make the time limit. 

Wetzler got his revenge on me a few days later when we 

were playing soccer. Going in too hard and too high for a 

block, he kicked my knees out from behind me and laid 

me flat out on the grass. I had to be helped off the field, 

and though my injury didn’t hinder my progress in the 

program, it did put a temporary hold on my participation 

in sports. 

Inside I was steamed for a few days, but I never bad- 

mouthed him. I’d been brought up better than that. And 

whether we liked it or not, we were both on the same team. 

✪ 

Flying had become a part of me by now. The hours I spent 

perfecting my maneuvers were the best way to escape the 

nagging feelings that caught up with me whenever I was 

on the ground. Up in the sky I felt peaceful and free, but 

as soon as I landed and entered the classroom, my worries 

came crashing down on top of me. 

The academic demands of the program had increased 

significantly since I’d moved to California, and with the 

41


addition of trigonometry and calculus, I was struggling to 

keep up. Such a high standard for math was vital for a Navy 

Air Corps pilot, as there were numerous calculations to be 

made both when landing and when taking off. But even 

though I understood why it was essential to be able to work 

out the velocity required for takeoff given the weight of fuel 

the plane was carrying and the speed at which the aircraft 

carrier was traveling, it didn’t make the classes any easier. 

So I wasn’t entirely surprised when one afternoon I was 

called to the commander’s office. As I waited in the corridor 

outside, I was joined by nine other cadets— including 

Wetzler. Some, like me, were also having a hard time with 

the math, but others had no academic struggles at all. 

What reason could there be for all of us to meet with the 

commander like this? As I looked around, I realized that all 

these guys were from Ohio, but what could that have to do 

with anything? 

Before any of us managed to figure it out, the door 

opened and all ten of us were called in. 

The commander didn’t waste time with pleasantries. 

“Now you all know that anybody who washes out of the 

program at any point ends up as a second- class seaman.” 

I felt my chest tighten. I knew this; everyone did. It was 

one of the awkward truths about the V-5 program: those 

who had hoped to conquer the skies as a Navy pilot but 

failed were immediately retrained and sent to war packed 

in one of the Navy’s ships or— even worse— in one of their 

submarines. It’s true that if we earned our wings, we would 

42


still be based on a ship, but life as an officer pilot on a huge 

aircraft carrier was worlds apart from that of a second- class 

seaman on a tiny frigate. 

On top of that loss of prestige and responsibility, I had 

another reason for not wanting to be a seaman: I was prone 

to seasickness. I figured I’d make do on a big ship, but I 

couldn’t imagine how green I’d be on a sub. 

The commander went on. “Well, for you boys from 

Ohio, things have been somewhat different. I’m sure none 

of you read the small print when you signed up for the 

program, but if you had, you would know that you have an 

option at any point to request to be honorably discharged. 

Don’t ask me why Ohio did things differently, but that’s 

the way it is.” He paused, looking around the room. “But 

now things are changing. You’ve got two more weeks to get 

the honorable discharge, but after that, you stay the course 

and take your chances like the rest of them.” 

This was all news to me, and it left me feeling both 

shocked and troubled. Two weeks felt like too short a time 

to decide whether I would give up on my lifelong dream of 

being a pilot. How could I be expected to make that kind 

of decision? But if I was honest with myself, I could see the 

warning signs when it came to my academic studies. Was I 

confident I could get an A average when I’d barely heard of 

trigonometry and calculus prior to arriving at Saint Mary’s? 

As we filed out, I wondered out loud, “I’m still struggling 

with all that higher math. Maybe this is where it all 

ends for me.” 

43


“Are you kidding me?” The words came from a 

young cadet I’d spoken to a few times. “This is great 

news. Remember Joey, who washed out midway through 

Gonzaga? He wrote me and said he was offered this option 

too. As soon as he got home, he went to an air base in 

Columbus and took the exam, and now he’s flying with 

those guys.” He thumped me on the back. “Think about it, 

Whipps. How much math do you need when you’re taking 

off and landing in a field?” 

It all sounded good, but the decision still weighed 

heavily on me. This was a tough choice for me to make 

on my own, even if I was already twenty- one. I wished I’d 

worked harder at math while I was in school, especially 

since my mom had been a teacher and would have helped 

me. Yet I’d never felt the urge to really push myself in 

school. I had no way of knowing back then that my future 

as a pilot could rest on trigonometry formulas. 

I was torn. Did I need to apply myself to study and 

work harder than ever, hoping I’d make it to Florida 

and beyond? It was a risk, but weren’t pilots supposed to 

take risks? 

Then again, I had to admit that the alternative looked 

a lot better. A pilot was still a pilot, whether he took off 

from water or land. And if this route was a guarantee that I 

wouldn’t end up trapped in an oversized tin can along with 

hundreds of other sailors, surely that was worth it, wasn’t it? 

Both arguments played out in my mind, but just when 

the balance seemed to shift one way, I would reconsider 

44


and find myself leaning toward the other option. The clock 

was ticking, and I was desperate for help. So I went to the 

one source of wisdom that had never let me down: I prayed 

to God. 

The conviction came gradually, like the dawning of the 

first light, but I knew what I needed to do. It was time to 

head back to the draft office. 

45


'Til We Meet Again? 






LifeWay 

Parable 

Amazon Kindle 

Apple iBook

Chapter 1 

“Mom, can I go with Johnto the department store?” 

Beverly asked, holding up a blouse on a hanger. “I want to 

exchange this blouse before our trip tomorrow.” 

She stood in the doorway of the girls’ bedroom in their 

900- square-foot house in Mishawaka, Indiana. The seven- 

member Gilvin family was getting ready to head “down 

home to Kentucky,” as they put it, to visit relatives on Aunt 

Beulah’s farm. 

“Oh, Bevie, don’t do that now,” Bev’s mom, Betty, said. 

“We’re getting everything ready. You don’t need a new blouse 

anyway.” 

“But I don’t want to wear this white one down at the 

farm,” Bev said with a level of concern only a ninth-grade girl 

7

8 || ALL BUT NORMAL 

could attach to her wardrobe. Little sisters Connie and Gail, 

twelve and ten years old, respectively, listened from the doorway. 

“She just wants to go driving with that boy,” Connie 

whispered. Gail nodded. 

“Well, you’ve got plenty of clothes,” their mother said. 

“Can’t I trade this for something new?” Bev pressed. “It’s 

our vacation. I want to wear the right thing.” 

The day had been full of rushing around. Betty had 

packed for all five daughters, of whom Bev was second oldest. 

Darkness had fallen over the leafy northern Indiana city, and 

suitcases lined the walls of the tiny home, ready to be shoehorned 

into the wood-paneled family station wagon for the 

next day’s journey. From the living room, sounds of voices 

on television drifted in as their father, Russell, finally got off 

his feet for a bit. 

“Are you all packed up?” Betty asked. 

“I think so. Yes.” Bev could sense a weakening in her 

mother’s resistance. 

“Then go ask Daddy.” 

Bev’s eyes gleamed. She paused before walking toward the 

living room, gathering her thoughts, her eyes ref lecting the 

words she was about to say. 

Everyone knew Bev was clever and highly intelligent and 

not a schemer. Her sisters considered her the kindest and most 

playful sister. Her giggle was infectious and smart, not silly. It 

emanated from a warm heart that loved to laugh. She spent 

a lot of time with her younger sisters—playing make-believe 

school in the basement and volleyball in the park, and rollerskating 

and bike riding on the sidewalks around their house.

SHAWN THORNTON || 9 

Measured in birthday invitations, Bev was the most popular 

outside the home as well. On Valentine’s Day a month 

earlier, she had received f lowers from a number of boys at 

school. Few were brave enough to come calling to the house, 

but Bev’s sisters knew she was the focus of special attention 

from boys. 

Bev was at the head of her class academically as well, her 

report card a tribute to the first letter of the alphabet. When 

not socializing or playing, she sat in the house and read dense 

books with no pictures in them and sometimes Latin primers. 

She had recently won the highest honor given in eighth 

grade, the Daughters of the American Revolution award, for 

being the student with the best academic performance, best 

citizenship, and most well-rounded personality. The family 

had gathered at the school to watch the presentation, her 

sisters giddy with excitement, Russell and Betty taking lots 

of pictures. Nobody in the family had received such an award 

before, but it seemed obvious that it would go to Bev. 

Bev also served as crossing guard at the school, a conspicuous 

honor given to only the most responsible students. 

Every day, she left class early, put on her patrol belt, and 

helped children safely cross the street after school. It made 

her proud that she had been entrusted with the lives of her 

younger schoolmates. 

Tonight, Bev’s well-known tenacity was on display. Her 

sisters were right. She was indeed hoping to spend a few 

moments with John Thornton before heading to Kentucky 

for spring break. She barely knew him—he was seventeen 

and a senior in high school, and she was fourteen. John had


asked her to a dance, prodded by his best friend, Chuck, 

who was dating Bev’s older sister, Sue. Bev’s parents agreed 

she could go to the dance, and John began dropping by the 

house to get to know her. In truth, Chuck had pressured 

him into it. 

“You can’t ask a girl to a dance and then ignore her for 

two months,” Chuck scolded John. That made sense to John. 

If he didn’t get to know Bev, what would they talk about at 

the dance? 

Normally, the Gilvin and Thornton families would never 

have associated. They shared no friends, no church, no clubs, 

and little cultural background. The Gilvins were transplanted 

Southerners. Russell had moved the family from Kentucky to 

Indiana after World War II in search of a better job and now 

drove a truck for one of the factories that had sprung up in 

the Midwest after the war. The Gilvins’ modest home, with a 

simple porch out back and a tiny awning over the front door, 

could barely contain their growing family. Four girls shared 

one bedroom. Three-year-old April slept in her parents’ room. 

If someone sneezed at night, everyone said, “Bless you.” 

The Thorntons resided on the opposite side of town—and 

on the opposite side of the social spectrum. Their two-story 

home faced the St. Joseph River on a new, well-to-do street in 

Mishawaka. John’s dad was a proud Notre Dame graduate, a 

politician and businessman who partnered with the Chicago 

mafia and ran an illegal casino behind a false wall in Mishawaka’s 

most upscale restaurant, the Lincoln Highway Inn. When his 

political party was in office, he wielded great power locally, running 

the license bureau. Political cartoons of him appeared in


the local newspaper’s opinion pages, and reporters knew better 

than to dig too deeply into his affairs. The Thorntons were big 

fish in a small pond and often made the ninety-minute trip 

to socialize with Chicago’s elite. Mrs. Thornton kept weekly 

appointments at the bridge club and beauty parlor. Their calendar 

was full and so was their bank account. 

When John turned sixteen, his father took him to the 

auto dealership on Highway 31 in nearby Niles, Michigan. 

“Pick out a car,” he said, waving his hand toward the lot. 

John, newly licensed, chose a sporty, cream-colored ’62 

Corvair, and his father purchased it outright. 

Russell and Betty naturally had not allowed Bev and John 

to go out alone, protective as they were of their daughters. 

Russell was gentle and gregarious, a natural salesman and an 

easy friend, but he was not so friendly to teenage boys interested 

in taking his daughters around town without supervision. 

John and Bev had already failed to get his permission 

to go for ice cream without Chuck and Sue. In John’s first 

visit to the Gilvin house, Russell had seemed standoffish, 

powerful, and mysterious. It didn’t hurt that he had the 

muscles of a dock worker from driving heavy trucks before 

the advent of power steering. John got the distinct impression 

that if he caught him crossways, Russell might chase him 

around the side of the house with a baseball bat or maybe one 

of those Kentucky long- barrel shotguns. 

Still, John had been courageous enough to call on Bev 

again, and even with limited interactions, puppy love was 

blooming between them like the dogwood trees along the 

boulevard. Now, on the night before the family’s spring break


trip, Bev approached her father in the living room, heart 

more hopeful than when she began. Blue television light 

radiated against the drapes and against his hands, resting on 

the arms of his chair. 

“Daddy?” Bev said. She never faked sincerity. Even 

when asking with a purpose, she could only come across as 

sweet and believable. They were kindred spirits, she and her 

father—witty and sociable but gentle and kind. 

“ Mm- hm,” Russell replied. 

“I wanted to go exchange this blouse at Goldblatt’s. I’d 

like to get a better one for our vacation.” 

“You’re running out of time. Goldblatt’s closes at nine.” 

“If I go soon, I can make it.” 

“Did you ask your mother?” 

“She said to ask you.” Bev paused. “If it’s easier, John can 

take me.” 

Russell didn’t respond immediately. 

“He’s got his license,” Bev added helpfully. 

Her father’s thoughts seemed set on the next day and the 

long drive, not on the television show that continued before 

him. Connie and Gail stood behind Bev and awaited the 

verdict. 

“I hope they let her go,” Gail said softly, thinking of her 

brand- new roller skates. Bev was the hero among the girls 

that Christmas because she had prevailed on their parents 

to buy them all new roller skates—not the clip-on kind but 

roller skates with real boots. 

“I hope they say no,” Connie whispered back. “That boy’s 

too old for her.”


Russell seemed ready for bed and tired of making decisions. 

He heaved the air from his lungs. 

“Whatever your mother says.” 

“Okay. Thank you.” Bev went quickly to see her mother, 

her goal coming to unlikely fruition. “Daddy says it’s okay 

with him if it’s okay with you.” 

Betty looked up from packing a bag for April and shook 

her head a few times slowly, unconvinced but worn down. 

Bev wasn’t usually this insistent, and the other girls needed 

help getting to bed. Tomorrow would be long, and she didn’t 

want cranky kids stuck in the car together. 

“Fine,” Betty said. “Go ahead and go. Just don’t be late. 

And come right back.” 

“Yes, Mom,” Bev said and disappeared to call John before 

her parents’ decision could change. Gail beamed at Connie. 

Connie bunched up her lips. 

“He’s still too old for her,” she said. Gail shrugged and 

hopped off to make sure she had gathered all the toys she 

wanted to take. 

Lately, Bev’s sisters admired not just her grace and gentleness 

but her deepening faith. The Gilvins were regular 

church attenders but not overly religious. Russell often 

worked second jobs on Sundays or went to car shows. Betty 

took the girls to Twin Branch Bible Church, a congregation 

that met in a three-hundred-seat A-frame building twelve 

doors down from their home. Bev had always embraced faith 

more passionately than the others in her family. She worked 

with Child Evangelism Fellowship to conduct backyard 

Bible clubs and summer 5-Day Clubs for children. She also


began attending Youth for Christ meetings led by a committed 

young couple, George and Pat Phillips. Their zeal for 

the Bible and prayer inspired Bev, and in recent weeks, her 

prayers took on an urgency that caught the attention of the 

Phillipses and her friends. 

“Pray for this boy I like, that he’ll come to Jesus,” Bev 

asked repeatedly at Youth for Christ meetings. “And for my 

dad to come to Jesus too.” 

That prayer became the focus of her life, and friends 

heard her pray with startling passion, “God, use me in any 

way that you want to see John and my dad come to know 

Christ.” 

John had attended church with Bev’s family a couple of 

times, though he would have rather spent time alone with 

Bev, enjoying conversation outside the presence of spying 

sisters and Bev’s parents. That kind of opportunity had not 

come until now, the evening of March 30, 1962. 

At around eight o’clock, John pulled up outside the Gilvin 

home in his Corvair. The quad headlights lit up the street, 

and the Chevy bow-tie badge seemed to glow with inner 

warmth. Without making a scene, Bev traipsed out the back 

door and hopped into the passenger seat. John’s lanky frame 

and goofy smile were visible in the darkness. 

“Hey,” he said. 

“Hi,” Bev responded, grinning across the divided bench 

seat. He thought she was vivacious and beautiful, good- 

hearted and mischievous, all in right measure. 

“Well, here we go.” 

John took the long way to Goldblatt’s, making a circle


around town. Otherwise it was too quick, and there was no 

time to be together. 

“Isn’t the dance going to be fun?” Bev said. 

John shrugged. “I don’t dance much. I guess we’ll watch 

Chuck and Sue.” 

“I think we could try,” Bev offered. 

He nodded. There was a silence. “Kentucky, huh?” 

“My Aunt Beulah’s farm. It’s always so much fun. They 

have farm animals, and my cousins will be there.” 

“Pretty far away.” 

“A day’s worth, I guess. But it’s a pretty drive.” 

John drove on in silence. 

“Guess I’ll see you when I get back,” Bev said. 

“That’d be nice.” 

John was often at a loss for words with Bev. She struck him 

as so smart and genuine and promising. John, by contrast, was 

disappointing his family’s academic expectations. Classrooms 

didn’t fit him well. As a boy, he stared out the windows at 

passing airplanes, wondering where the passengers were 

going and wishing he could join them. When teachers called 

on him, especially in math class, he usually had no answer. 

Equations made no sense to him. This surprised his parents 

because Wilson Thornton, John’s grandfather, was known for 

a geometric algorithm he created in 1951, which was lauded 

among mathematicians across the country. Wilson’s name 

even appeared in popular geometry textbooks. 

John was a different bird. In grade school when the teacher 

taught two plus two is four, John’s immediate response was, 

“Why? Who says it’s got to be four? Let’s make it five. How


about twenty?” It seemed to him that teachers were assigning 

arbitrary numbers to arrive at easy solutions. John questioned 

everything in the same independently minded way. It didn’t 

help his grades. 

His parents put him in college prep classes in high 

school, clinging to their dream of another generation of 

Fighting Irish. Many family members—cousins, uncles, 

grandparents—were college-bound or had their degrees 

framed and hanging on the wall. The plan was for John to 

attend college and become a teacher. But reality was going 

another direction. 

Finally, the high school principal sat the Thorntons down. 

“John won’t be following in your footsteps to Notre 

Dame, Mr. Thornton,” he said bluntly. “He hasn’t performed 

well enough. He’s had to take extra classes to make up for 

the ones he failed. Right now, he’s struggling in all his college 

preparatory classes. My question is, do you want him 

to graduate from high school at all? If so, I recommend he 

switch to classes he can pass and enroll in summer school so 

he can at least earn a diploma.” 

It was bitter news for the Thorntons, but not much more 

could be done. They had given him the best they could with 

their money, inf luence, and encouragement. Now, with an 

uncertain future ahead of him, John would have to make his 

own path. 

“Say, how do you drive a car like this?” Bev asked as they 

glided through the night. A light spring snow still graced the 

sidewalks, though the streets were clear of it. 

“You mean shifting gears?”


“Yes. Daddy’s trucks always have a gear shifter coming up 

from the f loor.” 

“This one’s very much the same. You just—well, here. Put 

your hand here.” 

He pointed to the gear shift protruding from the floor. 

“I’ll speed up. You move that thing when I say so.” 

John stepped on the gas as they traveled down the four- 

lane road. 

“ Okay—now,” he said. Bev switched the gearshift lever. 

The car smoothly settled into a higher gear and a lower rev. 

“Good job, Bev!” 

Bev smiled. “I drove a car! I can’t wait to get my license 

someday. Then I could drive us places.” 

John smiled back in spite of himself. He was drawn to the 

liveliness and affection of the Gilvin family. Home life at the 

Thorntons’ was good but staid. They showed love through 

duty and commitment, not gauche displays of emotion or 

bantering conversation. Something about this Southern family 

and this girl sitting an arm’s length from him struck him 

as fresh and exciting. 

“Coming up to Goldblatt’s,” he announced with a trace 

of new- driver’s pride. 

Goldblatt’s was in the town’s new shopping plaza on 

Miracle Lane. Bethel College, a small Christian school, sat 

opposite the mall. They had named the street, deeming it a 

miracle they had been able to buy the campus. Bev, her hands 

folded on the white blouse in her lap, sighed contentedly and 

pondered what she would exchange it for. She was thinking 

of a pair of blue jeans.


John signaled and arced left into the intersection. 

The impact was so sudden and jarring that neither John 

nor Bev knew what had happened. Coming the opposite 

way across Miracle Lane, a pickup truck banged the Corvair’s 

passenger side bumper, sending John’s car spinning backward 

and sideways. Another car collided with the back of it. John’s 

head smacked the window and driver’s side door. Bev’s head 

came down squarely on the dashboard. For both of them, 

everything went black. 

The three damaged cars sat silently, waiting for help. 

Bystanders rushed over, alerting other drivers and peering 

into car windows. 

“What happened?” 

“That sports car turned into the intersection. He must 

not have seen the oncoming traffic.” 

“Who hit him?” 

“That truck. It can’t have been going more than thirty, 

forty miles an hour.” 

“Nobody looks too badly hurt.” 

The pickup driver got out of his banged-up vehicle and 

walked over. 

“You okay?” someone asked. 

“I think I’m fine,” he said. “He turned right in front of 

me. I couldn’t stop.” 

He sat on the curb and waited. Within minutes, emergency 

personnel arrived and helped John from the car. 

“Can you stand up?” a medic asked. 

“Yeah,” he said, feeling woozy and not completely aware 

of what had just happened.


“Can you walk over here and sit down?” 

John did. 

“Does it hurt anywhere?” 

John held up his hand. There was a small cut on the back 

of it. The medic looked him over before ushering him to the 

ambulance. 

“You’re a lucky boy,” he said. “They’ll stitch that hand up 

for you at the hospital.” 

“This one’s not awake yet,” said another medic, examining 

Bev in the passenger seat. 

“How’s she doing? She alive?” one medic asked. 

“She’s alive. Doesn’t look too banged up, but she’s 

unconscious.” 

“What about her head?” 

“Nothing there, really. Just a cut under her chin. And on 

her knee. That’s all I see.” 

“But she’s not conscious?” 

“I don’t think so. Miss? I’m a medic. Are you all right?” 

Bev did not respond. 

“Miss? Are you all right? Can you hear me?” He shook his 

head. “No, she’s out.” 

They carefully pulled her from the car and put her on a 

gurney. Her body convulsed several times. 

“Whoa, whoa, watch out!” one medic said to another. 

“Did she wake up?” 

“I don’t think so.” 

“Probably just knocked out for a while. I’ve seen worse.” 

At the hospital a little while later, John’s brain seemed to


refocus. He found himself in a small room. Looking down, 

he saw a bandage on his hand. An ER nurse came in. 

“You’re okay to leave. Your parents are here to take you 

home.” 

John followed his parents to the car, to their home, and 

to his bed. 

At the Gilvin house, the phone rang just before nine o’clock. 

The girls were almost in bed, their thoughts full of the cows, 

horses, and cousins they would play with at Aunt Beulah’s farm. 

“Mrs. Gilvin?” the voice said. “There’s been an accident. 

Beverly’s at the hospital. It looks to the doctors like she has a 

blood clot in her brain. She’s sleeping right now.” 

“Oh, God, please,” Betty said, and she and Russell rushed 

to the station wagon. 

The packed suitcases and their owners would not be 

going to Kentucky. 

Bev lay in a bed in the intensive care unit looking like 

her normal self except for an abrasion on her forehead and a 

cut under her chin. An IV protruded from her arm, and the 

doctors had given her a tracheotomy. Otherwise she simply 

appeared to be asleep—not bruised, not broken, not seriously 

harmed. 

“It looks like she’s just knocked out,” the doctor said, 

somewhat unhelpfully. “We should know more in three days.” 

A specialist was brought in, but in the hours and days 

that followed, everyone seemed mystified by her condition. 

Several times the dire phone call came. 

“Mr. Gilvin, you should probably bring the family in. Bev 

may have a short time to live.”


Each time, the family stood around the bed as Bev slept 

as if nothing could wake her. 

A somber feeling pervaded the house as days blurred into 

weeks and weeks blurred into months. The girls saw little of 

their mother, who stayed at the hospital all day. The family 

summoned their financial resources to pay for a registered 

nurse to stay all night with Bev. Betty and Russell’s conversations 

bled through the bedroom walls, full of sadness, self- 

recrimination, and occasional blame. 

“Why did he have to turn in front of that pickup?” came 

Russell’s voice, exasperated. 

“I don’t know, Russell. It breaks my heart.” 

“Ah! We should never have let her go. I can’t believe that 

boy did this to her.” 

The sisters were never part of these conversations, but one 

night, Connie began crying in her bed. 

“Why are you crying, Connie?” Gail asked in the darkness. 

“’Cause Bevie’s going to die.” 

“No, she’s not. Don’t say that.” 

“Then why isn’t she awake yet?” 

“I don’t know. She needs rest. Sleep is good. She was in 

an accident.” Gail paused, then added, “Everybody at church 

prayed for her this Sunday. And three people called the house 

today to ask how she was.” 

“But she’s unconscious.” 

“I know that. She’s sleeping,” Gail countered. 

“Shush! It’ll be all right,” Sue said. “Whatever happens, 

it’ll be all right.”


• • • 

On the night of the accident, John started vomiting and 

experiencing an intense headache while lying in bed at home. 

He returned to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed him 

with a concussion and kept him for three days. After that he 

returned home and suffered no further obvious effects. 

His senior year, with all its excitement and anticipation, 

was winding up, but John’s mind was on Bev, lying unconscious 

in a hospital because of the accident he had caused. 

He tried to visit her, but the Gilvins had denied him access. 

Their pain was still too fresh. On the other side of town, Mr. 

and Mrs. Thornton were deeply unsettled that their son was 

now mixed up with a family so unlike them. At the same 

time, they, like John, wanted to help the Gilvins if possible. 

The problem for John was that no one seemed interested 

in his feelings about the situation or offered to help him sort 

out his responsibility—not his parents, not the Gilvins, not 

anyone. As Bev slept on, John sought counsel from Chuck 

one night while they drove John’s newly repaired Corvair to 

a bank overlooking the St. Joseph River. 

“I hear what you’re saying,” Chuck said. “So, what do you 

think you’re going to do?” 

They both leaned against the hood of the car, watching 

the river f low by like liquid time. 

“How do I know?” John almost shouted with frustration. 

“Nobody’s telling me anything! The adults are handling 

everything. I’m not involved. It’s like they don’t even care 

that I was there!”


He paused to hurl a rock into the void. It landed too far 

away to register a splash. 

“My life has always been confusion,” John went on. “I 

don’t even know which end is up. I’m just bouncing around. 

One day this happens; another day that happens. It’s all just 

random. So now this accident. What do I do? Stick around? 

Slowly move out of the picture?” 

He shook his head, unsatisfied with every option. 

Chuck thought for a moment. “You ought to go visit her,” 

he said, leveraging himself up and looking back toward the 

city center. 

“I tried.” 

“You should try again.” 

John knew in his gut it was the right thing to do. 

A few days later, he ventured back to the hospital, feeling 

horribly awkward and conspicuous. Does everyone know I’m 

the one who was at the wheel of the car that injured this innocent 

girl? This time the nursing staff let him through—with or 

without the family’s permission, he didn’t know. He walked 

quietly into Bev’s darkened room. She lay there alone, several 

medical machines standing cold sentry around her. The 

vivacity that had drawn him to her seemed to have drained 

away. She was sleeping, empty, gone. He opened his mouth 

to say something, but speaking didn’t make sense—she was 

unconscious. She still looked so young. 

A nurse slipped in. John turned. 

“I brought her something,” he said and handed the nurse 

his gift: a stuffed white dog. 

“That’s very sweet,” she said and laid it beside Bev. It


seemed to enliven the scene just a little, as if some part of 

Bev’s personality had returned in the silly expression of the 

animal. 

“I’ll see you later, Beverly,” John said haltingly. Then he 

walked out. A deep weight of responsibility went with him 

to his car and back home. 

• • • 

The Gilvin girls visited their sister on occasion, gathering 

soberly around the foot of her bed. Nobody had scripted 

their interactions with an unconscious sister, so Betty coached 

them. “She can hear you. Talk to her.” 

“Hi, Bev,” Sue said bravely. 

“You look really good, Bevie,” Connie added. 

“Hi, Bev,” Gail said, not feeling very creative. 

“You’re safe here,” Sue continued. “Someone’s always here 

with you. You’re gonna be all right.” 

Connie turned to their mother. “I’m scared.” It was the 

sight of Bev’s eyes, slightly open at the time, and of the 

rolled-up towel placed in her tightly clenched fist to keep 

her fingernails from embedding in her palm. The scene 

frightened her. 

“It’s okay,” Betty said. “This was a nice visit. They’ll see 

you later, Bevie. Say good- bye, girls.” 

“ Good-bye, Bevie. See you soon,” Sue said. 

“Bye, Bevie,” the others said and filed out as silently and 

respectfully as they could. 

Back home, the girls heard their parents praying in their 

bedroom.


“Dear Lord, please bring Beverly back to us,” came their 

father’s muff led voice through the wall. “Please don’t let her 

die. We want to see her. Let her be part of this family again.” 

Their mother’s weeping f lowed under his words like a 

stream of grief. 

In the small home of George and Pat Phillips, the Youth 

for Christ group also prayed earnestly for their friend Bev 

and felt gripped to pray with urgency for John Thornton 

and Russell Gilvin, just as Bev had been asking them to do. 

Together in the modest living room, they cried out, lifting 

up the request Bev had asked them to pray in the months 

before the accident: “Lord, use Bev in any way you see fit so 

that John and Mr. Gilvin will come to you.” 

One Sunday not long after the accident, John, who had 

started to attend church occasionally, listened intently to the 

sermon at Twin Branch Bible Church. When the pastor invited 

the congregation to come forward for prayer, John stood up 

and walked to the front. The situation surrounding the accident 

had opened his eyes. Awareness of his own failure and 

inadequacy had led him to recognize his need for a Savior—or 

for something to guide him out of his brokenness. On a different 

Sunday, Russell did the same thing. On his previous 

visits to church, he had jangled the change in his pocket with 

nervous energy, to the point of distracting people nearby. Now 

he was baptized, and he attended Sunday school so faithfully 

that in the years to come he would win medals for attendance. 

John’s quiet journey of faith helped him formulate a way 

to respond to Bev’s new reality—and the future staring so 

blankly at him.


• • • 

“Good morning, Bevie. It sure is a nice day.” 

The nurses always talked to Bev as they did their rounds. 

As usual, the only response was the hiss of air f lowing into 

her neck through the tracheotomy tube. A small black-and- 

white television droned on from the desk across from the 

bed. Russell had picked it up somewhere on his truck- driving 

journeys. The nurses left it on permanently, on the doctor’s 

theory that it would stimulate Bev’s brain. 

“July Fourth was nice,” the nurse continued. “Kind of 

hot. The fireworks were spectacular. You could see their 

ref lection in the river. It was gorgeous.” 

Suddenly something hit the nurse’s back and fell to the 

f loor. She looked down—a white stuffed dog rested at her 

feet. She turned. Bev’s eyes were open, and her glare indicated 

she was seriously annoyed. The nurse had been standing 

between Bev and the television, and Bev had thrown the 

dog to get her to move. The nurse gasped, dropped her tray, 

and rushed from the room. 

The call to the Gilvin house was triumphant, joyful, and 

unexpected. 

“I’m happy to tell you that Bev woke up today,” the doctor 

said. “She’s going to live.” 

Russell hugged Betty tightly, both of them feeling waves 

of victory and relief. Betty cried. A miracle, it seemed, had 

been granted as a result of the prayers of friends and family. 

After three months, few people were expecting Bev to live. 

The Gilvin sisters were beside themselves.


“Bev’s back!” Gail yelled, running around the house 

before being herded to the car to visit her. April clapped her 

hands in celebration. If everyone else was happy, she was 

happy too. 

Bev’s eyes were open, and she was looking around, but as 

was to be expected for someone who had lain motionless in 

bed for three months, she had lost some of her body’s functions. 

She could not speak, sit up, walk, or use her arms or 

hands in any consistent way. She had partial amnesia and 

had forgotten the three days preceding the accident and the 

accident itself. 

“Sit up now, Bev,” the nurses said as they led her through her 

first rounds of physical therapy. Carefully, they placed hands 

behind her back and brought her forward. Bev’s eyes registered 

that it was happening, but her response was wordless. 

“We’re going to put your legs over the bed for a few minutes 

before laying you back down again, okay?” 

Bev gave approval with a look. 

Within a few days, they were standing her up between 

two strong nurses who held her arms like fence posts so she 

wouldn’t pitch forward. They trained her hands so she could 

feed herself and handle her own hygiene. She did these tasks 

roughly. Her fine motor skills appeared to be gone. She 

could not pick up an object without long moments of mental 

determination and a slow, clumsy physical response. Her 

joints seemed locked in place and no longer moved with the 

f luidity of normal human motion. 

“These things will come back,” the doctors told her family 

encouragingly. “Just keep working with her on them.”


John heard that Bev was conscious and waited a few 

days before coming to the hospital to visit. As he stepped 

into the second f loor hallway, he saw Bev standing there 

between two nurses, struggling to take a step. Her body 

was bent unnaturally, and she was still wearing a hospital 

gown. To John she appeared elderly, broken, even forlorn. 

She looked up at him slowly, still unable to speak, and their 

eyes met. John wasn’t sure if she even recognized him. Her 

mind appeared entirely focused on regaining control of her 

legs. Shocked, unable to imagine a conversation, and not 

wanting to interrupt her therapy, he turned and walked 

briskly out. 

The tracheotomy had left Bev’s throat scratchy and 

injured. One day she spoke her first word since the accident: 

“Daddy.” It came as a low croak, so frightening to Connie 

and Gail that they secretly hoped she would not speak again 

until her voice returned to normal. 

After a couple of weeks, doctors were satisfied that she 

was making enough progress to go home and continue her 

recovery there. She still could not walk on her own and spoke 

only in an unnerving baritone rasp. 

“Her motor skills will return over time,” doctors said. 

“Just keep working with her.” 

A hospital bed, quietly donated by the Thorntons, was 

waiting for Bev at the Gilvin residence. It was placed in the 

girls’ bedroom, then later in the tiny, centrally located dining 

room, which would become Bev’s room for two years. 

A day or two after Bev’s return, Connie and Gail lowered 

the rails and helped their sister down from the bed.


“The doctors said you should crawl because it will help 

you get your coordination and f lexibility back,” Connie said. 

Bev looked at her wide- eyed, partially comprehending. 

“Come on,” Connie coaxed. “Let’s get down on the f loor.” 

Carefully and slowly they helped her to her knees, then 

laid her f lat on her stomach. They got on either side of her, 

took her same face-down position, and began the exercise. 

“Now pull your knees under you and push up with your 

hands,” Connie said. Bev slowly followed their example with 

moderate success. She seemed taxed to her limit. She awkwardly 

pushed her chest a couple of inches off the ground. 

“That’s good, Bevie!” Gail said as Bev sank back to the 

f loor, unable to hold the pose or to complete the desired 

movement. “Let’s do it again. This is fun!” 

Gail enjoyed playing teacher in the mock schoolroom in 

their basement, and now she was able to teach a real, live 

pupil. Hopes of a full recovery filled everyone’s minds. 

Bev rested a moment, then tried to push herself up again. 

This time she got farther. 

“Good, Bevie!” Connie said. “Now let’s crawl forward, 

just one step.” 

“I . . . can do . . . this,” Bev said. To their relief, the 

scratchy, deep voice had gradually gone away. But her speaking 

cadence still sounded off, as if she were drugged. Gail 

reached over to move Bev’s free arm forward. 

“Don’t . . . help . . . me! I . . . can do . . . this,” Bev said 

gruff ly. 

She seemed upset, humiliated. Older than both Connie 

and Gail, she was now groveling painfully on the f loor. Her


sisters could get up and walk around at whim, but Bev was 

stuck. 

“ Here—come this far,” Gail said, sitting a few feet in front 

of her. Bev grunted and willed her limbs to move. 

“Like this,” Connie said. 

“I . . . can . . . do . . . it!” Bev snapped back. “Don’t . . . 

help . . . me!” 

“But Mom said to help you,” Connie said. “She wants us 

to help you.” 

Bev collapsed on the f loor. 

“I . . . can do . . . it,” she said, voice muff led by the carpet, 

where her face was now half-buried. “Stop . . . helping . . . me.” 

The next morning, Connie, Gail, and April came into the 

bedroom holding a plate of runny eggs, a glass of juice, utensils, 

and a dish towel. Bev stared at them, leery and confused. 

“What . . . happened?” she said. 

“It’s breakfast time!” April announced. Bev shook her 

head and repeated, “What . . . happened?” They knew what 

she meant. 

“You were in an accident,” Gail said plainly. “You don’t 

have to think about it.” 

“I don’t . . . remember.” Bev’s face held unspoken questions. 

Why am I in this room? Why am I in this bed? Why can’t 

I move or speak normally? What happened to me? 

“Everything’ll be fine, Bevie,” Gail said. “Look, we 

brought you some eggs!” 

April approached and set the eggs on Bev’s lap. Connie 

gently put a fork in Bev’s left hand and helped her poke some 

eggs, dribbling with yolk just like their mother always made


them. She guided the fork to her mouth, and Bev took them 

in and began chewing. She was right- handed, but the effects 

of the accident had caused the whole right side of her body 

to remain stiff. 

“After a while, you’ll be doing this on your own,” Connie 

assured her. 

“I’ve got juice when you want some,” Gail volunteered. 

Connie turned for a moment to April, who was standing 

by the fan they called “big blue” because of its size and color. 

It was the only thing that kept them from madness during 

sweltering summers. “April, would you get the salt and pepper 

from the table?” she asked. 

Just then, April’s eyes went wide and she ducked. A plate 

full of eggs zoomed by her and into the fan. Yolk f lecks spattered 

around the room in an explosion of yellow stickiness. 

The girls looked toward the bed. Bev’s left hand was wavering 

in midair, her face a picture of rage. Connie and Gail looked 

at her as if to question why. April sobbed and ran from the 

room to find Betty, then threw herself into her mother’s arms. 

“I can’t help with Bevie anymore,” she said. Connie and 

Gail came behind her. 

“Bev threw a plate of eggs at her,” Connie said in a confused 

whisper. 

Betty’s expression clouded, but just for a moment. 

“April, we can do this. We can all do this. We need to help 

your sister. Now Gail and Connie, why don’t you clean up 

the egg before it dries all over the place?” 

Betty held April until she stopped crying. 

A few days later, Connie came in to bathe her sister the


way the nurses had taught them, using a basin filled with 

warm water. Afterward, she began brushing Bev’s hair. 

“You’re getting much better at walking,” Connie said with 

a mother’s assurance. “It won’t be long before we’re all back at 

school. Everything’ll be fun. Ooh, your hair looks nice, too. 

I’m glad we washed it—” 

Without warning, Bev swung her elbow around angrily, 

smacking Connie’s arm and sending the hairbrush f lying 

across the room. Connie jumped back, unable to mask her 

emotions. The hairbrush clattered to a rest. Bev’s eyes f lashed 

with ire, and she settled into an angry, unexplained silence. 

Connie quietly picked up the basin and walked out of the 

room. 

Questions poured out when the girls were riding in the 

car with their mother. 

“Why is Bevie different now?” April asked. 

“Because of the accident,” Betty said. 

“But why?” 

“April, that’s enough.” 

“Is she going to be normal again?” 

Betty paused. “She’s going to be just fine.” 

Connie and Gail looked at each other, wondering how 

much hope to set on her words. 

• • • 

After two months, Bev was walking and talking well enough 

to enroll for her sophomore year in the fall. The high school 

had passed her through ninth grade, due to her academic 

strength. Now it was time to return to normal life.


While Bev was unconscious, John had graduated and 

taken a job with Everett- Ballard Funeral Home. His goal: 

to become a mortician. They put him to work cleaning 

the place, doing routine maintenance, and driving an 

ambulance—mostly to pick up drunks and vagrants. At 

the time, the mortuary business operated ambulances that 

offered no service except a fast ride to the hospital. After a 

year of apprenticeship, John could attend mortician school, 

then get his license and perhaps one day own a funeral home 

or become an embalmer on staff. 

He had chosen not to fade away from the Gilvin family 

and instead was quietly allowed to see Bev again. Betty 

and Russell even gave him permission to drive Bev to school 

occasionally. 

But school was proving difficult for Bev. Her natural 

intelligence seemed bottled up inside her, tangled at times. 

Connie was tagged to help her with her homework. One day 

she brought in the geometry book for a quick lesson before 

the next day’s exam. 

“Triangles are very predictable,” Connie instructed, reading 

from the book lying open on Bev’s lap while she sat in 

a chair in the living room. “They have three angles, and the 

angles always add up to one hundred and eighty.” 

Bev listened and processed. 

“So if this angle is forty-five degrees and this one is fifty- 

five, what is this third one?” Connie asked. The question 

hung there as Bev pressed her brain into the problem. 

“ Forty- five plus fifty-five would be . . .” Connie said. 

Bev’s face f lushed. She clearly didn’t like being prompted


or patronized. Her right fist, clenched tighter than normal, 

pressed hard against her body. An expression of pure fury 

tugged at her lips and lit a f lame behind her eyes. 

“I know!” she said. “I get it! I just—” 

She was sputtering frustration. 

“I’m a little thirsty,” Connie said. “I’ll go get us some iced 

tea and we can move on to another problem. Be right back.” 

She stepped away. The sisters were learning how to manage 

Bev’s condition. 

One day in the middle of September, John pulled up to 

the high school. Bev could no longer ride the bus—she was 

too stiff and slow; boarding and riding presented too many 

hazards. She walked over to his car. He pushed open her door 

from the inside in anticipation. With an awkward motion, 

she f lung her pack in and sat down roughly. Pain emanated 

from her eyes so much that John didn’t know how to greet her. 

He pulled away from the curb and began to drive her home. 

“I can’t do anything,” she said after a time of silence. “The 

stairs—I can’t get up them fast enough. I’m late for class. 

The teachers are marking me late. When I get there, I can’t 

open my book to the right page or write anything down fast 

enough. It’s like—like I’m in slow motion, or everyone is in 

fast motion. I don’t know how to keep up anymore.” 

John listened. 

“ People—people make fun of me for the way I do things,” 

she said. “Everyone’s too busy. Everyone’s . . . normal. Like 

I used to be.” 

John’s heart was burning now, his gut screaming with 

indignation. His words burst out almost unwillingly.


“Who are these kids?” he nearly shouted. “Who are these 

teachers? Who is this principal that lets someone get treated 

like this?” 

He looked over at Bev in the passenger seat. Once a shining, 

spunky, school leader, she was now an afterthought to 

most people, an unsolvable equation. She was trapped, body 

and soul. 

“You’re not going back there,” he announced simply, as 

if he had the authority to make it so. Minutes later at the 

Gilvin house, John parked the Corvair in front and walked 

in with greater resolve than he had ever shown in anything. 

Betty and Russell were both in the kitchen. They looked up 

at him, sensing he had something to say. Bev stood behind 

him, clutching her book bag, not knowing what would 

happen. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Gilvin, I don’t know if Bev has told you 

what’s happening at school,” John said. 

They looked at him and waited. 

“Things aren’t working. She can’t get around. People are 

making fun of her. The teachers aren’t helping her. Nobody’s 

helping her!” 

He reined in his frustration and continued evenly. 

“I don’t think she should go back. Not in her condition, 

not the way she is right now. It’s not helping her. It’s not 

helping anybody.” 

He was surprised at his own boldness. Their response surprised 

him even more. 

“We’ve been thinking about that too,” Russell said. Betty 

sighed. John and Bev didn’t know her parents had met with


the principal, who concluded that because Bev could no longer 

navigate the hallways and stairways fast enough to make 

classes on time, it was impossible for her to function as a 

student anymore. 

“We think this is probably the end,” Russell said. “We’ll 

have to do something else.” 

The four of them took the decision in somberly, minds 

full of unspoken questions about the future. So Bev’s academic 

career ended. The straight- A student became, by force 

of circumstance and lack of viable options, a high school 

dropout. 

• • • 

Life went on around her. Bev sat at home and read for hours, a 

pleasure still available to her. Her sisters played volleyball and 

roller-skated in the skates Bev had won them. Betty cooked and 

managed the house; Russell drove the truck; April got bigger; 

Chuck and Sue got serious and married that fall. Perplexed by 

Bev’s condition, everyone quietly hoped she would get better 

over time. Doctors told them—more hope than prognosis— 

that she would improve. After all, there were no obvious injuries, 

no broken bones, not even a notable scratch or bruise left. 

But Bev was a different person, and everybody knew it. 

Meanwhile, John’s stint at the mortuary wasn’t going 

well. Maybe it was the monotony, maybe the dead people. 

He just knew he wanted to go in a different direction. 

Serving in the US Army for four years seemed to offer productive 

work and extra time to plan his life. He told Bev 

of his decision, and though they were still only shallowly


acquainted, they spoke tentatively of a shared future. One 

day in December before heading off to Korea, John went 

to Will’s Jewelry in downtown Mishawaka, with its big, 

landmark clock out front, and bought three matching rings, 

one for him and two for Bev. He surprised her with them 

on Christmas 1963. They weren’t exactly engagement rings. 

After all, she was just sixteen. But they were a statement 

of commitment, his way of saying, “I’m not walking away 

from this.” What that meant, he wasn’t sure. He still saw 

her as the pretty, mischievous, vibrant girl on whom he had 

developed a teenage crush. But now their situation bore the 

weight of adult decisions. 

In Korea’s demilitarized zone, his head was full of its own 

battles. I’ve got to be a man. I’m the one who turned in front 

of that truck on Miracle Lane. I liked her before the accident, 

didn’t I? Does that mean I love her now? Should I marry her 

because of the accident? What’s my responsibility? Am I doing 

this out of guilt? If the accident hadn’t happened, would I still 

be interested in her? 

Letters went back and forth over the ocean. John sent gifts 

of beautiful Korean fans to the Gilvin sisters, and they wrote 

back with thanks. The sisters spied on Bev as she wrote letters 

to John at the kitchen table. Writing was so laborious for her 

that it took hours to commit enough words to paper to merit 

the stamp. Soon their frequent letters circled around the idea 

of actually getting married and setting a date. Following his 

gut and settling the storm inside his conscience, John confirmed 

he would like to marry Bev. She received her parents’ 

approval. They thought Bev was young, but John was trying


to do the right thing, and what other future would a daughter 

in her condition have? 

The wedding was planned while John was in Korea. He 

came home on leave, stepped into a nice suit, and put a ring 

on Bev’s finger in a ceremony at Twin Branch Bible Church. 

She wore a borrowed dress and gripped her father’s arm like 

a vise to keep from falling as she walked down the aisle. 

Her sisters wore pillbox hats and “rainbow dresses”—April 

in yellow, Connie in blue, Gail in pink, Sue in mint green, 

and John’s sister, Donna, in purple. Each dress had ruff les 

around the bottom. April carried a little white basket. John’s 

best man was a guy he had never met, because Chuck was 

Roman Catholic, and in 1966 Catholics and Protestants in 

that area didn’t generally participate in each other’s weddings. 

The reception was held in the basement with cake, punch, 

and pastel mints. Bev shone like the sun with joy. 

As excited as the Gilvin sisters were to be in a wedding, 

their opinions of John were mixed. Bev insisted to Connie 

that she loved John, but Connie still felt Bev was too young 

to get married. And Sue openly disliked him at first. Gail 

and April were younger and more sanguine about the future. 

The Thorntons hosted everyone for a rehearsal dinner at 

the Lincoln Highway Inn. The girls had concluded by now 

that John’s family was rich. 

“I bet the girls who eat here have their own bedrooms,” 

Gail whispered as they admired the elaborate interior of 

the inn. 

“I bet they have their own dressers,” Connie said. 

“I bet they have their own closets,” Gail said.


“And lots of shoes,” Connie added before their mother 

hushed them. 

As Betty put it, the Thorntons were “not the kind of 

people we would normally have picnics with,” but they 

were nice enough. The Thorntons paid for John and Bev’s 

honeymoon—three nights in a classy Chicago hotel overlooking 

Lake Michigan—but the honeymooners didn’t get 

that far. Twenty miles out of town after the wedding reception, 

John spotted a motel and took an early exit. 

“That looks like a nice place,” he said. 

Bev eyed him with good-natured suspicion. John 

shrugged. 

“Chicago’s a long drive. We wouldn’t be there for another 

hour and a half.” 

Five nights later, they reported to Fort Sill in Oklahoma, 

where John entered a new round of training. Then the army 

deployed him to an emerging global hot spot—Vietnam. 

There he worked the radio with a couple of officers, scrambling 

and unscrambling coded messages that came in. One 

day he got a message from his dad, delivered by the Red 

Cross: a son, Shawn, was born December 20, 1966. 

John was now a father, and I was his son. 

Mom sent reel-to- reel tapes of me crying, and the guys in 

Dad’s unit lay on their beds and listened to those tapes for 

hours. They hadn’t seen or heard their own children for so 

long that even my squalling sounded sweet. 

Mom and I lived with Grandma and Grandpa Thornton 

in their large home until Dad got home in June 1967. He 

had avoided, by just a few weeks, the bloodiest months of


that war. He got a job at Dodge Manufacturing—an iron 

foundry that made parts for large machinery makers such 

as Caterpillar. Soon after that, he and Mom found a home 

on the outskirts of Mishawaka on a dead- end cinder road 

with three homes. Ours was the smallest—handmade and 

less than a thousand square feet. But it was the house I grew 

up in. 

It sat on Victory Road.


All But Normal? 






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CHAPTER ONE 

I am Adam Eberhart. 

At least, that’s who I was in utero. 

Then, on the way to the hospital in Boston, my mother— 

who knew her husband well—asked my father one last time if 

he wanted to change his mind, to which Dad replied, “Well, if 

it’s a boy, I guess we’d better name him after me.” 

So instead of being Adam Eberhart—which is primary, euphonious, 

and individual— I became Richard Butcher Eberhart, son 

of Richard Ghormley Eberhart. 

When I was brought home, Dad and our next-door neighbor 

were philosophizing upon the event. 

“What will you call him?” our neighbor wanted to know. 

My father was Richie to my mother and close relatives, and 

Dick to everyone else. So those names were used up. “How about 

Little Richard—but in Middle English: Diccon?” Dad suggested. 

The neighbor, who was a Greek scholar, scribbled on a piece 

of paper, considered it for a moment, and then said, “The name 

3

THE TIME MOM MET HITLER . . . 

would look better, aesthetically, if you used the Greek k instead 

of the English c. Thus: Dikkon.” 

And so it was. 

Not a great name when you are in junior high. You can imagine 

the taunts. So I was Richard in seventh grade and Rick in 

eighth and ninth grades. Dad’s academic- gypsy life gave me the 

liberty to remake myself with abandon every time I changed to a 

different school. (I attended seven of them during twelve years.) 

During my seminary years, people often misunderstood me 

to be “Deacon” Eberhart, which, while it led to a funny explanation, 

did little to affirm my sense of identity. During the 

1970s, when I was living in Berkeley, the daikon (a Japanese 

radish) rose to prominence, leading people to wonder if perhaps 

that was how my name was supposed to be pronounced. (So 

you’ll know, it’s pronounced Dick-On.) 

Try introducing yourself as Dikkon Eberhart at a noisy cocktail 

party. What people hear is aggressively German— Dick von 

Eberhart. 

Later, during my career as a salesman, I discovered that my 

name was a benefit after all. Customers often forgot my name 

after a sales call, but they did remember that they liked to buy 

from that salesman with the strange name. They would call my 

employer. Send me the guy with the odd name. 

During Shakespeare’s time, Diccon was a famous character 

in many plays about bedlam—madness. Diccon was used by 

many playwrights as a disruptive trickster, who stole and jabbered 

and kept the farce moving along, presumably to laughter 

and to ridicule from the audience. And in Shakespeare’s own 

Richard III that wicked king is called Dickon by his scheming 

supporters. 

4

DIKKON EBERHART 

These were not the sorts of Dikkon I desired to be. When 

I was young, though, Mom introduced me to a different sort 

of Dickon— in Frances Burnett’s The Secret Garden. Burnett’s 

Dickon is a wild boy from the moors—yes, as he sometimes was 

in the bedlam plays—but here, Dickon is also a spiritual guide. 

It is Dickon who assists Colin and Mary in the secret garden 

and helps them to heal. 

At last! Here was a namesake who was neither a bedlam 

trickster nor a humpbacked king who may have smothered 

his own nephews (and did, according to Shakespeare). A vast 

improvement. I must have read that salubrious book a dozen 

times while growing up. 

During the years when separating myself from my father was 

a big issue for me, I used to long after that fellow Adam. I had 

almost escaped! Surely Adam would not have had any of the 

problems Dikkon had! 

You see, my father was a poet, and he was very well received— 

indeed, famous— in America and England during the half century 

between the early 1930s and the late 1980s. My parents 

knew and were close friends with most of the poets who were 

publishing during those years—Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, 

Allen Ginsberg, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Robert Lowell . . . 

the list is long. Most of these people were casual droppers- in at 

our house, largely, I believe, because my parents were cordial 

and were pacifists when it came to literary war. 

Dad and Mom delighted in almost every poetical voice, 

regardless of who had recently snubbed whom, or whom the 

critics were making eyes at just then. The critics appoint themselves 

to be the door wardens to literary immortality—they 

hold the keys to what many poets want most. The struggle for 

5


approval by the critics might simmer for years, as one group 

seeks to advance in critical attention against another group. 

Literary battles can be fierce, but some of them provide us 

with great one-liners. For example, when I was young, debate 

had been ongoing for decades about the value of what is called 

free verse. Writers of free verse avoid conventional structures 

of poetry such as rhyme and meter and punctuation and any 

set length of line. Instead, they write their verse in open form 

anywhere on the page and believe they have creatively freed 

both themselves and their readers from stodgy old constraints 

in favor of greater beauty and inspiration. 

One of Dad’s friends, Allen Ginsberg, was often looked 

upon as a master of free verse. Several times I heard Allen proclaim 

his allegiance to free verse. But another friend of Dad’s, 

Robert Frost, came up with the best line. Frost said that writing 

free verse is like playing tennis without a net. 

Granted, many a young man has a father who looms large in 

his life, particularly in his early life. I became aware of Dad’s professional 

success later—the prizes, the awards, the laureateships, 

the honorary degrees, his many books, etc. What I was aware of 

as a boy, however, were his passionate words themselves— their 

hot rhythms and their vibrant inflections. 

Dad was an ardent lyricist. When Dad read his poems aloud 

(or rather sang them, as I thought it), his particular words, in 

their particular order, seemed to me to have hung in the air 

forever, indelibly, from the moment of Creation itself. This 

impressed me mightily. In our living room, or from a stage 

somewhere, there came cosmological and literary perfection, 

and it was modeled for me by my dad. 

If I had been a different boy (if I had been Adam, for example), 

6


my life would have been easier. For if I had been a different boy, 

I might have aspired to be an astronaut, or a quarterback, or an 

FBI agent, or something else—certainly not a poet! But in my 

soul, I knew that I was like Dad. I, too, was a word-smithing guy. 

And Dad . . . well, Dad cast a decidedly long literary shadow. 

From the day I was born, from the very giving of my name, 

I had been molded as a literary artifact. Perhaps that moment 

with Dad and our Greek-scholar neighbor was like what happened 

in Eden when God paraded His newly created creatures 

before Adam to get their names. 

What shall we call this new thing, and why? That was the 

question God asked of Adam. 

Adam said, It’s a dog! Because he is loyal and brave and will 

fight for us. 

Dad (and his friend) said, It’s a Dikkon! Because he shall 

absorb his father into his very soul on the chance that one day, like 

a chrysalis, he may emerge from his cocoon with his own wider and 

radiant wings. 

I was— at once— positioned for literary potential, yet at the 

same time saddled by Dad’s own literary achievement. It was 

a weight under which I would stagger and chafe for decades. 

Without intending it, my father and his Greek-minded 

friend had sentenced me to a lifetime of worry and self-doubt. 

I could never claim victory in the war I launched against myself 

to defeat that doubt. I was much like another Greek, the mythical 

King Sisyphus, who was sentenced by Zeus to spend eternity 

pushing a giant boulder up the side of a mountain, only to have 

it roll back down again each time the boulder was just inches 

from the top. 

Growing up, I sat at our dining table with literary “gods” 

7


beside me, and I passed the peanuts to them at cocktail parties. 

I delighted to run in my imagination, to catch up with their 

quick talk and with their perfected allusions. I was aware that 

I was not of them, yet I observed that my parents delighted in 

them. I thought that someday I might word-smith, too, and 

then I would be of them. 

They impressed me, not because of their literary renown—I 

was indifferent to that because they all had literary renown in 

the same way that they all had faces or feet—but because of 

their oddities. 

The seemingly delicate poet Marianne Moore excited me 

with her baseball interest—and was chosen later to throw 

out the first pitch during the 1968 baseball season at Yankee 

Stadium. 

The urbane southern poet Allen Tate delighted me when 

he argued at length with Dad about the language of human 

sexual intercourse. Is it always making love (Tate’s view) or can 

it legitimately be described as . . . well, a word with an f (Dad’s 

view). Vital info for me at fifteen! 

The Majorcan poet, novelist, and mythologist Robert 

Graves— in the States to assist the filming of his Roman novels 

I, Claudius and Claudius, the God—who declined to discuss 

with me his experiences in World War I, and wanted instead to 

laugh with Mom and Dad about the unhappy fate of his bohemian 

grocery store—he was amusing both for his erudition and 

for his mouse- skin cap. 

The tweedy Sir Osbert and the long-nosed Dame Edith 

Sitwell—she with the diamonds as big as ice cubes on her 

fingers—excited my imagination. Though brother and sister, 

they were my first knight and lady. Dame Edith asked novelist 

8


Evelyn Waugh to be her godfather when she converted to 

Roman Catholicism. The author of Brideshead Revisited, Waugh 

was a favorite of mine. 

Angular Ted Hughes and pretty but strained Sylvia Plath 

were, after Plath’s suicide, the protagonists in a literary and 

feminist furor over the contents of Plath’s roman à clef The Bell 

Jar. I remember Hughes, not Plath, although I probably met 

her because she was a Cambridge-based, literary-minded, Smith 

College girl not unlike my mother, although eighteen years her 

junior. What I do remember is my parents’ concern for them 

at the incautious shortness of time between their meeting and 

their marriage— only four months. 

Encounters like these were endless, but I could empathize 

with poor old King Sisyphus. It’s no small task perpetually 

breaking bread with greatness, trying to keep up with greatness’s 

chatter, but coming up short of it time and time again. 

Greek mythology also tells us that King Sisyphus was guilty 

of murder. 

For years, I believed I was too. 

Here’s what happened. 

9

CHAPTER TWO 

Dad was born in 1904,in Austin, Minnesota, the seventh 

generation of Eberharts in America. We count our line as commencing 

with Paul Eberhart, who was born at sea in 1727, 

while his parents were en route from what is now Germany 

to Philadelphia. As was the case with most eighteenth-century 

immigrants, the Eberharts came to this country for greater civil 

and religious freedom and for greater financial opportunity 

than they had in the Old World. 

They emigrated from Wurttemberg, which is now part 

of Germany, anchored by its capital city, Stuttgart. If you go 

to Stuttgart today, you will find statues there of our ancestors, 

among them Eberhart the Noble, Eberhart the Groaner, 

Eberhart the Fat, and— this is the one I like the best— Eberhart 

of the Rushing Beard. 

Once our family came to the New World, we pressed ever 

westward from Philadelphia through western Pennsylvania, 

Illinois, and finally into Iowa. 

Dad’s grandfather was Jeremiah Snyder Eberhart, a Great 

11


Plains circuit- riding Methodist preacher possessed of— it was 

said—a fiery passion. Jeremiah had three brothers who were 

ministers too. One of those minister brothers was Isa Eberhart, 

who also became a published poet. So when Dad was a young 

teenager and the assignment at school was to produce a poem 

by the next day, and in an ecstasy of excitement, Dad produced 

five poems, the Eberhart family’s explanation was that, 

of course, Dad was merely following the lead of his great-uncle 

Isa, the minister- poet. 

My father’s father was born in Albion, Iowa, about sixty 

miles west-northwest of Cedar Rapids. His full name was Alpha 

LaRue Eberhart, but he was always known by his initials, as 

A.L. 

During A.L.’s youth, there was virtually nothing in northern 

Iowa and southern Minnesota save for acre upon acre of black- 

earth prairie, on which the American Indians had once resided 

along with flights of killdeer and herds of buffalo. At first 

slowly, and then with greater rapidity, frontier homesteading 

farmers arrived, which meant that towns were built, churches 

were planted, entrepreneurialism flourished, the law made its 

first inroads, and a rough-and-ready frontier ethos became the 

norm. 

In this way, the American prairie was tamed and usefully 

transformed— as the nineteenth century would record it— into 

the production of wheat, corn, alfalfa, soybeans, and especially 

of hogs, steers, and chickens. 

There were a lot of hungry mouths in the cities of the East, 

and those mouths needed to be fed. That need created a generation 

of strong farmers on the Midwest plains, who plowed, and 

harrowed, and winnowed, and threshed. It was a time when 

12


young men weighing no more than one hundred pounds came 

of age by mastering two thousand–pound Percheron horses— 

sometimes, indeed, four of them at the same time. The terrain 

was flat and vast. Young men were out there alone on the land, 

controlling their teams with the flick of reins and a whistle. 

A.L. left school at age fourteen and began his career as a 

farm laborer. But he had bigger ideas than that. Chicago was 

the place where a young man with drive could succeed, and so, a 

year later, A.L. made his way there. During the next six years, he 

managed to save enough money to open his own store, selling 

men’s fashions. But he was too restless for retail, and he sold the 

store and went out on the road as a glove salesman. 

The financial panic of 1890 drove A.L. back to Chicago, 

where he capitalized on what was a family acquaintance with 

George H. Swift. Swift brought the young Eberhart into the 

Swift meatpacking company, and over the next few years A.L. 

rose until he was a manager of Swift’s South St. Paul, Minnesota, 

branch. 

By 1900, A.L. had made a name for himself—he possessed 

energy, drive, imagination, and the hunger to live well. The late 

nineteenth century created an opportunity for many men to 

get rich. One of them was a New York–born German butcher 

named George A. Hormel. Any man with the ability to catch a 

wind as it blew—and with the vision to sail it cunningly—could 

make the prairie hum. George A. Hormel was one such man. 

By the time of my father’s birth, Austin, Minnesota, was humming. 

There, in 1894, Hormel had begun to build his dream of 

a meatpacking enterprise that could rival George Swift’s. He had 

assistance from his three brothers, but most especially, in 1900, 

he seduced A.L. away from Swift. Hormel knew a comer when 

13


he saw one, so he brought my grandfather aboard as a director 

and made him head of sales, and in 1901, they incorporated. 

Two years later, A.L. and his wife, Lena, celebrated the birth 

of their first son, Dryden. Then, in 1904, their second son, my 

father, was born; their daughter, Elizabeth, came a few years 

later. Everything was falling into place for A.L. and Lena. By 

the time my father was born, A.L. was on his way to becoming 

a wealthy man. 

A.L. could help people decide. Every business needs people to 

decide. A yes helps the business and the customer directly. A no 

may help the competitor, which in the end helps the business by 

forcing it to improve. But a maybe is death. A.L. was a no-maybes 

guy. And as it turned out, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. 

Uncle Dry also became a salesman (stocks and bonds), as did 

his son, Bill (cosmetics). For a brief period in his forties, even 

Dad spent time as a salesman (floor wax). Unlike the others, 

though, Dad held on to his sales job only until something better 

came along. Unlike his father, Dad was not a no- maybes guy. 

Dad was a poet. Poets love maybes. A poet’s maybe is the linguistic 

and aesthetic well from which creative juices flow. If you 

want to find the home of a poet’s muse, figure out the location 

of that poet’s maybe. 

* * * 

Soon after my father was born, the Eberhart family moved into 

Burr Oaks, an eighteen- room home (complete with a basement 

bowling alley, basketball court, and dance hall) that A.L. built 

for his growing brood and that dominated forty acres of fields, 

woods, and scrub between itself and the Cedar River. Many are 

the youthful adventure stories that Dad set there. 

14


In the melt days of early spring, Dad and his brother, Dry, 

would chop enormous cakes of ice loose from the river banks 

and launch them into the stream. They’d take big branches of 

downed trees aboard, and using these clumsily for oars, they’d 

try to maneuver their unsteady craft downstream. The river was 

cold, and though it was not deep in summer, in spring its current 

ran very high and fast with the snowmelt water, and once 

it entered the woods, its way was tangled with fallen trunks and 

rock outcrops. The goal was to ride the urgent current all the 

way to the falls . . . of course, when no one was looking—no 

parent, that is—for this was a daring and dangerous thing to do. 

When I was young and enthralled with the stories Dad 

would tell, the Cedar seemed to me to be as wild as Huck Finn’s 

river, and just as fine a place for a boy to lie on his back, adrift 

upon a raft, and to feel that the world is, indeed, awful purty. 

“Tell the one about the ice cakes,” I’d plead. Then I’d snuggle 

against my father, he of the scratchy face and pipe smoke. For I 

was little, and he was big, and I’d know the story would come 

out okay. 

As the boys float along, the day grows colder, and it 

begins to snow. And the trees close in. It’s darker. And 

the river runs faster now as it dips into the darkness of 

the forest. And there are— of course—the falls ahead. 

Not yet heard, but waiting, dark and toothed. Then, in 

the dark: a lurch. The ice cake hits a fallen tree, rides 

up a little, whirls, hangs precariously, and . . . cracks in 

half ! Plunges into the stream. The boys are wobbling 

now, crouching, terrified. Another piece of ice breaks 

off. Water covers the top of the ice now. Now they’re 

15


sinking. And now they hear . . . is that the falls? It is! 

And now the falls are closer. And no one knows where 

they are. Faster the river runs, and faster. The falls are a 

roar. The ice cake whirls. Then, just at the penultimate 

moment, the boys spy a tree branch hanging low across 

the stream. Can they make it? Frantic work with the 

useless oars. Closer. Closer. The falls are a death trap 

about to snap closed. The boys crouch. They spring. 

They clasp. They sway. The ice cake disappears in a 

rumble of destruction. And there are the boys hanging 

by their armpits, shuffling sideways, immortal. 

Ah, the thrill! And it might have happened. One can never really 

be sure with poets. 

* * * 

My mother found an attractive, frontier, Tom Sawyer– ish quality 

in Dad’s tales of his Minnesota youth. Of course when Dad was 

young, the unfenced prairie no longer stretched from southern 

Minnesota all the way to the Rockies. But Mom, who grew up in 

cultured surroundings in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was nonetheless 

thrilled with Dad’s vicarious touches of the Wild West. 

My mother was a woman who loved to sing her way around 

the house as she swept and cooked, and a particular favorite 

was Bing Crosby’s hit “Don’t Fence Me In.” She and I would 

do the song together in the kitchen as she prepared onions, a 

slice emphasizing the end of each line— 

I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences [slice] 

And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses [slice] 

16


And I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences [slice] 

Don’t fence me in [sweep everything into the pot] 

I understood Mom’s delight at the idea that her husband, when 

he was a boy, might have ridden his cayuse all the way to the 

mythical spot where the West commences. Mom loved Dad’s 

frontier boyhood, just as she did his deeply expressed love of 

the history of his family. 

Family lineage, the dignity of earliest ancestry—these were 

very important to my father. He thrived on the meaning of 

being an Eberhart. Dad’s mythmaking imagination delighted 

in who we are. Westward drive was one of the meanings of the 

American Eberharts. 

But Dad had reversed the westward-pushing trend of our 

ancestors. While Uncle Dry settled in Wilmette, near Chicago, 

and Aunt Bunny (Dad’s sister, Elizabeth) married a Texas oilman 

and settled in Albuquerque, Dad turned back to the east— 

first for his college education, then even farther to England for 

his graduate work. Upon returning to the States, Dad cemented 

our family’s geography by making his living teaching at eastern 

universities and summering in Maine. 

Why this reversal, undermining as it did a major Eberhart 

meaning? Because everything changed for my father when he 

was seventeen. 

It was the fall of 1921. That was the time of the knockout 

punch. Dad’s family was smacked down onto the mat, and 

when Dad looked up and shook his head to clear his buzzing 

brain, he perceived that everything had changed. Everything he 

had known and trusted had changed to a wilderness of doubt 

and fear. 

17

CHAPTER THREE 

So what happened in 1921? 

To understand what happened, you need to know the three 

top men at Hormel. There was George A. Hormel, of course, 

whose dream it was to beat George Swift in business. There 

was A.L., his second- in- command, and there was Ransom J. 

Thomson, also known as Cy, who was comptroller and reported 

directly to my grandfather. 

In 1921, A.L. was at the top of his powers. He was well respected 

in the meatpacking industry for his business acumen, 

and he was well compensated by Hormel for his sales success. A 

big man with a big car was my grandfather, and he supported 

his family with self-confidence. 

Both Hormel and my grandfather were important men in 

the upper Midwest, and for a short period of time, Cy was too. 

Though he was still in his twenties, Cy was a friend of the governor, 

of senators and representatives, and of all persons of consequence 

in the region. He came to Hormel right after high school graduation 

and impressed George greatly with his drive and ambition. 

19


He did not begin to steal until 1911. 

Ten years later, in 1921, the story of Cy Thomson’s million- 

dollar embezzlement was a national sensation. There was a 

Robin Hood fascination about the thing, owing in part to the 

fact that he gave a lot of the money away. Also, there was the 

local horror that this man—this man!—known and liked by 

everyone, the benefactor of thousands, was a crook! How could 

that be? 

When Thomson returned after almost ten years in prison, 

many people stood him drinks, and clapped him on the back, 

and swore they had never believed in his guilt. His confession, 

they assured him, must have been a cover- up for the guilt of his 

superiors, one of whom was my grandfather, A.L. 

So how did Thomson work it? 

Once he was released from prison, Thomson wrote a memoir 

of about seventeen thousand words in which he sought to 

do three things. One, he addressed young men and warned 

them not to do what he had done. They must not find themselves 

“sinking into the quicksand,” as he called it, of crime. 

Two, he explained that the embezzlement was really the fault 

of the Hormel organization because the Hormels had given 

such a young man as he was such ready access to the company’s 

enormous funds (in 1920, Hormel grossed about $30 million). 

So, really, the incautious Hormels ought to have expected 

something bad to happen. And, three, he described how the 

embezzle ment was done: he kited checks. 

As Thomson said in his memoir, it was all so foolishly easy. 

The money was coming in so fast and moving around so fast, 

that no one except himself—and he did all this in his head 

without ever writing anything down—no one except himself 

20


could keep track of it, certainly no auditor. The downside for 

poor Thomson personally, though—and he bemoaned this in 

his memoir—was that he was losing sleep while trying to keep 

the accounts straight in his head. 

The other downside was that he could never—not ever— 

take a day off. The entire community admired Thomson’s attendance 

record at Hormel. What an employee this man was! He 

was tireless. He was faithful. He was always there with a ready 

answer anytime anyone asked a financial question. And every 

single day, after Thomson’s Hormel work was done, he traveled 

the two hours to a spot next to the town of LeRoy, where he 

had laid out and was building his experimental farms and his 

entertainment park, Oak Dale. Every day, he oversaw its gargantuan 

growth. 

Of course, the truth was that Thomson could never dare to 

miss a work day at Hormel because he couldn’t risk someone 

else opening the mail. 

Thomson’s first theft was this: he stole $800 from a woman 

in South Dakota who mailed a check to the company to purchase 

eight shares of stock. Thomson issued the stock immediately. 

Then he placed her funds “in transit,” as he said. That 

same $800 was still in transit ten years later when Thomson was 

finally found out. 

The whole Cy Thomson story was—and remains—fascinating, 

in a fascination-with-depravity kind of way. For ten years, 

Cy Thomson was one of the biggest men in the upper Midwest. 

His Oak Dale enterprise was so famous that it attracted as many 

as thirty thousand eager visitors each weekend, at the cost of 

one dime per head. 

So eager were the visitors to come to Oak Dale that the 

21


famous Oak Dale Trail was carved out of the prairie. The Trail 

led travelers the 350 miles from Chicago, or the 180 miles from 

Minneapolis/St. Paul— to Oak Dale. Thomson published brochures 

and maps of the route, with notes suggesting stops at 

such- and- such a hotel, or restaurant, or campsite, or mechanic 

along the way. The cost to advertise in the brochure was to 

pave a section of the Trail. Each business that paved the Trail 

received a special Oak Dale Trail sign. Therefore, Thomson’s 

customers experienced a smoothly paved road maintained at the 

expense of the advertisers (with frequent brand- name signage), 

and reassuring accompanying notes in the travel guide, which, 

among other enticements, listed the locations of all the most 

comfortable bathrooms along the nearly 530 miles of the Trail. 

Why, the travel experience was as much fun as being at Oak 

Dale itself ! 

Cy Thomson began his experimental farms with Single 

Comb White Leghorn chickens and then branched out to 

Duroc hogs. But how to attract more customers? Beyond offering 

a tour of his barns—principally fascinating to the men of 

the visiting family—Thomson knew that he needed to attract 

the wives. The answer was Oak Dale Park. 

As he did with everything, Thomson made the park grand. 

It had a pavilion dance hall decorated by the finest artist from 

San Francisco, with room for one thousand dancing couples 

and lit by two thousand electric lights. Famous bands such as 

Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, and Red Nichols and His Five 

Pennies all played at Oak Dale. Even Thomson’s tennis courts 

were lit for nighttime play. All you had to do was put a coin 

into the slot, and the lights came on for as long as the timer 

ticked. If you wanted more time, you just added more coins. 

22


The simplicity was brilliant. Cy provided the lights. His customers 

paid the electric bill. 

There were gymnasiums for children, wading pools, swings 

and slides, all surrounded by a fence so weary mothers could relax 

in the assurance that their little charges could not wander off. 

And of course, there was also a large outdoor swimming pool. 

I can imagine the Eberhart children at Oak Dale. There’s my 

father—I can see him now—standing on the edge of the big 

swimming pool, which was a bright sheet of water, with all his 

friends in it, beckoning. 

Cannonball! 

Cy Thomson made all of this pleasure available to the upper 

Midwest during his ten short years of success. But Thomson’s 

time was running out. In late 1920, an auditor from Minneapolis 

made a sudden appearance at Hormel, demanding to see 

the books immediately. The only mention of my grandfather 

in Thomson’s memoir comes when Thomson convinces the 

auditor to go out with Mr. Eberhart for a round of golf and a 

luncheon at the country club before he sits down to the books. 

Had the auditor not joined A.L. during that morning, though 

the books would have looked fine on examination, the auditor 

would almost surely have noticed that Thomson was personally 

short by roughly $200,000 that day. But he did join my 

grandfather for a round of golf, and in that time, Cy managed 

to doctor the books in his favor. 

Then in late April 1921, the Shawmut Bank in Boston wrote 

to Thomson asking why Hormel’s cash position, recorded at 

slightly over $1 million, did not actually have $1 million of 

cash in it. Thomson was able to deflect the bank’s concern by 

his usual subterfuge. However, the end was near. In early July 

23


1921, the Shawmut wrote a letter directly to George Hormel in 

which it demanded a thorough examination of the company’s 

books. Hormel gathered the directors and called Thomson into 

his office. 

In Thomson’s memoir he makes the exculpatory point that 

he did not really have the heart and soul of a thief— after all, it 

was the fault of the Hormels that he had had such ready access 

to their cash. And he proves his innocence of true thievishness 

to his readers by describing his thoughts during his perp walk 

down the hall to the office of the boss. 

A real thief, Thomson avers, would have had the guts to 

concoct some alibi during that minute-and-a- half walk. But 

Thomson—obviously to himself not a real thief—merely 

opened the boss’s door and before anything else could be said, 

blurted, “Gentlemen, it’s all over; the jig is up.” 

One hour later, he wrote the last entry he would ever write 

in the company’s general journal, an entry charging R. J. 

Thomson with $1,187,000— the exact total of the money he 

had embezzled during the ten years since he took $800 from 

an investor in North Dakota. 

And in those days a million bucks counted for something. 

Thomson cooperated with the lawyers and the accountants 

who were brought in; he showed them where every stolen dollar 

was. He signed over to Hormel every property he had ever 

bought with stolen funds, most of which Hormel liquidated 

quickly, and then Hormel turned to A.L. 

One of A.L.’s principal assets was his stock position in 

Hormel. A condition of his contract provided that if danger to 

the company were dire, he could be forced to sell it back to the 

company for a fraction of its value. The embezzlement created 

24


such a condition. Meanwhile, the banks wanted a clean slate. 

No charges were brought against A.L. related to the embezzlement. 

However, the bankers, and perhaps Hormel himself, 

wanted Eberhart gone. Grandfather had shared an office with 

Thomson, and there were those who felt he must have been 

aware of what transpired, or at the least, that he had failed to 

exercise due diligence. He was, after all, superior to the crook. 

He was second in command at Hormel. It had been his duty 

to keep a sharp eye. 

Too, A.L. was not a Hormel. This was a family company, 

after all, and my grandfather was not part of the inner circle, 

whatever his value and skills. The company had just been dealt 

its most dangerous blow, and it was fighting for its very existence. 

It needed to concentrate on what was most precious. 

Eberhart, for all his good qualities, was not indispensable. And 

in any event, the Hormels could get their stock back, cheap. 

How badly, in the end, was Hormel hurt? By September, 

Thomson was in Stillwater prison serving a fifteen-year term. 

Oak Dale Farms and the Oak Dale Park were owned by Hormel. 

A.L. Eberhart’s stock position was restored to company control. 

And Jay Hormel, son of George, is reported to have said to the 

mayor of Le Roy that the embezzlement, which was a national 

media circus fueled by its Robin Hood appeal and carried in 

1,300 papers across the United States, provided a bonanza in 

free publicity. 

A.L. was in his midfifties at the time. He had worked for 

Hormel for twenty-one years. He was a man at the height of 

his powers. He was well respected by his peers elsewhere in the 

industry, and that proved to be a good thing. After my grandfather 

was let go at Hormel, George Swift, creator and president 

25


of Hormel’s principal competitor, Swift Foods, handed him a 

blank check—literally: a signed check with no amount written 

in— and told A.L. that anything he needed was his. 

At the same time A.L. was reeling from the financial blow, 

it became apparent that Lena was seriously ill. The word cancer 

was scarcely used around the household, and of course, never 

in front of the children. However, it was cancer—lung cancer 

(though my grandmother did not smoke)—and it weakened 

her inexorably during that dire summer of 1921. In the end, 

though, the truth could not be kept from the children, and A.L. 

took them to the apple orchard and laid it all out before them. 

According to Dad, “Apple Orchard,” a section of one of his 

longer poems, Burr Oaks, is an accurate rendition of the event. 

The beauty of the sun shining through the white-and-pink apple 

blossoms contrasts, both in the poem and in Dad’s telling, with 

the ache of what needed to be told. 

Dad was seventeen. Having just graduated from Austin 

High School, he decided to postpone his departure for the 

University of Minnesota to assist with his mother’s care and his 

sister’s comforting. My grandmother was a believer in the power 

of prayer, and my father, his father, and she spent many hours 

together, praying. Other times, Dad read to her from uplifting 

books. He nursed her with tender bites of food when she could 

eat, and with drinks of tea or lemonade. He also managed and 

monitored visitations from other ladies of the town. Sometimes 

Lena was simply too weak to accept a visit, and Dad acted as her 

secretary, politely offering apologies on her behalf. 

Eventually, there came a time when prayer and local doctoring 

were of no avail, and the family accompanied Lena to 

Chicago to have what was then a last- resort therapy employing 

26


dangerous radiation. For a time, Lena showed improvement, 

and the family returned to Austin. However, Lena’s recovery 

was short lived, and she died in November 1921. 

When Dad would tell this tale to my younger sister, Gretchen, 

and me, he would use a tone that lent the tale a sense of awe and 

of tragedy that endowed it with an almost Shakespearean aura— 

or at least it did for me. Of course, I was young, and I loved my 

dad. In reality, though the tale is colorful enough, it is really just 

an ordinary human tale of a business reversal coincident with a 

parental death. 

Dad’s journal entries from the period reflect the yearning he 

felt for her recovery and, more vaguely, for the recovery of his 

father’s fortunes. The entries are articulate beyond the ordinary, 

even for a time when youngsters were more carefully schooled 

in English composition than they are today. Emerging in Dad’s 

journal is a passionate voice. Dad was already a writer of poetry, 

but his journal marks the emergence of a powerful prose maker. 

Many times, to me and to interviewers, Dad explained his 

poetic determination in life as “my attempt to heal a bifurcated 

and an inexorably anguished soul.” His soul may have been 

bifurcated—cut in half—by the twin calamities which his family 

encountered, but there was another element in Dad’s poetic 

determination that was apparent to me. It was apparent to me 

because I shared it. He was a Romantic. He believed in emotion 

as the great doorway to intense aesthetic experience, such a high 

level of experience that it closely touched the level of the divine. 

1921. This is the time and these are the events that wounded 

my father, and he barely adjusted to it. Once, he told me it wasn’t 

until he was in his fifties that he finally began to recover from 

the death of his mother. That’s a long, long burn. 

27


The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, 

and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told? 






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