Chap 2 Prelude to an Early Death 120224

     In the first chapter I talked about Christian legacies, using brief events in the history of the King Ranch as an example of how these legacies can profoundly affect the future, to preserve and enrich many lives. This next chapter explains how I got myself mixed up in a situation which caused my life to need saving in the first place.       

     In November 1966 it was extra money for the Hampton, Virginia police officer. Every weekend he would babysit teenagers at a popular hamburger joint on the corner of Pembroke and Mercury Blvd. It was one of those car hop joints which served the patrons in their cars. The officer was technically off duty. It was almost time for the joint to close. Still, he had to be vigilant until closing time. One never knew what could happen in an instant, even with this crowd of mostly good teenagers. The officer would watch until every high school aged patron left the lot. The worst offense was usually open containers of alcohol on the premise and in cars. He could usually deal with that and not get the offender in any lasting trouble. All in all, he was glad that he had this extra job. Christmas was just around the corner. The paycheck of a Hampton City cop in 1966 was skinny. He really needed the financial boost that this extra job offered to him. Enforcing traffic laws for occasionally squealing tires was not something he usually paid a lot of attention to unless the driver was extremely reckless to boot. Chasing down speeders doing ten miles over the speed limit definitely was not something he would do.  

     However, as often happens in all police work, routines are made to be shattered. Tonight, the officer's routine was interrupted by a 1963 white Oldsmobile Holiday Sedan. It came through the intersection at Mercury Blvd. heading east on Pembroke toward Buckroe Beach and it was traveling at speeds approaching ninety miles an hour. The speed limit was thirty-five.

     The veteran patrolman immediately stopped what he was doing and ran toward his cruiser. He pulled out of the parking lot in record time and pursued the Oldsmobile. As he punched the gas pedal to the floor, his cruiser fish tailed a bit. However, he was a country boy. He had learned to drive on gravel roads, so he had the skills to quickly regain control of the cruiser. This was not his first high speed chase. Yes, he had learned to drive and drive fast. However, there was something else about his job that he would never learn to do. He would never learn how to get rid of those images of past wrecks which were stored for life in the back of his mind. They were gruesome. Many could become the makings of a good horror flick, and he could recall every one of them in vivid color replete with smeared blood, twisted steel, and mangled bodies. Almost all were the results of senseless high-speed driving. No doubt, this screw ball’s actions was about to produce more of the same. Yes, he was certain that there would be no peaceful sleep for him tonight. He would be too busy processing and then filing away more terrible memories. of senseless deaths. In one mile, the four-lane city street narrowed. It took a turn to the right, before dead ending into the ocean. He was sure that is where he would find his nightmare for that night. A car going that fast had absolutely no chance of making that turn. Lights flashing, he now steeled himself for what he was about to see. At the same time, he did a little high-speed driving, himself. However, there was absolutely no chance of catching this fool in time. 

     Earlier, on this same night, I had taken a date and a friend, Robert Long, and his date to a rock concert in Norfolk, Virginia. I believe the name of the band was "The Four Tops". I thought that was a stupid name. Marty Robins was my guy, and I had played his gun fighter ballads over and over since I was nine years old. In those days if a country and western guy like me wanted to listen to rock music then it would have to be something soft and mellow, with harmony, like Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons or maybe Bobby Vinton.  When those guys sang, it could make chills go up and down even my hard core country music spine.

     However, there was a good reason for me going to see these knot heads. That reason was a girl. I really liked this girl but going to this concert was the only way that I could get her to go out with me. The whole thing was hopeless. She was in love with one of my best friends and he was one of the most handsome and charming guys in town. Against him, a guy like me didn't have a chance. Every girl in the neighborhood, including my two sisters, swooned over this guy. So here I was. The radio was playing softly, and I was driving toward the neighborhood. My date, Robert, and his date quickly fell asleep. It was a relatively long drive through the Norfolk traffic toward the Hampton Bridge Tunnel. The structure had a narrow two-lane tunnel connecting my hometown of Hampton to Norfolk. The tunnel ran under the famous James River, not far from where James Town was established by Captain John Smith. Do you remember him? Pocahontas saved his life. Do you remember that? 

     In the days leading up to our date, I had sincerely dreamed that a miracle would happen and that this girl and I would hit it off. However, deep down I knew this was never going to happen. The guy she was in love with far outclassed me. There were other girls who liked me, and they were pretty. However, I didn't like them for one simple reason. You see, there just had to be something wrong with them if they liked guy like me. I certainly would not have liked me if I were them. So, there you have it. This was the crux of my problem. I really thought that taking this girl's attention away from my handsome friend would somehow lift poor pathetic me out of the dust of self-loathing and tonight would probably be my last feeble stab at doing that. Although by the very nature of my jumbled thinking, I was destined to never find the right girl, nevertheless I thought she was asleep, sitting beside me. How crazy was that? Her being asleep seemed to magnify my hopeless situation. It seemed to say everything I didn't want to hear. It said my last chance date with the girl of my dreams had fizzled. I felt like a complete loser. In less than two weeks I would be flying to Oakland, California and from there on to Saigon to be assigned to a combat unit somewhere in South Vietnam. I had just finished advanced infantry training at a place called Tiger Land. It was located inside Fort Polk near Leesville, Louisiana. Before that, I had completed basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Now, it was time to go die.  

     How had things come to this? I graduated high school with honors and should have been in college now. Finishing college had been another very important dream of mine. Instead, I was headed for the senseless killing fields of Vietnam, as an 11B10 combat soldier.  

     It wasn't until many years later that I was able to recognize the mistake I made, which led me to this. Simply put, I was being cleverly guided by spiritual forces which were beyond my understanding. You see, when I turned thirteen years old, I had turned my back on God. Like so many others of my generation, I was determined to seek my own path in life. The path I chose, however, was now crumbling from under my feet. I was standing on the edge of a cliff, with forces much mightier than me seeking to push me off that cliff. Now, the Spirit of God was the only one who could save me. However, as I said, I had turned my back on God.

     I got good grades in school. I didn’t drink. I didn’t smoke. I wasn’t a teenager who followed the crowd. Instead, I had spent my boyhood summers working hard on my Grandfather’s farm near Lexington Virginia. I had done this every summer since the age of seven. In return, my grandfather gave me the proceeds of one calf a year to be placed in a college savings account. Now, however, in 1966, the big question was this. Why wasn't I in college? Instead, I was heading for a war which didn't seem to make a lot of sense.

     I became a Christian when I was eight years old. It happened through a bible study led by a white-haired neighbor whom we called Mom Cole. Mom Cole taught this bible study in my mother's home once a week. I listened in on the adult class. I then confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and became born of the Spirit. That's the first step we must take for God to become a real person to us. Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:5, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”. While being born of the spirit guarantees eternal life in Christ, it also guarantees that conflicts will follow. In my case it immediately caused a huge wall to be built between my unbelieving father and myself. Although my father was born of the Spirit much later in life, that wall between us never came down. In my case, much of the reason for that was not my unbelieving father's fault. Some was, but most of the blame was mine. You see, when I turned my back on God at age thirteen, I no longer listened to the advice of the Holy Spirit. That advice would have greatly helped restore and maintain our relationship, not perfectly, but to a manageable degree. My earthly father was a sensible man in many things. I learned a lot from him and could have learned a lot more if I had not turned my back on my God. However, after turning my back on God, I became a perfectionist, who expected my father to be perfect too. I became offended by each new imperfection which I noticed in him. Of course, he also had some culpability in the situation, so we remained at odds. It was a catch twenty-two, leaving only my mother as the go to person for advice. She did not always give the best advice.        

     I did receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit at age 11. This was about two years before I turned my back on God. That anointing is the second step we must take so we can grow into the purpose driven people who God intends us to be. That same year, when I received the anointing of the Holy Spirit, I was elected president of my sixth-grade class and did very well in school. I witnessed to my classmates and led some of the troubled boys in my sixth-grade class to Christ. Things were really looking up for me. Although there were deep wounds which Satan had placed in my mother’s soul, as an infant, she was still able to host the bible study, which led me to become born of the Spirit. Shortly after that happened she opened up her home on Sundays to a part-time minister named Tom Jones. With my mother’s help and Tom’s leadership, a church named "New Covenant" was established. That church is still located at 1079 Big Bethel Rd. in Hampton, Virginia to this very day. However, my newfound spiritual commitment brought more and more tension between myself and my father. My father respected Tom Jones tremendously, but for many years he wanted nothing to do with confessing Christ Jesus as his Lord. Like Richard King, my father was an incredibly intelligent man, but he was also a perfectionist. He in turn expected perfection in his children. That caused even more contention between us. Still, I also became a perfectionist. When I turned my back on the Holy Spirit all hope for dealing with that malady ended. I needed to take that next step which all believers need to take. I needed to walk in the deliverance which few believers ever obtain. Ignorance of this deliverance was the reason I turned my back on God, but I didn't know that.        

     Now, in my nineteenth year of life, though I was a believer, because of a lack of knowledge, my soul was perishing. Spiritual ignorance led me to make horrible choices. I didn't have a clue about my real identity. I certainly did not know how to allow the Holy Spirit to develop the gifts within me. Instead, I focused on correcting my perceived faults. To break this cycle of defeat, I needed to take that third step with Christ, which is simply cutting the strings which Satan has to our life. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness doing just that. All Christians need to do this but most never do. Like most Christians, I knew nothing about this third step until much later in life. In my mid-teens, I was tricked into the trap of rejecting everything, which could not be proven by science. As Tom’s church grew and moved into a building, my family stopped attending church altogether. At the same time the tension between my father and I eased a bit. We were becoming more alike in our unbelief. Maybe that was the reason for that.

     After high school graduation, I looked forward to the freedom college would bring. Then came the big mix-up. My mother learned that the ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp.) program at Virginia Tech paid a small monthly sum to members of the Military Corp. She talked me into signing up. Supposedly, a co-op student, working with her, had told her that I would only have to attend drill once a week and attend weekend training once a month. However, my mother often had a problem relaying facts correctly to the rest of the family, so I do not know if this was exactly what he told her or not. This I do know. From conversations with my mother, I believed that I would be able to live my life on campus, as a civilian for most of the time. To complicate things even more, many times I also got my facts wrong. Later I found that none of what I believed to be true was true. Furthermore, we did not attend summer orientation where I would have discovered the real facts in time to make changes to my enrollment. It would take many years and many other instances of receiving incorrect information from her, before I would realize that both my mother and I had a real problem communicating factually with others. Ironically, it had nothing to do with being honest in daily life. It was a spiritual issue. Neither of us had walked out the deliverance which all believers so sorely need. 

      When I arrived at Tech for fall quarter, I quickly learned my mistake. Instead of being similar to the National Guard, the Corps was more like the military training program at West Point. Freshmen were called Rats and were harassed night and day. We were given no freedom whatsoever. Furthermore, we were yelled at by upperclassmen from before sunup to well after sundown. I immediately asked for a transfer to the civilian side of campus, and finally, after six weeks, I got an audience with the Dean of Admissions, who had the authority to grant this request. The answer he gave me still rings in my ears today. “Son”, he said, “I went through the Corps here at Tech. If it was good enough for me then, it’s good enough for you now.” His mind was made up and so was mine. I requested a termination form and signed it in front of him. At this point, the angry Dean spoke into being a curse upon my life. I did not recognize it as such, nor do I think now that he meant it as such. He said, "Son this is a decision which you will regret for the rest of your life". That was a curse. He also said I would not be allowed to return to Virginia Tech for a minimum of one year. The Dean's curse was partially right. I did regret the decision to quit school until much later in my life, after I returned to a loving relationship with my God and my eternal Father. At this point in my life, however, I felt nothing but anger. In just a few short months after dropping out of college, I received my draft notice to report on June 12, 1966, for induction. That was my mother’s birthday.

     Now, let's fast forward about five months, to November, 1966. I was home on leave one month before having to report to Oakland, California for transport to Vietnam. During that leave, the nightly TV news with Walter Cronkite was replete with videos of actual fire fights and dead bodies. There were almost three hundred thousand troops in South Vietnam. Many of those doing the actual fighting were 18- to 20-year-old draftees like me. We were not career soldiers and were given only a total of four and a half months combat training. Nine weeks of that was ill improvised advanced jungle warfare training. It was a real joke. Furthermore, smart kids like me could tell from afar that something wasn't adding up in all those news reports. The reason for America being involved in the actual fighting seemed phony. Why couldn't we ramp up our support and training of the Vietnamese, themselves, and let them do the actual fighting? After all, it was their country and their future at stake.

     As I neared the tunnel, Barry Sadler’s Green Beret song began to play on the radio. The last verse had always pierced a very inward part of my soul. In that verse, Barry sang about a young wife waiting in vain for the return of her Green Beret husband, who was killed in combat. After listening to that verse, I remember thinking, “At least this soldier had experienced a short time of independence as an adult and as a husband. I was still living at home with my parents. A terribly lonely and helpless feeling grew stronger than ever. I felt betrayed, but by who or what, I didn't know. I had acted on my mother's ill reported advice, which set in motion grievous consequences. Yet, I didn't blame her. Instead, I blamed the Dean of Admissions, and he became the focus of my growing anger. It would be years before I would be able to understand the root cause of my mistake. As I entered the tunnel, I glanced at my date who was still sound asleep beside me. That tormenting voice in my head got louder. It told me that the reason she was asleep was because it was the best way to avoid my company. Furthermore, I remember thinking, "Wayne, you are a real loser and a nobody”. With that thought, I lost it. I mean I really lost it. Halfway through the Hampton Roads Tunnel, that quiet desperation which I had suppressed for years arose to take over. My self-control slipped away. Gradually, oh so gradually, I depressed the gas pedal, and the powerful Oldsmobile engine responded smoothly by propelling the big sedan through the exit of the narrow two-lane tunnel at over 100 miles an hour.

    The hamburger joint was just a blur when I went past it. A few seconds later, however, as I approached the curve on Pembroke, my self-control returned, and I did slow down to the 35 mile an hour speed limit just before seeing the blue and red flashing lights from the patrolman’s cruiser pull in behind me. We both pulled to the side of the road. Surprisingly, after he approached my driver side and spoke to me through the window, there was not a hint of anger in his voice. He very calmly asked for my driver’s license and waited patiently as I fished it out of my wallet. There was a calmness in his voice which no doubt came from the relief of realizing that we were okay. He asked me if I understood why he had stopped me, since I wasn't speeding when he pulled me over. I responded by saying that I did understand. He then explained how he noticed me speeding by the hamburger joint where he was working. I now believe that he was so relieved to see that we were okay, that it was hard for him to get mad. A severe scolding also seemed to be the last thing on his mind. Instead, he very even handedly stated the following as he handed back my driver's license. “I see you have not been drinking so I am going to ask you to promise me that you will never speed like this again. You had to be doing over a hundred miles an hour when you passed me at the hamburger joint. If I could prove that then you would be going to jail. Instead, I am going to write you up for doing 45 in a 35 mile an hour zone”. Considering what I had just done, that did not seem like a bad consequence for my actions. Very relieved, and fully aware that I had taken a terrible chance, I assured him that I would not speed like that again. We parted company. My date’s house was only a hundred yards or so further on. I pulled over and stopped in front of it. She opened her own door and got out without a word being said by either of us. It was the last time I saw her. What a blessing that was for both of us. I didn’t have the good spiritual sense to realize this at that time, but I believe she did. The court date for my speeding ticket was after the date of my deployment. I never paid it. I remember thinking, “There is no need to pay this ticket since you won't be alive to reap the consequences for not paying."

    Just a few days later my parents drove me to the airport. I don’t remember much about that day, but I do know that it was the last time I left home as a boy. The airport was located in Norfolk, Virginia. People around us at the airport were able to see me attired in my dress greens with all the ear markings of a new recruit. On the inside, where they couldn’t see, I was still clothed in a low-grade anger, which I felt for that Dean of Admissions. It's a hillbilly thing. I felt that dean was overstepping his authority. I had not taken an oath to serve in the military. Furthermore, one should never give a hillbilly the impression that they are flaunting power. Forgiveness is not a hillbilly's strong suit.