January 29th, 2020: All My Heroes...

     I was sitting around thinking the other day and something came to me. I realized that all of my heroes were now dead.

     Now, I'm not talking about fictional characters. A good many of them are still around, although our culture is changing them into something unrecognizable. Comic book heroes nowadays have to change to conform to new values that our society wants to force upon us. Those values are not actually new; they have been around for a long time. We just recognized them as wrong and are expected to accept them as normative now.

     You may think my first hero is silly for a grown man, but the one fictional character in my list played an integral part in my youth and helped me deal with rejection. Leonard Nimoy's "Mr. Spock" was a hybrid of two very different cultures. His mother was an emotional human, while his father was a stoic, logical, and emotionless alien from the planet Vulcan. This mirrored my life in that my father was a very strict, logical individual who loathed discussing anything involving feelings, while Mom was romantic, emotional, sometimes silly, and playful, and helped me deal with the typical teenage highs and lows that most young people go through. In Spock, I found a role model who taught me to master my emotions and feed the logical, hungry for learning side of myself. He came at just the right time in my life to help me grow into the person I am today. He passed on February 27, 2015.

     I never had a brother, but in December of 1969, I met a man who believed in me like no one else had. He hired me to work in the pizza place he managed and very quickly told me that he saw great potential in me. He gave me my first management job, stood up for me in so many ways, introduced me to my first wife, and remained a good friend up until his death on November 20th, 2016. Wayne McCuan was one of four men in my life I considered brothers.

     When we are born into this life, we don't come with an instruction manual. Some people make wonderful parents, while others struggle with it. I was an inquisitive kid, with a penchant for getting into trouble. My dad had grown up with a strict father and became just like him. There were many instances where I wished my father had simply sat down with me and explained what I had done wrong, but instead, we were physically punished. I watched over the years, and after mom died in 1975, I saw a different man emerge. He began to attend church and became a dedicated worker for them. He was active right up until the year that he passed away. I admired the way he turned his life around and enjoyed visiting with him twice a year after I moved away. I could always count on him to give me good advice and listen to the things that troubled me over the years. I gave him a copy of one of my books when I began to write and he looked at it thoroughly and said, "Well, time travel is interesting." I knew he did not read science fiction; I just wanted him to see what I was doing, and I could tell he was proud. I lost him on August 17, 2018.

     I was saved in 1970 at the age of 19. I began to attend different branches of the Anderson, Indiana Church of God, but I would come and go, losing interest and never fully committing to working in the church. In 1986, a lot of things changed for me. I had a new job, we moved into a new house, and I began to go back to church, determined to give more of myself. I served on a few committees and gave it all my very best. I started to be noticed and made new friends all of the time. One man, Paul Arthur, sang in the choir with me and became a friend and brother in Christ. although older than me, he was like family, and he encouraged me to sing a duet with him in front of the church, something I never envisioned myself doing. The response was so positive that I soon began singing solos and was even asked to sing at a couple of weddings, youth convention, and youth camp. Paul talked me into being a youth counselor, which was very fulfilling for me, and my attention to the teens I was responsible for was noticed by my pastor. When our youth pastor left the church, I was asked to be his replacement for the next fourteen months. All of this made for the most rewarding period of my entire life, and it all started with Paul. We lost him on October 14th of 2019.
    My last hero was my pastor in Houston. Fred Davey was a very wise man who knew how to help people grow closer to God in significant ways. He taught me about sanctification and prayer and encouraged me to be more than I had ever been before. He showed his faith in me as a person by asking me to become the interim youth minister and prayed daily with me when I served as the Chairman of the Church Council and had to deal with one of the most divisive issues that church had faced during my time there. He was more like a father to me than a pastor, and his love and friendship was cherished by me. We lost Pastor Davey on August 6, 2019.

     I know that one day, there will be a great reunion with those who have moved on to their rewards, and I look forward to that day. I am inspired each day by the part each of them played in molding me into the human being that I am today and work to be deserving of the gifts that they gave me.