Dad was a man whom everyone loved and enjoyed his company. He always greeted folks with a smile and a few jokes. This week marks six years since his promotion to Heaven. He was born in Phenix City, Alabama, and said he remembers seeing the chickens under their house through the floor slats.
Dad was a wonderful athlete. In high school, he excelled in football, often mentioned in the local newspaper for his efforts with the Perry High School Panthers. He tried out for the Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals. My childhood was at the ballfields because he was always playing for one, two, or three softball teams at a time.
Dad began writing songs as a teenager. He wrote songs that would make people laugh, think, and cry, but they all had deep meaning and significance. Monthly, he traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, to join his fellow songwriters and critique each other’s songwriting efforts. He said some of the gatherings became brutal for songwriters who submitted substandard songs.
I could write for hours about the Renaissance man that was my dad. As a child, I began noticing something peculiar about my dad. Growing up during the Cold War era, I often saw news coverage of a Soviet leader’s speech. I rarely paid attention to their words because I didn’t know what they were saying. One day, Dad, out of the blue, said to me, “Do you want to know what they are saying?” He began interpreting their words, explaining what they said, and then repeating it back to me in Russian. I didn’t think much of it as a child, but did think it strange.
As I grew older, a similar scenario would play out when some of my friends were present: Dad would begin speaking Russian. They would look at each other, uncertain of what they had just heard, and then he would always explain what he had just told them.
One day, it dawned on me how unusual it was for a man from Dad’s era to speak Russian, and I asked him how he had learned. I knew he had been in the U.S. Navy, but what I didn’t know he was in U.S. Naval Intelligence with Top Secret clearance. He shared that during his security background check, the FBI visited his family, his family’s neighbors, and some of his high school friends and coworkers, and that some of them thought he might be in trouble. He thought that was funny.
Dad made a life-long friend in basic training, but their military paths diverged as Dad began his Russian language studies in California. After Dad died, I found documents regarding his different levels of security clearance and the guidelines about what he could and could not speak about. Dad and his team were tasked with monitoring the Soviet Union’s communications from his base in Turkey and his Naval ship, the USS Intrepid (CV-11).
Dad’s lifelong career was as an Air Traffic Controller at the Atlanta Regional Center in Hampton Ga. One day, he came home and told us, “I got to tell the President of the USA what to do today,” referring to giving flight instructions to the pilot of Air Force One.
Many years later, I traveled to the Russian Federation (Russia) for the first time in 2005. I was excited but nervous. I was traveling with friends for a church ministry, but none of my family was going with me. I asked Dad to go and help with the translation. Sadly, he declined, but the next time I went, he said yes. He began to brush up on his Russian because he said he was rusty.
How wonderful it was to have my own personal Russian Interpreter. It was interesting to see how the Russians responded this an older American gentleman speaking their language. From the youngest to the oldest, they all were keen to listen to what he had to say. He shared his life story and how he came to faith in Jesus Christ as a young man in Naval training in California. Some joked to him that they knew he was a spy. It was surreal as I listened to our Russian interpreter explain what my dad was saying. Dad even tried a few jokes in Russian with his southern accent.
Several times, Dad went with me and Kim to Russia, and the last time he went, we were joined by our sons, Clint and Alex. Our two sons saw their Grandad in a different light.
One day, we were inside the Kremlin, and although Dad’s Russian was still rusty, he explained what we were seeing as we visited different buildings and churches and what people were saying to us.
Seeing God use a language skill he had learned some 50 years earlier was inspiring. I don’t believe he thought that he would ever use that language skill again, but God brought it full circle, and it was a sight to behold.
Sadly, Alzheimer’s Disease took dad away from us. It’s a terrible disease that slowly, too slowly, takes away the one we love, one piece at a time. Towards the end dad stopped speaking, and I doubted that he knew I was his son. I used all the tricks I had learned to get him to say something, anything to me. I couldn’t get him to speak, and after exhausting all my efforts, I said, “Hey, Dad, how do you say praise God in Russian?” He looked towards me and whispered, “Slava Bogu.” Those are the last words I remember Dad saying to me…
Dirt Road Diaries 