Hospitality

I was going to write a post about the lesson Kara's grandfather taught me while the family was in South Carolina for Duncan's graduation from boot camp.

But Patrick beat me to the punch and did a great job.

Here's the story as told by Patrick.

The trip to see Duncan graduate was a remarkable one. You can read more about it at Kara Graves’ blog (link on the right of this page) and my other blog. This is a related story.

My father was raised under brutal conditions. His parents treated him in a way that, had they lived in our time, would have sent them to prison. He was the family scapegoat. Desperately poor, uneducated, and without a faith family, they were on their own. When they needed water, Bill was sent for it. When some money was found to buy new clothes or shoes, they were never given to Bill. His parents had favored children and they made it plain Bill wasn’t one of them and never would be. Dad tells me about how he would find trash, sneak it home, and stuff it in the cracks in the walls of his room so that the cold winter wind couldn’t come in. It helped very little; when he would get the water late at night, by the morning it would be frozen solid, right by his cot. By the age of six he was given a bucket and sent deep, deep into the mines, working his way back in crevices that were no more than three feet high, skinning his elbows, hands, and knees so that he could get a bucketful of coal. He’d bring it out and they’d send him back in.

During the summer, he was the only child made to work; and he worked every summer in his memory. He worked in fields, hoeing, pulling weeds, stacking hay, or harvesting hemp (the government used to pay people to raise hemp to use as rope in the war effort!). I’ve seen the only existing photo of my father as a boy. He was eight years old and his eyes were hollow and blank like those of a child in Ethiopia. His stomach was swollen by starvation and worms.

When dad reached the legal age, he volunteered for the US Navy. That caused a great stir in the family. He was roundly criticized and insulted for his decision (they wanted him back home to work for them and weren’t keen on him being in the US forces) but he marched off anyway. This was during the Korean War and he believed there was nothing the Koreans could do to him that would be worse than he’d endured for his first 18 years at home… but he wasn’t sent to Korea. He spent most of his Navy experience in Columbus, Ohio (city motto: Why Do We Have A Navy Base When We Don’t Have Water?) and Bayonne, NJ. He met my mother on a blind date and they married before he was discharged.

He knew he couldn’t go home, but he had no money. He took two and three jobs at a time while going to college — all the time getting nothing but derision from his family. He would walk to classes with rubber jar rings around his shoes to keep them from coming apart, enduring the sneers and snickers of his classmates.

He never forgot. His heart for the poor is so strong, he can’t help himself; it drives everything he does. He has spent his time stateside speaking for poor, small, isolated congregations, taking thousands of tons of good clothes and food to the poor, giving his money and time to them. When he goes overseas it is never on a major campaign with write ups in Christian Chronicle or Gospel Advocate. He goes alone, or with my mother, or Duncan, or a very small team. He goes to unreached areas and, when he returns, he has no luggage, no goods, no extra clothes, books, Bibles, or money. He arrives back with only the clothes on his back and his passport (and, at his age, with essential medication. He’s been known to give most of that away, too).

So there we are at Parris Island to see Duncan graduate, but Dad can’t stay focused. He keeps wandering off, looking for someone who needs something. We packed the rented minivans (nine of us went from four directions so we had to rent vans) with picnic supplies so that Duncan could have a real feast with us on Family Day. Duncan was finally released to spend five hours on base with us the day before graduation and we were so excited! We walked with him and he showed us different parts of the base. Dad kept wandering off. Here was his grandson, graduating from the most intense boot camp in the US Armed Forces, and whom he hadn’t seen in nearly a year… and he kept wandering off.

Finally, he showed up, all excited. He had found four new Marines whose parents were late or unable to come. He had them in tow. He was taking them to the vans to feed them. I tried to pull him aside and explain that we had bought that food for Duncan — our son. You know? The Marine that’s related to you? He heard nothing, no matter how I tried to steer him. I was trying to find a way to feed the new guys he’d found AND Duncan. Maybe I could pay for them to eat with us at one of the base restaurants… but it was too late. Dad was leading the Marines to the picnic tables. Out came the food and they ate.

It was a beautiful thing, really. They were so grateful. They were happy to find people to talk to who would help them as they eased back into society and out of the rigid matrix of Parris Island. Duncan ate some of the food as he visited with his family. Dad didn’t visit with the family. He spent all of his time — and eighty percent of the food — on those four men.

I will confess to some frustration. I didn’t want this time with Duncan to be diluted. I was selfish and wanted to focus on my boy, my man, my Marine. I didn’t want to be faced with the problem of trying to find a restaurant to feed my family; a problem we had tried to dodge by bringing the food with us in the first place. It complicated the day, but Dad can’t help himself. He’s been poor. He’s lived without family support or love. He’s been alone. It isn’t that, when he sees someone in that condition he must help them. No, he looks for them. Constantly. And whatever he has, even if it doesn’t strictly belong to him, will be given to them. Duncan learned that when he took Hardy Boy books to read on a mission trip to Guyana when he was nine. He didn’t get to finish them or bring them back because, since it was within reach of Dad, it was available to be given away. And it was.

He just can’t help it. And that’s not all bad.