Tail-end. If ever there was a term to define my genesis, it would be tail-end. The last, unlucky jet scheduled to deliver ordinance, allowing the opposed to accurately direct their fire. The slowest runner in gym class. The fourth of four children to be born to Bucky and Alice, my father and mother destined to die.

Bucky, my dad’s childhood nickname, was born and raised a good Lutheran in central Pennsylvania, signed up for the Navy after Pearl Harbor, and served horrific years as a medic, Pharmacist Mate, third class. A nineteen-year-old kid recovering the corpses of 19-year-old battlefield casualties, shipping them home to suffering and bereaved families. First to France, then to the South Pacific, the hand of God delayed his landing at Iwo Jima in the first wave. When kamikaze planes broke a nearby warship at Leyte Gulf taking all hands with it, Dad made a foxhole promise to God that he would give his life to ministry, if allowed to survive. Alcohol abuse suppressed his demons and lent excuses to his delaying tactics.

Alice was born to a large family, but never lived to see her father, who died of Typhus while working timber. My grandmother tried to make ends meet, selling bread to the people in Lewistown, PA, but when the great depression hit, like a rising tide, the family was swept away. Mom found herself a resident of Malta Home, operated by the Knights of Malta, an orphanage, self-sustaining farm, and old age home for the poor. Children worked. Mom scrubbed. She ran away at age 17, where my uncle Dick took her in. Uncle Dick stood firm in the doorway as two, PA State Troopers demanded Alice’s return. “Over my dead body.” It just wasn’t worth it.

Alice, meet Bucky. Bucky goes to war, returns broken, unenumerable memories of death, and fueled with alcohol. The story goes that Alice told Bucky that if he ever again landed a hand on her in anger, they were done. Done. Fine’. Nada a second chance. Mom would and could make it on her own. She could, too. Dad swore off the booze, or so we thought, the demons suppressed, and life became the Shangri la of the baby boomer generation.

Dad welded for a living, taking night classes to become an accountant. The Saint Louis Arch, Navy submarine hulls, and neighborhood porch railing  were the achievements of his calloused hands. My siblings arrived by C-section, all three, the last with the obstetrician’s warning that a fourth pregnancy would lead to her death. Anger reared its head, and my older brothers paid the price. Bucky’s promise to mom diverted, his promise to God delayed.

My mother became pregnant with me, and prepared herself to die, willingly accepting her fate that I might live. Willing to die that I might live. Familiar? She cried throughout my entire pregnancy, I’m told. Despite the obstetrician’s willingness to abort the tail-end Charlie, and the obscure state lines (with all their legal complications) I was born of Caesarian section in June, 1961, riding the final wave of the Baby Boomers. Tubes tied. A tic-tack-toe board of abdominal scars, my mother lived to die another day.

I may be a tail-end Charlie, but I’m a walking, talking, breathing miracle to be alive.

Dad had gotten a hold of a Methodist Book of Discipline during his service years, liked what he read, and was willing to be swept into the ocean of God’s amazing grace as taught by John Wesley. I was made a disciple of Jesus as an infant upon the baptismal vows promise by mom and dad at the Stillwater Evangelical United Brethren church, outside of Jamestown, NY. The cold water induced audible farts, I’ve been told.

Our family attended the Camp Street Methodist Church in town, becoming the United Methodist Church in the great merger of 1968. Yeah, the same year the Tet Offensive turned society upside down, when MLKing and Bobby Kennedy were shot. Camp Street hosted a wonderful Vacation Bible School; songs taught to me then bring comfort to me today. The pastor was Harold K. Guiser.

As a toddler I recall walking down the hall past his study. I looked in to see him in his black robe preparing for worship. God-like. Vitalis slicked back hair. Black, winged-tipped dressed shoes. The real deal. He saw me standing there, eyes unblinking. “Would you like a Bible,” he asked, calling me by name. I still have that New Testament and Psalms right by my side.

Reverend Guiser towered in the pulpit. He caught my attention one Sunday, even as I squirmed in the pew. “We all face a fork in the road,” he stated to a complacent congregation sitting in silence. I thought of my mother’s sterling four prong forks. “Each of us must choose,” he said. I thought to myself, I want to be on the winning team! I chose Jesus.

Choices. Choices matter. My choice was to go with Jesus.