Driving up I-77 in South Carolina toward Charlotte North Carolina I was not sure I had the gas to make it home. All I felt was fear. The reason for my fear was miles behind me in Columbia, but I could not shake it, or out run it. The real concern was right there in my back seat.
In August of 1992, I had lost my job as the company I worked for went through budget cutting moves. A couple of months before that, my wife and I had separated. Our three children lived with me through the week and with her on the weekend. I had to find a job quickly because I lived, as most do, pay check to pay check. Finding work in my field was not easy because I was a jeweler. I customized pieces of jewelry to be exactly what the customer wanted by setting diamonds or colored stones, sizing it, or redesigning it to fit the customer’s desires.
In actuality, the job I lost was not as challenging as the one I had three years earlier. I held the title “Custom Craftsman” then. I traveled the country beginning with pieces of jewelry that had been cast to preliminary designs, then I took other parts and the customers present jewelry, tore it all apart, then reassembled it right in front of the customer usually in about an hour. The job I just lost was more like ‘fix and repair’ than crafting custom pieces. Still, I took the ‘fix and repair’ job for one reason. I wanted to spend more time with my wife and children. My wife was now gone, but my children were there, and I wanted to be with them.
In life, what we want, and what we have to do, are often at odds with each other. Not finding work for what I was trained to do after four weeks of searching, I had difficult choices in front of me. My severance pay was dwindling fast. Another month of bills were coming due soon. I had to make a move now.
I called my boss from three years ago and found that he had an opening for a Custom Craftsman. He offered me a one year contract for twice the money I had made before, but I would have to be on the road from 4-8 weeks at a time with 10 days or maybe two weeks home in between. With no prospects for a local offer the pressure was intense to accept before he changed his mind. My children weighed heavy on my mind.
A father must do a few things. Some of those are; love his children, spend time with his children and provide for his children’s needs. The decision I faced, put at least two of those ‘must do’ things in direct opposition to one another. To provide for them, I had to be away from them. “Unacceptable,” I thought. There must be some alternative. I dropped to my knees in anguish and prayed for the answer.
The next day, the answer came like a light bulb turning on in my mind. Turn the contract down, but offer to be a gap man filling in for other craftsman who were on vacation, or just needed a break. It was worth a try to convince my old boss that this would help him staff his team. I pitched it to him on the phone an hour later. To my shock, he took me up on the plan. I would work 1-2 weeks a month and make enough to pay all of the bills and still have money left over. The children’s mother liked the plan too because she would actually get more time under the new plan than she was getting with them presently.
During my first planned 10 day work trip, I found myself in Battlecreek Michigan. On my second night of the trip there was a Presidential debate on TV, which I wanted to watch. My plan was to get fast food at a drive through, go back to the hotel and watch the debate. My van was the second vehicle sitting at the red light waiting to turn left onto the main drag where all of the fast food restaurants were found. The light turned green. The car in front of me moved through the intersection and I followed. A flash of light caught my left eye and immediately my forehead broke the windshield. I bounced around in the driver’s seat breaking the drivers door window with my head while a sharp pain cut through the top of my left shoulder and then – everything went still and quiet.
A car running approximately 50 miles per hour had gone through the red light implanting itself in the drivers door of the E150 Ford Van I was driving. The bone jarring impact was painful, but seemed like a bad dream.
I woke up, crawled from my seat across the van and out the passenger door. I stood up on my feet in the drizzling rain and my sock became soaked with water from the street. Looking down, I found my left shoe was missing, but when I looked back up, I felt increasingly weak and very strange. What little judgement I had at the moment told me to sit down in the passenger seat of the van and wait on somebody to call the police. I remember sitting down.
The next thing I knew, people were talking around me, but I could not see anything. Pitch blackness was my world as I heard someone yell, “He’s back”. I had no idea who was back, but I was beginning to feel drops of cold water hitting my forehead. Soon, very dim lights were starting to be visible. The blurry lights slowly came into focus and so did the faces of the voices I had been hearing. There over me were two paramedics. I was laying on my back in the middle of the road where I had fallen from the van seat after evidently passing out. And by then, the rain was steadily falling on my face.
At the hospital, I learned that I had a severe concussion and a broken collar bone right where it joined to the shoulder bones. All of their information was too much for me to take in with the tremendous pain. Maybe I did not respond good enough for them, I just don’t know, but they left the room. To this day, I don’t understand what was going on there. I was in part of the emergency room, but nobody else was anywhere around. Only half of the lights were on in the rooms which I saw from my bed. I could not hear anyone talking and I could not see anyone. What was going on, I wondered? Suddenly, I knew I needed help; and fast. I was going to throw up.
Severe pain that lasted longer than a half hour would make me sick to my stomach. After hours in the ER, this pain had been going on a long time. I hurled and fell to the cold floor. I rolled onto may back and screamed for help. What happened after that is foggy at best. Even today, after 30 plus years of thinking about it, I cannot figure out what transpired between the hurling and the discharge in the middle of the night. I vaguely remember the cab driver trying to figure out what hotel I needed to go to as well as walking into the hotel room, but most of that night remains lost to me. The flight home the next day was pure torture, but my children made it all go away as they put their arms around me with hugs and kisses when I stumbled in the door.
In the coming days, reality set in. I had not worked enough to pay the bills, but there was even worse news. The doctor said that I had bone, muscle and nerve damage which would take years to overcome. The weakness of my left arm and hand would remain. That was the hand I held jewelry steady with while I worked on it with my right hand. Translation – my career as a customer craftsman was over – at least for a year. After that, who knows?
I learned that the guy who was driving the car which drove high speed in my door was high on drugs at the time. Fortunately, he had insurance, because my bills were late and new medical bills were adding up fast too. The lawyer handling my divorce agreed to handle this situation also. Since stress dulls the memory, I don’t remember the details of what happened in the settlement, but I do know that my lawyer persuaded the other drivers insurance company to advance me a fair sum of money before the final settlement was completed due to my dire financial situation.
I picked up the kids from school on a Friday afternoon and was trying to figure out what I would feed them. They would not be going to their mother’s this weekend because she was out of town. And I – I was now dead broke. The phone in my apartment rang at 3:30 PM. An insurance company representative who I had been working with was on the line telling me the advance check was ready. What a relief! No money, no food and less than a half tank of gas in my car. That check was just in time.
“Where is your office? I will come right over to get the check” I said. I expected their office was in Rock Hill where we lived. In my mind I reasoned, “It could be in Charlotte, but that is only 20 minutes north. I can run up there too.” The ladies voice said, “I am in Columbia South Carolina.” Shocked, I checked the clock and asked, “What time does your office close?” She replied, “5 PM.” Determined to take care of my children’s need for food over the weekend I said, “I will be there before you close, but please be sure the check is there and ready. I will have very little time to get to a nearby bank to cash it before they close at 6 PM.” She assured me that she would, giving me the address and directions. I corralled my 8 year old twin sons and 6 year old daughter into the back seat and took off for the 1 hour and 10 minute drive.
We pulled into the insurance office parking lot at 4:48. I went to the door and found it locked. No one was inside. I had a phone number, but it would ring in the darkened office. What good would that do? More importantly, what could I do now? I did not know if I had enough gas to make the drive back home, but there was no other option. I had to go as far as I could before dark and then walk the four of us the rest of the way back home.
So there I was, driving up I-77 in South Carolina toward Charlotte North Carolina. I really did not think I had the gas to make it home. All I felt was fear. The reason for my fear was the locked door in Columbia. I could not shake it. The fear was overtaking me faster than I could drive. There in my back seat were the children who I loved so much, but who would soon be walking with me in the dark with nothing to eat until the check could be sent by FedEx. At the best, it would not arrive until Tuesday.
“I had failed my precious children.”
By the grace and mercy of God, the car made it home and I found some food in the back of the cabinet, but I never shook the feeling of failing my children. It’s still with me today falling on my face in these tears. And I know that it will always be with me.