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Thursday, 19 June 2008

Little Owen

By Granny Annie of Fools Rush In

Grandpa and Grandma raised one child. This child was a miracle. His name was Owen.

When Grandma was pregnant with my father, she says she went into a field and got down on her knees and bargained with God. She promised God if He would let this child live, she would dedicate the infant to the service of the Lord. She had lost eight babies, most from stillbirths in the eighth month of pregnancy.

Her faith was tested when Owen was born weighing less than two pounds. My grandma and grandpa lived in a coal mining community in Oklahoma and medical needs were difficult to tend to. They kept my dad warm this December 5, 1914, by placing him in a shoe box near the wood stove.

This child grew nicely for two years until he was suddenly stricken by a crippling disease. Polio was the scourge of the nation and thankfully my great-grandmother had read that massaging the limbs of the victim on a 24-hour basis would keep the patient from being crippled by the disease. My dad had a slight limp and a barely noticeable withered hand but overall, he came out of the illness with barely any lasting effects.

It was around 1919, when the Swine Flu epidemic hit the United States. At that time my grandparents had relocated to a coal mining community in New Mexico. The family legend has it that my dad was the only person in the small community that did not get the flu and he ran errands from house-to-house for all the people who were incapacitated.

Dad was curious about the coal mines. His dad, his dad’s friends and brothers were all coal miners. One day grandpa took eight-year-old Owen into the depth of a coal mine and told him to remember what he saw because it would be the first and LAST time he was ever to be in a coal mine. It was.

My dad died at age 85 on September 23, 1999, after a long, eventful, productive and influential life. He held many college degrees plus an honorary doctorate and had advanced in his chosen field to high levels in the United Methodist Church during his 40-and-a-half-year ministry. He was a genuinely good man, reaching out beyond his retirement years to help anyone in need. He did, however, believe in a hand up more than a hand-out.

My grandma always insisted that she never influenced dad’s decision to enter the ministry and that she never told him of her field dedication.

Dad had some problems in his 80s with strokes and dementia and his doctor ran many tests. One specialist discovered that dad never had polio. He had contracted encephalitis at age two which caused damage to the right side of dad’s brain thus causing the left-side crippling. We had to laugh knowing all that dad had accomplished in his life, his continued education, the people he had helped, the family that looked to him and adored him and his tremendous abilities, only to learn he suffered brain damage at the age of two!

Did I mention that he was a miracle?

[EDITORIAL NOTE: A satisfying number of new stories has been arriving at The Elder Storytelling Place this past week and I thank you all. Not that we can't always use more. That's a hint...]

Posted by Ronni Bennett at 02:30 AM | Permalink | Email this post

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