My Personal History

I entered the U.S. Coast Guard a short time after my marriage. After boot training I was assigned to school in Groton Connecticut for a few months. Our first son, Vernon Jr., was born there. Although it was a difficult time in some ways, we were blessed with some good Christian friends who were very helpful. One was a very lovely lady, Maida Balsover.

She and her husband Chuck, a Navy Submarine Warrant Officer, treated us like their own children; feeding us, driving us around, looking after my pregnant wife when I was stuck on the base by my duties. Maida even organized a baby shower for Pat at the church. On more than one occasion Maida and Chuck loaned us their new Cadillac – we didn’t even ask!

That was fifty-four years ago but we have never forgotten them. Although we lost track of them as we, and they, were transferred around, we recently reconnected with Maida through the pastor of her church. Sadly Chuck passed away several years ago. These wonderful people made such an impression on us that we have never forgotten them and we have told and retold the story of their kindness to us to family and friends.

I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward. Mark 9:41; NIV.

After I finished school I was assigned as Assistant Officer in Charge at Point Cabrillo Light Station, a light house located between Mendocino and Fort Bragg in northern California. This was an impressive title for what seemed a grueling job of twelve to sixteen hour days. There were; ten buildings, twenty five acres, three houses with yards, and fences to be maintained, the light house equipment to be serviced and watches to stand twenty-four hours per day seven days a week.

The station was manned with just three men. Bill, the “chief” who was actually a civilian light-keeper and two Coast Guardsmen, myself, as second in charge, and Gene. We were given just eight hours of liberty (time off) each week, and every third week-end. Fortunately the job came with a house and this was, in many ways, our first real home as a married couple. The location is a place with a coastal view of spectacular beauty. Some years later, after we were transferred, the movie Majestic used the light house as the location of a party in some of its scenes. The small town of Mendocino was also used in scenes of the Murder She Wrote TV series as the location of the character Jessica Fletcher’s home.

Our phone was the crank type seen in old movies where you crank it and say, “Operator! I’d like to call –.” My wife used a wringer style washing machine and a clothes line (weather permitting) to do our laundry. Weather not permitting she hung the clothes in the house. This was in the days of cloth diapers so we had lots of laundry. The only water well was contaminated and condemned by the County Health Department, so we had to hand carry our drinking water from a fresh water spring about two hundred yards, or so, from our house. There was no TV reception and only intermittent radio reception.

We often spent our liberty time grocery shopping or doing other chores. Our primary recreation consisted of reading, fishing and watching the ocean for boats, whales, etc. We only managed to go to the town’s one movie theater two or three times in the approx. eighteen months we were there. Yet, in spite of the difficulties we encountered at Point Cabrillo it is one of our most treasured memories and we still dearly love to visit the area and the light station. We were too young to fully appreciate the beauty of it at the time.

From Point Cabrillo we were transferred to Honolulu, Hawaii. There I was assigned to a 180’ buoy tender called the Blackhaw. The Coast Guard had no base housing so we found an apartment on Kapiolani, Blvd. not far from Waikiki. We had no car so we generally had to walk or ride the city bus if we wanted to go anywhere. For grocery shopping we had to use the Commissary at Pearl Harbor Navy Base. Since it was so far away we would ride the bus there, do our shopping for the month and then take a taxi for the trip back to our apartment.

Patsy was pregnant with our daughter Debbie, our second child, and was due very soon. We had settled into a fairly comfortable routine but we were not attending church. My duty days, lack of transportation, etc. all made convenient excuses. It wasn’t that we made a conscious choice not to attend church during this period – we just didn’t expend the effort to find a church and find a way to attend. We should have!

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Heb 10:25; NIV (italics mine).

Several months later I was transferred to the Kukui WAK189 a 339’ converted WWII Liberty Ship. Commissioned May 11, 1945 she served until decommissioned February 29, 1972. The Liberty Ships were cargo vessels rapidly mass produced during WWII to get supplies to Europe through German submarine blockades in huge convoys.

“Eighteen American shipyards built 2,710 Liberty’s between 1941 and 1945, easily the largest number of ships produced to a single design…The immense effort to build Liberty ships, the sheer number of ships built, and the fact that some of the ships survived far longer than the original design life of five years, make them the subject of much interest..” Source: Liberty Ship,Wikipedia.

In early 1961, shortly after I was assigned, we left for a six-month West Pac cruise and Patsy took the children back to California where she stayed with her parents during my cruise. The separation was difficult but it made our time together all the more special and I believe the difficulties we faced together matured us and made our bond stronger.

The responsibilities I had to deal with and the things I encountered on the cruise certainly hastened my maturity. Seeing the difficulties faced by men, women and children in the islands we visited, such as; Kwajalein Atoll, Guam, the Mariana Islands and especially in the Philippines, Japan, and Hong Kong, was a real eye opener for me.

Conditions probably have improved some by now, but I was there in 1961 and I literally saw groups of people, day after day, eating scraps of food from our vessel’s garbage cans, hundreds of people sleeping on the sidewalks, entire families living on boats no larger than our life rafts, and wearing clothing we would throw away or use for rags. These things made a lasting impression on me that I will never forget.

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. Mark 14:7; NIV (italics mine).

"'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God. Lev 19:9-10; NIV (italics mine).

While on the cruise I felt the Lord tugging at my heart again. As soon as we returned to Honolulu I went looking for a church and I found Door of Faith Church at 1161 Young Street, Honolulu. It was, and still is, a full gospel church planted in 1940 by a missionary, Sister Mildred Johnson Brostek. Sister Brostek died in 2005 at the age of ninety-three. I remember her as a dynamo who; pastored the church, ran prison ministries, rest home and street ministries, taught Bible studies, and planted churches on other islands. By the time of her death the church had started a Bible College and twenty-four branch churches stretching from the U.S. mainland to Okinawa and New Zealand. It was here that I first became involved in serious Bible study and where I learned some of the fundamentals of effective Bible study.

For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the LORD, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. Ezra 7:10; NIV (italics mine).

I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! Eccl 1:13; NIV (italics mine).

I will study your commandments and reflect on your ways. 16 I will delight in your principles and not forget your word. Ps 119:15-16; NLT (italics mine).

It was here, at the Door of Faith church, that I learned effective personal witnessing techniques and first became active in ministry. I served in street ministry, rest home ministry and prison ministry. It was also here that I met Marvin, a young Seaman in the U.S. Navy, who has been a close friend for more than fifty years. If one of us had money we both ate. We shared food, prayer, ministry, Bible study, joy and pain. We now live on opposite coasts but we are still in touch at least weekly via internet or phone.

Pat and our children rejoined me shortly after we returned from the cruise. The people of the church welcomed them at the airport with boxes full of flower lei’s – so many you could scarcely see their faces. We had a nice apartment not far from the church in a quiet neighborhood with good neighbors and good friends. We still didn’t have a car so we did a lot of walking, pushing a stroller but life was good.

A few months later, I was transferred off the Kukui to search and rescue duty because the Kukui was going on another cruise and I was due to be discharged prior to their return. This was during the era when the space shuttles were doing water landings and on several occasions we were sent out to pick up the Navy para-divers who were doing training jumps in preparation for the next shuttle mission. The Navy liked to have us pick them up after their training jumps because our low draft forty footers made it very easy to get them and their gear out of the water.

The next couple of things that I will discuss I have never felt comfortable discussing. I don’t like discussing them publically even now but it is an important part of the story.

Shortly before my enlistment was up Pat and our children returned to the mainland. It was during this time that I felt led to engage in my first serious spiritual fast, abstaining from all food and drinking only water for seven days then eating only every other day for the next three weeks. Since Pat was back on the mainland and I was living on base, I was free to spend all my off duty time in prayer, study, church meetings, etc.

One night as I was walking from the boat dock to the church I had a very strange experience. It was unusually dark, so dark that I could only see a few feet ahead of me. Suddenly I had the feeling that there was someone ahead and then I felt an eerie presence of evil. Although I couldn’t see anyone, I sensed clearly that someone was there - a block or so ahead of me. I kept walking and after going another block a man stepped out of the doorway of a building in front of me. Even though I expected to meet someone, his sudden appearance startled me for a moment but I didn’t feel that he was any threat to me. He asked me for money but I didn’t have any. He smelled like a brewery and was obviously very intoxicated. After some discussion I convinced him to accompany me to the church. When we arrived at the church there was no one there and the church was locked which was unusual. The basement door was normally left open for servicemen, like myself, to get in. Although I didn’t feel prepared to handle the situation I decided it was up to me to pray with this man so I did. This was my first such experience and when I finished praying I was somewhat astonished by the fact that he not only seemed changed but also appeared to be completely sober.

At one point, while attending the Door of Faith Church, I felt the call of God upon my life very strongly. Young and naive, as I was, I believed I was being called into the ministry to be a pastor. I made up my mind to find a way to attend Bible College and enter the ministry. Fortunately, once again, God had other plans for my life and I was never found a way to follow MY path. I know now that I would have been a miserable failure as a church pastor because that was not my gift or my calling.

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Eph. 4:11-13; NIV (italics mine).