On Fatherhood
- John Bost
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Up early this a.m., frankly too early after a near midnight long day.
Dad passed yesterday morning, though he was found only early afternoon.
We got the call around 4:00 while in Blowing Rock! Stunned!
We were all quite sure this relatively healthy God-lover would make it until 12/20/25, closing out a coveted 100 years!
He was apparently showering in preparation for his Sunday go to meeting ritual. He loved church!
He was known for his devotion to God, his family and his church.
His childhood story was much rougher than mine (understatement)!
His family suffered great loss during the depression, a large family farm bought out from under them for the price of taxes owed...some 2000 dollars. I don't even know if they as kids ever fully understood.
Dad said, "One day a man rode out on a fancy horse, and the next day showed us his deed."
They moved to an old rent house which later burned! With everything salvageable loaded onto the school bus he was driving by then for income purposes (mostly buying shotgun shells, as squirrels and rabbits fed them, along with vegetables raised in the yard), they moved into the city and diagonally across the street from a new church.
My Aunt Ginny began attending. The other family members, to include my dad and the four male syblings (one lost to pneumonia before a doctor could arrive on the farm) were "unchurched."
Dad said he saw some pretty girls in the church yard and later attended. Aunt Ginny married the preacher's son and Dad, the preacher's piano playing grand-daughter, Peggy Louise.
He had just turned 18 and she had just turned 16 or so! Dad said he payed a magistrate $5.00 to work out the details.
Some days afterwards, Pearl Harbor was bombed and he was off to Chicago as a Navy recruit. After being trained in the ship yards, this newlywed squirrel hunter, soon found himself behind a 40 caliber machine gun in the Philippines.
His story of the unknown man that stepped into the gun turret to instruct him, when the first Kamakaze planes began diving, was almost unbelievable.
After shooting down several planes, he later searched the ship to say thanks...the "man" was never identified as ever being on the craft!
He sent home his meager paycheck to Mom, along with money made on the side, seems he learned to cut hair on the heads of the 50 or so men on board the LSM 316. Quite the entrepreneur.
By the time the Japanese surrendered, Mom had bought a home in Statesville, down below the church.
Story goes that he was given $50 and a ticket from SanFrancsico to Winston-Salem and after a meal at a restaurant near the bus station, called K&W, he caught a cab to Statesville.
Mom was sweeping off the front porch and saw a slow cab drive by with a sailor looking out the window.
Dad says that she recognized him, threw the broom down and ran to the street!
My sister was born about 9 months later, then me in '48!
His work ethic, love for his four kids, leadership in multiple churches set an example I will never forget.
Fortunate to have been born to such a man!
I tried to honor him in a book written a few years back, "The Christ I Came To Know" as it was because of him!
Sorry for your loss prayers for you and your family