"Well, YOU Could Run..."

Here I am, one week after the 2014 mid-term elections. And I'm still trying to come to grips with everything that has happened in the past year.

At the first part of November 2013 I found out Judge Alfonso Campos, the Justice of the Peace in Caldwell County Precinct 3, was not going to seek re-election as he is relocating out of the county to take care of his aging mother.

Judge Campos has done a great job as JP for the people of Caldwell county and I was concerned all of the improvements he had implemented would be lost should the office be taken back by the other party. They hadn't had a good track record in their previous experience.

I called the Caldwell County Republican Party chairperson and asked her how I could help her keep the JP3 position in the "R" column. Her response was, "Well, YOU could run!" I thought about it for a moment and I told her, "I'm on disability and I don't know if I CAN run. I'll have to check with the Social Security Administration to find out if I can." She encouraged me to find out. I also told her I didn't know how I could afford to mount a campaign and pay the $375.00 filing fee. She told me, "Don't worry about that, we'll teach you about all that."

I called Social Security and they told me there wouldn't be a problem with me running. I qualify for the "Ticket to Work" program that allows one to try to return to the workforce without risking disability benefits.

I called the CCRP chairperson back and told her Social Security didn't have a problem with me running. I also told her that I wasn't going to make a decision right away, I wanted to pray about it for a while first.

I talked with my wife, Kristie, and she thought it might be a pretty good idea. So, I started praying about it. I prayed for nearly an entire month. As it was getting close to the day I would have to make a decision, I made a rather bold move. I made a challenge to God. I told God, "If you can provide a way to get the $375.00 for the filing fee to get on the ballot, I will run for Justice of the Peace." I didn't tell anyone about my deal with God. After a few days, I did tell Kristie about it.

Finally, the last day that I could file came. I expected to get a call from the CCRP chairperson to find out my decision. Sure enough, I get a call, but it didn't go the way I expected. She said, "Ben, we have someone who is willing to pay your filing fee. Can you run?" Suddenly, I knew it was time for me to honor my side of the agreement I made with God. "Yes, I'll run.", I said. Later that afternoon I filed as a candidate.

The next step was the primary election, it would take place on March 4th, 2014. Since I was the only Republican, I ran unopposed for the General Election ballot. There were a few other statewide races that were forced into a runoff election.

The summer was relatively quiet, but Kristie and I had some fun campaigning in the Luling Watermelon Thump Parade and the Martindale 4th of July Parade. We met all kinds of people and handed out business cards to get my name out into the public. Everyone we spoke with was very positive toward my candidacy.

Suddenly, it looked like we might have to pull out of the race. The reason was, our landlord for the property we were renting in Maxwell, Texas was forced to sell by the bank. We had 30 days to find a place to move to in the county and in the precinct. We got notice on July 2nd.

Kristie immediately started packing up our house. In the space of the next week she packed up nearly 90% of our belongings. The only things that weren't packed were the things we used every day and my office computer and music equipment.

We immediately started looking for another place to move. Just by chance, I saw a post on Facebook for some property, but I didn't know if it was in the precinct. We called immediately and made an appointment to see it. It turned out it was owned by another one of the the Republican candidates, Ken Schawe.

We went out to see it and it was actually a very good fit for us. The problem was, Ken didn't want to rent with dogs as he had just spent $3,000 fixing up damage from the previous renters. That was A-OK to us. Ken was straight-up honest with us, and we respected and appreciated that from him. He told us he had some other properties that might work out better, and we went and looked at several of them. Unfortunately, they just weren't right for us or they weren't in the precinct.

Time was getting short. We only had 11 days left before we had to move. Kristie and I decided we may only be able to try to buy a mobile home and find some land to put it on. We went out to Village Homes out on US 183 to see how they might be able to help. They had a 2 bedroom home we could afford, but then we'd have to find land. Kristie and I told them we'd have to think about it.

Two days later, we got a call from Village Homes telling us they had a home that had been repossessed and was already on some land. We went out to look at it. It was in Hays county, but it looked like it was our only choice. We asked how much it would take for a down payment, $3,000.

It looked like I would have to withdraw from the race. I didn't want to, and neither did anyone else want me to.

We talked with my wife's parents about borrowing the money for the down payment. They told us they would loan it to us. Two days later, we got call from Village Homes and they told us we needed to get the down payment to them right away as another couple wanted the property. We went to pick up the check from my father-in-law to bring it out to them.

On the way out there, we got a call from some good friends of ours, Bob & Peggy. Peggy had been in a really bad car wreck the weekend of the Luling Watermelon Thump and she was laid up. She wanted to know if Kristie wanted to come out and pick the figs from her tree as she wasn't able. We told her we'd try to get out there.

We stopped at Maxwell and I picked up my guitar. I figured I'd play some music and we'd spend some time talking with Peggy while Kristie picked the figs.

We went out to Village Homes and dropped off the check and on the way back, stopped at Bob and Peggy's.

We sat and talked for a while and played some songs. Suddenly, Bob says to us, "How would you like to rent the house up front of the property here?" Kristie and I looked at each other because just the week before, Bob had said many people had asked him about renting the house and he just wasn't interested in renting it. They were using it for storage.

"How much would you rent it for, Bob?", we asked. He said, "How about $500 a month on a two year lease." Kristie and I had to pick ourselves up off the floor. We walked over to see it.

It was FULL! Full of furniture, full of personal items, full of family pictures, there was even a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the livingroom.

Bob and Kristie started talking about what it would take to get it all packed up so we could move in. It would be a LOT of work. Then, Bob said, "if you're going to do all this work, we'll do two months for free." And we thought, "Could God bless us this much?" When we got back to their house, we told Bob and Peggy not to make a decision right away. We asked them to talk about it, pray about it, sleep on it and we'd call them the next day. On Sunday, we called and Bob said, "Let's do it."

The next day, Kristie and I went to buy a plant to say thank you to Bob and Peggy. I walked across the parking lot and halfway through the store and the back across the parking lot. By that time, I was pretty wiped out. I really felt bad and the pain in my chest was killing me. I told Kristie, "The last time I felt like this, I had a heart attack. I'm not going through that again." We drove to the emergency room right down the road.

In the ER, they hooked me up to the EKG and gave me a nitroglycerin tablet. It helped a lot. We waited. More nitroglycerin. It worked more. They kept me overnight and did a stress test the next day. Everything was fine, just the arteries around my heart in spasm. No blockages.

While I was in the hospital, Kristie started packing up the new house, 75 boxes later, she was done. All the furniture was moved to storage sheds and trailers, the house was bug-bombed, carpets cleaned, walls scrubbed, kitchen scrubbed. All in 4 days. Kristie did an awesome job while I was in the hospital and resting afterward.

On Saturday, August 2nd, on the last day of the 30 days, we moved out of the house in Maxwell and into the house here in Niederwald, 8 miles up the road. We were still in Caldwell county and still in the precinct. God had delivered us a miracle and kept me in the race.

The month of August was spent unpacking and arranging the new house and once that was done, it was time to focus on the campaign. Kristie and I started hitting some of the local gatherings so we could be seen and people could get to know who I was.

September found us in full swing. People really only start paying attention after Labor Day. Bar-B-Ques and other community gatherings in the precinct as we could find them. National Night Out in Maxwell and the Martindale VFD BBQ were just a couple of the notable events.

Finally, we got our yard signs ordered. 200 signs ready to go. Then we started driving all over the precinct putting out signs and talking to people. Handing out push cards, going to campaign events such as the Caldwell County Sheriff's Association Candidates Forum. It really became a whirlwind the last month before the election.

Then, early voting started. Kristie and I walked through neighborhoods, knocking on doors and reminding people that early voting was happening for the next few days. We also made hundreds of phone calls to try to get out the vote in our precinct. Then, early voting was over.

At this point, I was optimistic because of the response we got when we talked with people, but I just didn't have a feel for how to gauge the electorate. It was driving me crazy to get the early voting numbers each day from the elections office but not to be able to know exactly how people had voted.

Finally, Election Day was here. I got up at 5:00 am and drove to each of the polling places to put out my signs. It was a drizzly day but the forecast said we'd have the most rain in the evening. Kristie wasn't doing well with her back that day so I made her stay home to get some rest. She was mad at me because I wouldn't let her go to the polls in the morning. But, I knew it was going to be a very long night and didn't want her to be uncomfortable all day long.

I spent most of the morning out at the polling place in Martindale, Texas as that was where the largest concentration of votes in my precinct would be coming from. Turnout was actually surprising. They were busy nearly all day until it got dark. In the afternoon I decided to go check how the other polling places were doing and I went by the house and picked up Kristie. She was finally glad to be able to go.

We drove back to Martindale and waved our signs until it was too dark for people to see them. Except for Kristie running into a Texas Rat Snake about 4 feet long, there wasn't a lot of excitement.

We drove to the other polling places and picked up our signs, it was raining pretty good by that point in the evening after the polls had closed. Then, we drove to the Republican HQ in Lockhart to await the results.

About 9:30 all of the festivities at the party came to a halt to get the results of the early voting. The tally for my race was 286 votes for me to 274 for my opponent. A 12 vote lead. It didn't seem like very much to me, but everyone started telling me that it was a really good sign. I was praying they were right.

The party went on, and then things started winding down as people left to go home. The only people left were those of us who were candidates and our spouses and a few other die-hard supporters along with the editor of the Lockhart Post-Register, Kathi Bliss.

Finally, at a little after 2:00 am, Kathi Bliss started announcing the results she was getting from Central Counting. First, she announced the race for County Judge. Amazingly, Ken Schawe won! The place went wild with hoots and hollers! We were all congratulating Ken and then Kathi said, "Next, we have Judge Ben Brady..." Kristie and I looked at each other... "What did she just say?" We were both sure we didn't hear her correctly... "843 votes to 750 votes.", Kathi Bliss continued. I jumped up and yelled, "YEAH!!!" We had won!

Kristie and I had worked so hard on the campaign and it was ALL the Lord that made it happen. You see, before we started in the race, there was literally less than 10 people in all of Caldwell County who knew who I was. My opponent had grown up in the county and had previously served as JP before Judge Campos. I thought for sure that her name recognition would be a factor.

God had put me in the race for a reason. Now, I'll get to serve the people of Caldwell County and give God the glory.

Jury Duty... Tough decisions

I just got home a couple of hours ago after having spent the last 2 days ensconced in the jury selection and trial for an offender charged with Assault - Bodily Injury - Family Violence. A class A misdemeanor here in Texas. The trial took place in the Caldwell County courthouse located in Lockhart, Texas, a city that claims to be the Bar-B-Que capital of the world... (and trust me, the BBQ here is FANTASTIC!).

About 10 days ago, I received my jury summons in the mail and I waited, rather anxiously, for yesterday, September 9th, to arrive. I've been summoned to jury duty almost a dozen times in my life and I've never been selected to serve as a juror, although I've always wanted to. You see, I've always been fascinated by the legal 'machine' process. A great deal of my interest was fueled by my very early childhood exposure to courtroom drama in the form of Earle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason character portrayed by the late Raymond Burr. For nearly 50 years I've watched nearly every episode of Perry Mason as well as all of the movies produced portraying the activities of the character. I've also seen countless other movies portraying the process of all that happens in the courtroom. Any time I get to watch through the keyhole of the courtroom, I'm enthralled by the process.

This time I was actually seeing it in real life. The first part of the process there were approximately 40 participants involved, known as the 'panel'. The name given to the potential pool of jurors that is created by the jury summons. Interestingly, according to statements made by Caldwell County Judge, Edward Jarrett, there were approximately 75 summons issued, but in reality only about 54 percent of those summoned where actually present for the process known as voir dire.

Voir Dire, according to  http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2229 is defined as: (vwahr [with a near-silent "r"] deer) n. from French "to see to speak," the questioning of prospective jurors by a judge and attorneys in court. Voir dire is used to determine if any juror is biased and/or cannot deal with the issues fairly, or if there is cause not to allow a juror to serve (knowledge of the facts; acquaintanceship with parties, witnesses or attorneys; occupation which might lead to bias; prejudice against the death penalty; or previous experiences such as having been sued in a similar case). Actually one of the unspoken purposes of the voir dire is for the attorneys to get a feel for the personalities and likely views of the people on the jury panel. In some courts the judge asks most of the questions, while in others the lawyers are given substantial latitude and time to ask questions.

On the many other occasions I've been summoned for jury duty I've never made it through the Voir Dire process. But this time, I was actually asked several questions by the prosecution and the defense attorneys. Even so, I was actually surprised they actually chose me to serve. The Voir Dire process took about 5 hours and then we were dismissed for lunch. When we returned, the actual jury of 6 people was announced. For our case the jury consisted of 3 men and 3 women.  A fair enough representation, I thought. We were instructed by Judge Jarrett to report to the jury room the following day (this morning) at 8:45 AM and the trial would commence shortly thereafter. 

I arrived this morning at the courthouse at about 8:30 AM and rather than go up to the jury room immediately, I spent the remaining minutes checking my email and reviewing my Google Plus and Facebook streams for any content that might benefit from any of my interaction. Finding none, I proceeded up to the jury room at 8:40 AM.  When I got there, I found all five of my fellow jurors already seated at the table in the jury room with the only chair remaining at the head of the table where the jury foreman's badge was waiting. It was conspicuously different from all of the other badges as it had a red stripe on the front of it instead of the blue stripe present on all of the other badges... I guess I had been 'volunteered' by my contemporaries. 

We were ushered into the courtroom by the bailiff and sworn in as jurors by Judge Jarrett. The most difficult thing we had to deal with almost immediately is the courtroom itself. The acoustics in the room was terrible. This was due to the lack of sound-absorbing materials in the room. Every surface in the room was made of hard wood, plaster or glass and there wasn't anything to deaden the reverberation effects at all. There wasn't any kind of public address system in use in the room as, that would have only made the effects much worse. 

The first witness called was the victim, a young woman of about 23 years of age and very soft-spoken. She had to be reminded far too many times to speak up so she could be heard by the jury.  She was alleging the defendant slapped her across the face and had caused her physical pain as a result of the contact. She described in a pretty fair amount of detail that her boyfriend and father of her child, had been having sexual intercourse and during the act he had become 'upset' because she had 'moved differently', apparently, they had not been having sex very regularly as they had not been living together.  

In his anger, he decided to examine her cell phone and as he was going to get it, a physical altercation ensued where he pushed her down on the bed and 'frog-punched' her in the rear of the left thigh. When she attempted to get up out of the bed, he then allegedly slapped her across the face. She stated in her testimony that the frog punch really didn't seem to hurt her at all, but the slap across the face was like an explosion of pain.  He got her telephone and started looking through the text messages and became even more incensed when he found messages from her employer (who was referred to as 'Snuggles') in which she had a conversation with him regarding a puppy she had recently obtained. 

The defendant then accused her of having a sexual affair with her employer.  He threw the phone across the room and she stormed out and made it outside and ran several blocks down the street. This event happened in November 2012 and here we are 10 months later. Later on, during other testimony by the police officer who responded to the call, we saw her dressed in gym shorts and a thin top, not at all practical in terms of the weather for that time of year. She was also barefoot, clearly cold and very uncomfortable. 

One of the very interesting aspects of her testimony was revealed by the prosecutor that the victim had twice executed a written affidavit, once at the Lockhart PD and once at the Caldwell County DA's office requesting the charges be dropped and not to prosecute the defendant. This occurred after the defendant had been in jail for more than a month. It was further revealed by the prosecutor that the victim had to be issued a subpoena in order to appear to testify. She was not a willing participant in the trial and was clearly uncomfortable testifying. She apparently still had feelings for the defendant and didn't want to cause him any more distress as a result of the arrest.  She said that when she initially called the police, she had no idea they would arrest him. She simply wanted the police to go with her to obtain her belongings and retrieve her infant son and go home to her own place. 

The prosecution also presented several photographs taken by police officers that depicted the areas of the victim's person that were allegedly struck and injured. Unfortunately, you really couldn't tell much from the photos, even though they were actually quite good. There was no noticeable evidence of any red marks or indication that the victim had been slapped. However, I could tell the left side of her face was swollen, consistent with an impact of an open hand. She was clearly (to me) slapped. Other members of the jury weren't as sure of the photographic evidence as I was. 

It was further revealed that she went to visit the defendant every week at the county jail for more than 6 months and wrote him letters every single day. The letters weren't specifically revealed, but they were referred to as having been written with content of a highly erotic nature and both the prosecution and the defense attorneys attempted to use the lascivious nature of the content of the letters to their respective ends. 

Naturally, the defense attorney did what she could to discredit the credibility of the victim but she really didn't make much of an impact upon the members of the jury. 

After the victim finished testifying, we took a brief recess for about 30 minutes and when we came back into the courtroom, the officer from Lockhart PD was called to the stand to testify.  He spent a bit of time relating his experience on the force and his ability to determine whether or not a person was lying.  At the time of the incident he had only been on the police force approximately 10 months. He also testified that domestic disputes were a fairly large percentage of the calls he rolled on.  He explained the procedural policies of the department with respect to assault type calls and stated he had restrained the alleged defendant in handcuffs for the safety of himself and his fellow officer, the sergeant who accompanied him on the call. He then produced a DVD with dashcam video depicting his interaction with the victim immediately after the alleged incident and her emotional distress and relating of her side of the incident were documented.  This dashcam video was actually the linchpin of the verdict we ultimately rendered. Without the dashcam video it would have been a far more 'interesting' afternoon.

The defense didn't put on any sort of a case. They closed their case immediately after the prosecution closed theirs. We were then allowed to go to lunch. 

After lunch, we returned to the courtroom and we were given the charges and the juror instructions by Judge Jarrett. He carefully explained our duties as jurors and how we were to conduct ourselves in the deliberations.  We immediately retired to the jury room to being our duties. 

Initially, we formally 'elected' me as the foreman of the jury. It was clear the others really didn't want the responsibility of presiding over the others. I didn't mind at all. We took an initial vote and there were 2 for a guilty verdict and 4 for a not-guilty verdict as they had doubts as to the reasons the defendant allegedly struck the victim. We had to come to a consensus that no matter what the reason, striking another person was not acceptable in our society and that if the event actually happened, it would require a verdict of guilty under the law.  

We discussed this issue for nearly a half hour, trying to come to grips with the consequences of our verdict on the defendant, the victim and their child. The defendant had already spent nearly 10 months in jail because of a slap across the face. It seemed to many of us, including me, that 10 months for a face slap was a pretty severe price to pay.  Unfortunately, we would not be involved in the sentencing of the defendant if a guilty verdict was returned. He had elected to be sentenced by the judge. 

Ultimately, we reviewed all of the photographic evidence and then the dashcam video from the patrol car and came to the conclusion, beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant had actually slapped her across the face, thereby committing an offense of assault.  We took another vote and it was unanimous... Guilty. 

I struggled with my decision to find him guilty because, in my experience, I have been angry in my life, many times... I could certainly understand how a situation between two people could get completely out of hand to the point of one slapping the other across the face. All of us struggled with the fact that it was 'only a face slap' and that the  prosecution seemed to be overly zealous in terms of prosecuting the case, especially since there really wasn't any kind of serious injury or lasting consequences. There were no medical personnel involved, no hospitalization, nothing even remotely like that. It was a simple face slap. However, as the law is written, we were bound to return a guilty verdict. It was a message we were compelled to deliver to the defendant to let him know that kind of behavior was not acceptable in our society. According to the prosecutor we talked with, after the verdict was rendered and presented to the court, the next time he is charged with Assault - Bodily Injury - Family Violence, it will be a felony charge which will carry a much stiffer sentence. 

She also told us she would recommend to the judge (because the defendant had other legal troubles that were pending) that he be sentenced to time served... 300 days thus far. All in all, I found the experience of being a juror on the case to be extremely interesting. I only hope the defendant, who apparently has a much longer criminal history, learns something from the experience as well. I'll be praying for him for quite a long time. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and the next time you get a jury summons, don't try to get out of jury service. You would want someone to be willing to serve on a jury of your peers should the need arise. 

Ben

God bless,

Yes, It's Official... well, kind of...

Yes, I'll have to admit it, I spend a LOT of time with Google+... on my phone, on my Nexus 7 tablet and on my computer when I'm here in the office. 

I can't help it. It's a great platform for meeting new people via Hangouts and interacting with others via their posts. I get to meet new people every day and it helps me to broaden my horizons.

If you're on G+, send me a hangout invite. I'd love to converse with you. 

If you're not on G+, WHY NOT? 

The image above was created by Hangout Graphics

Multiple Camera Video Clip Synchronization Calculator

Well, it's been an interesting week so far. Thursday last I was trying to think of a small project I could take on to occupy some of my time. It's not like I don't have enough to do here at the house... we have 11 parrots and 7 of them talk, 5 dogs who always need to be taken outside and exercised and then, of course, there is the various calls from relatives about "How do I do this on my computer?"

As I sat here pondering, I thought about some of the issues that have frustrated me in the past and one that really stuck out in my mind is a bit of a math calculation that I have to do quite often; calculating the synchronization offset for multiple cameras in my video editor in order to synchronize the video clips. It is not that it is hard to do, however it is a bit tedious if you have to do it with just about every video editing project you take on.

Just a little bit of history...

I have used many video editing software packages over the past 25 to 30 years and for those which allow editing of multiple video streams on the timeline, this becomes a bit of an issue. There are many good video editing programs available now, some only focus on editing one video stream and allow you to create some very good video productions that you can then use to author a DVD or send up to your YouTube channel. However, some of the more capable packages allow you to edit more than one video stream on the timeline and when that is the case, you usually have to synchronize the video relative to one of the other video tracks.

There is a local Gospel music group here in the Central Texas area called The Steel Magnolias. They've been active here in the area for 6 or 7 years. About 4 years ago, they approached me to help them with some video one of their 'fans' shot for them at one of their appearances. They wanted to be able to put it onto a DVD to sell at their product table in order to raise money for their ministry.

I got the video from them and loaded it into my editing software I was using at the time, Pinnacle Studio 9. Up to this point I really had not needed to do any editing with video shot via multiple cameras but it was a real challenge with Pinnacle Studio, not because it was hard to calculate the offsets, but because in order to create the desired scenes, you had to actually cut video out of the top-most video stream in order for the rendering engine to display the video stream below it.

This resulted in a nightmare if you had to go back and try creating a different scene as the process of making the cuts in the top-most video stream was destructive to the content of the timeline. Once you delete it, you can't get it back. You have to start all over with your project.

I started looking at a lot of other video editing software with an eye toward how multiple video streams are handled. Every package I looked at, except one, used the very same destructive approach toward editing multiple video streams. The only software package that didn't do destructive timeline editing with respect to creating scenes from multiple cameras was a product called EditStudio Pro from Mediachance Software.

As soon as I downloaded the trial version of the software I knew it was a great video editor. At the time it was only $90, which was an absolute steal for what it provided in functionality. I had used several other Mediachance products for doing photo editing and creating high dynamic range photos and I always found their software to be very worthwhile. EditStudio Pro was certainly no exception.

The thing that makes it different in terms of editing multiple video streams from multiple cameras is you can add what is called a "Multi-Camera Layer" to the timeline along with your multiple video layers. When you add this layer, you then have the ability to assign each of your video tracks to a "Camera" button that is available for you to click on at the desired point in the timeline in order to post a key frame into the Multi-Camera layer to switch the display from one stream to another. The real beauty of this method is you do not do ANY cutting of video information out of the timeline to create your scenes.

The Multi-Camera layer is used by the rendering engine to automatically switch from one stream to the desired stream at the time the video is rendered. The Multi-Camera layer also enables the use of an editing display that will show up to 4 video streams on a monitor so you can identify which camera would be best to create the scene at any given point in the timeline.

Another very distinct advantage to the use of the Multi-Camera layer is if you (or your client) decides they don't like a particular sequence of scenes, you can simply add a new Multi-Camera layer and simply disable the old one, just in case you might want to come back to it later. You can then create your new scenes on the new Multi-Camera layer and get your client's approval, without the hassle of dealing with re-building your video timeline as you would have to do in virtually every other video editor.

I originally purchased EditStudio Pro in 2009 and it became my go-to video editing package almost immediately. It has extensive text titling, video effects, transitions, masking and matting, just about anything you want in a good editing package.

Recently, I saw on their web site they have reduced the price to $49 as they are no longer licensed to distribute the MPEG 2 rendering engine that was used to output to DVD video format. It's really not a big deal to me, even today (although my installation was installed prior to this turn of events) as you can simply save your video out as DV format and use your DVD authoring software to render the video into the MPEG 2 format. For $49 bucks, this is probably the best video editing deal on the planet.

The only other drawback that has been caused by the passage of time and technological capabilities and advances in video cameras is EditStudio does not import MP4 or HD video formats that some of the new cameras record into. It's still not a big deal, just import the video and convert it to DV video and then pull it into EditStudio.

Here's a video I created for The Steel Magnolias using EditStudio Pro 6.05 using multiple video camera streams.

So why did I write the calculator?

All of this being said, I still had the issue of doing all of the time offset calculations bugging me. I had to figure out an easy way to do the calculations and eliminate having to find a piece of scratch paper to do all the math when I needed to synchronize streams.

One aspect of EditStudio that is also different than most other video editing software packages is the format used to display the position of the timeline cursor is NOT a format that is part of the SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) timecode standard.

EditStudio uses the timecode format of:
        0h 00m 00s 000 
This format represents hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds.

The SMPTE timecode standard used in many of the other video editors is:
        00:00:00.00 or 00:00:00:00
This format represents hours, minutes, seconds and frames. The portion of the timecode that represents frames may be delimited by either a period or a colon. In some cases it can also be delimited by a semi-colon.

There are also several different video standards in use in the television and motion picture industry:
Most common here in the United States is NTSC (National Television System Committee), however there are also other standards in use around the world. PAL (Phase Alternating Line) and SECAM (Séquentiel couleur à mémoire, French for "Sequential Color with Memory")

Each of these video standards has their own frame rate or number of frames that are displayed in one second. For example, NTSC is 29.97 frames per second. PAL and SECAM are 25 frame per second and the film industry uses a couple of different standards: Film NTSC, which has a frame rate of 23.98 frames per second and Film, which has a frame rate of 24 frames per second. With the invention of Hi-Definition video, there are also NTSC 59.94 frames per second and PAL at 50 frames per second.

Naturally, you have to take the frame rate into consideration when calculating the time offsets on the video timeline. so the first thing you need to do in order be accurate is determine how many milliseconds each frame consumes in a second. For NTSC at 29.97 frames per second, the individual frames consume 33.36670 milliseconds. a PAL/SECAM frame consumes 40 milliseconds and a Film NTSC frame consumes  41.70838 milliseconds. (it all depends upon how accurate you need to be) while Film (24 fps) consumes 41.66667 milliseconds.

Once you have the frames broken down to milliseconds, you can then convert all of the other time elements to milliseconds to make the math much easier:

• 1 hour equals 3,600,000 milliseconds
• 1 minute equals 60,000 milliseconds
• 1 second equals 1000 milliseconds

So, a time value on the timeline of your favorite video editor (one that doesn't convert to milliseconds already) would be represented as follows: (assuming NTSC 29.97 fps)

01:33:47.13
hh:mm:ss.ff

3,600,000 +  1,980,000 + 47,000 + 433.7671

Naturally, doing all the decimal math would be a pain in the butt so we round UP the number of milliseconds represented by the frames to 434 milliseconds.

3,600,000 +  1,980,000 + 47,000 + 434 = 5627434  milliseconds of video. Now we have established a position on the video time line that can be very easily compared with any other position to determine whether we need to add or subtract time from the beginning of the video clip to synchronize the clips.

So let's say Camera 1 video begins at 5627434 on the timeline and the scene we want to synchronize to begins at 01:47:30.22 or 3,600,000 + 2,820,000 + 30,000 + 734.0674 or 6450734 milliseconds.

Camera 2 begins on the timeline at 01:32:00.00 ( 3,600,000 + 1,920,000 = 5520000 ) and the scene to synchronize is located at position 01:40:21.17 ( 3,600,000 + 2,400,000 + 21,000 + 567 = 6021567 )

Now to do the calculations, we have to first find the difference between the synchronization position for each camera. You can pick either stream to do your calculation, however if you pick one you may find you will need to ADD time to the beginning of the timeline in your video editor (some editors will allow this, and some will not). So for this example, we'll use Camera 1 sync - Camera 2 sync:

6450734 - 6021567 = 429167 or 00:07:09.05 so to synchronize our synchronization points we would have to move the Camera 2 video clip to the RIGHT on the timeline by 7 minutes, 9 seconds and 5 frames.

If we were to have chosen to use Camera 2 as our reference stream, the difference would be: -429,167 so we would have to move Camera 1 to the LEFT on the timeline by 7 minutes, 9 seconds and 5 frames to synchronize the desired scenes.

If at all possible you almost always want to move video to the right on the timeline, because you may find one of your video clips start times to be at 00:00:00.0 on the timeline which would mean you would have to insert time at the beginning of the timeline in order to move it the desired offset.

As you can see, you can go through several calculations only to find (depending upon the number of video streams you need to synchronize) that you need to use a different video stream as your primary or reference stream.

I decided I wanted a way to calculate this information quickly and present it in a way to easily determine the best stream to use (since I typically deal with 4 camera streams at a time) as the primary stream to minimize the impact on the timeline.  The following image shows the results of using each of the video streams I used in my testing:

As you can see, using Camera 1 or Camera 2 in the above image would be much easier in terms of moving video streams on the timeline than using Camera 4 and especially Camera 3, which would require you to add time to the beginning of the timeline. The arrows show the direction the video stream should move in relation to the primary video stream.

Here is the same test data using the EditStudio Pro timecode format:

Using the program...

1. Select the video standard you wish to use from the drop list. The program will then calculate the frame duration in milliseconds to use in the calculations.
2. Select whether you want to use SMPTE time codes or if you are using the EditStudio Pro time codes format. The default is to use the EditStudio timecode format. 
3. Select the Camera you wish to use as your primary video stream, you can always select a different one later and re-calculate.
4. Enter the Starting time on the timeline for the video clip for Camera 1.
5. Enter the Ending time on the timeline for the video clip for Camera 1. The duration will automatically be calculated.
6. Enter the Synchronization time from the timeline for the video clip for Camera 1.
7. Repeat steps 4 through 6 for each of the video streams on the timeline as desired. You have to have at least 2 streams filled out, otherwise, what's the point of the calculation?
8. Click on the Calculate button at the bottom of the screen. The Offset Time will automatically be calculated for each of the video streams and you will get a visual indicator as to the direction on the timeline the video clip will be moved. If you see an arrow pointing to the left, you should select a new Primary Camera and press the Calculate button again to recalculate relative to the new Primary Camera stream.
9. You can press the Offset Time button (to the left of the Offset Time field) to copy the contents of the Offset field to the Windows Clipboard so you don't  have to retype the time in your video editor to move the starting position of the video clip.

That's about all there is to using the program. It can be used with ANY video editing software that uses SMPTE timecode or EditStudio Pro timecode. If you come across a video editor that doesn't use one of those timecode formats, you can always convert the timecode (provided you can determine the constituent elements of the time code in question and convert it to either SMPTE or EditStudio format and enter the information in the desired fashion.

If you have any questions at all, you can certainly contact me and I'll be glad to answer them if I can.

Where can you download the program?

That's an easy question to answer. Just use the following link to download it from my Google Drive.
Multiple Camera Synchronization Calculator

How do I get updates?

All you have to do is re-download the program from the link posted above. You'll be downloading the most current version.

What is the program written in?

The Multiple Camera Video Synchronization Calculator is written in a software language known as Clarion for Windows 6.3 (build 9058) from http://www.softvelocity.com
Clarion has been around as a programming language since 1986 under the MS/PC-DOS operating system and I've been using it as my primary programming language since 1989. Clarion for Windows came about in October of 1994 and the product is still actively marketed.

Windows 8 vs Windows 7...

Back in the latter half of October 2012 I decided to upgrade my workhorse computer to Windows 8, after all for $40.00 how could a body go wrong???  

Well, I'll tell you... The dirty little secret Microsoft didn't tell me when I ran the compatibility testing application prior to Windows 8 being installed is that Windows 8 doesn't support the use of virtual machines created using the free XP Mode available in Windows 7 Professional and higher. 

Why is this an issue? Because my programming language and software development environment of choice, Clarion from SoftVelocity is only a 16 bit environment (it creates 32 bit applications). As such, it will not run in a Windows 7 64 bit operating system. When I first started using Windows 7 64 bit a couple of years ago, I created my XP Mode virtual machine using the Virtual PC environment from Microsoft. It has served me extremely well as I not only do development in Windows, but I also maintain several DOS based applications that were created with earlier, much older development tools, including Clarion 2.110 and Clarion for DOS 3.102.

Naturally, I was plenty peeved at Microsoft for unceremoniously informing me that my virtual environment would not run under Windows 8. When attempting to identify what I could actually do about the problem, I found there was no way they provided an 'upgrade' avenue to convert my Virtual PC virtual machines to the new Hyper-V technology. 

Shame on you Microsoft. 

There are many thousands of businesses and individuals out there who use XP Mode in order to run legacy applications crucial to their businesses or personal use. 

As a result, I had to do a fair bit of juggling around some things on my hard drives (while at the same time re-organizing my office) and it cost me nearly a month's worth of time. 

I was finally able to get the second 200 GB IDE PATA hard disk in my machine (where I had been storing my virtual machines) cleared off and I then re-installed Windows 7 Professional. I quickly found that even though I had created the necessary 'base' XP virtual hard disk, I could not access the virtual hard disk from my previous XP Mode virtual environment. I think it had something to do with permissions. 

As a result, I did a little monkeying around with it and I was finally able to log into the old XP virtual machine and move all of the programming and source code files out of the virtual machine onto another one of my hard drives in my 4 terabyte array of storage. I was also able to export the requisite registry entries for the software I had installed as well as I knew I would probably need them in the new XP mode virtual machine. 

Next, I created a new XP Mode environment in my new Windows 7 Professional installation and did a main install of my Clarion 6.3 development environment.  I then copied my old Clarion 6.3 files with all of my updated templates and settings over the install and everything seemed to be working after that. But the big wrinkle was it was still only running under Microsoft's Virtual PC virtual machine environment. 

I wanted dearly to convert it to VMWare or VirtualBox instead, as I would then be able to run the virtual machine under Windows 8 instead. 

Unfortunately, the way XP Mode works, it seemed like it wasn't going to be in the cards... until last night.

VMWare has a program called vCenter Converter Standalone that will allow you to convert an installation of Windows XP (installed on a desktop or a laptop) or import an XP Mode virtual machine and create a new VMWare virtual machine.

So in the continuing saga of my Windows 8 vs Windows 7 / XP Mode compatibility battle I was finally able to convert my XP Mode virtual machine (which uses Microsoft Virtual PC virtualization software) to VMWare Player 5.0.  

It took more than 7 hours to do the virtual machine conversion for a 127 GB virtual machine from an IDE (PATA) drive to an eSATA drive.  When I initially launched the virtual machine I kept getting prompted for the activation  key and none of the keys I had would work with the XP Mode virtual machine because it is licensed specifically to work with Virtual PC.

I did some digging around and found that if I add the line: xpmode.enabled = "TRUE" to the .vmx configuration file it no longer prompted me for activation. I was then able to run my 16 bit programming environment under VMWare Player and it ran a heck of a lot faster than it did under Virtual PC. (which proves once again that Microsoft doesn't know what the hell they are doing when it comes to writing software, oh... wait... Microsoft didn't write Virtual PC, they bought it from Connectix, just like all of the other crapware they sell.)

The next step was to convert an Acronis TrueImage backup of my old Compaq Presario 2700, Pentium III Mobile laptop (which is 12 years old and still running fine) to see if I could create another XP virtual machine. It took more than 4 hours to do the backup across the network from the laptop to my eSATA drive. Then, an additional 20 minutes later converting it from the Acronis .TIB format to a VMWare virtual machine using the vCenter Converter Standalone. 


Once the conversion was completed, I had to figure out how to re-activate that copy of Windows XP in order to run it in the VMWare Player. As soon as it started up, I could see there was going to be a bit of a hassle in terms of doing the activation because it didn't recognize the network adapters in the Host, as a result, no Internet connectivity was available to try to activate using the XP product key from the COA (certificate of authenticity) on the bottom of the laptop.


I clicked on the "Telephone" button to activate by telephone... but because of the hardware changes the installation key that was generated would not validate correctly via the Microsoft telephone validation process.

What to do...?  On a hunch, I clicked on the button to change the Product Key and it gave me the 5 entry fields to enter the Product Key from the COA. I entered them and it automatically generated the installation key. 

I then entered the telephone validation process again and used the new installation key to generate an activation key and Viola! a new XP virtual machine was activated.

So, now it's 24 hours later and I can now run either XP environment in my VMWare Player as separate virtual machines. It's a good day so far!

The Good Neighbors Video Project

For 3 days last week I worked on a very interesting project...

Not long ago, a very dear brother in the Lord, Jim Lanning, contacted me and asked if I could produce a video to put on DVD to help him and his church to promote a ministry known as The Good Neighbors Ministry. The focus of the ministry is to provide a free lunch to children in an economically disadvantaged, unincorporated town in Central Texas known as Redwood, during the summer months when schools in the San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District are not in session. 

Redwood, Texas

Redwood, Texas is about 7 or so miles east of San Marcos, Texas. The neighborhood there is comprised mostly of Hispanic families and as you drive through the little town you can tell there is little there in terms of economic prosperity. Most of the inhabitants there live in single-wide or double-wide mobile homes or manufactured housing. Many of the properties are run down or in disrepair. From all outward appearances, it just doesn't appear to be a place where there is much happiness. However, there is one bright spot in town at the corner of County Road 245 and Poplar St., Redwood Baptist Church.

Redwood Baptist Church isn't unlike many other small community churches in Central Texas. The church building is comprised of a main structure that apparently had it's beginnings as a manufactured building. There is an outdoor pavilion where people congregate after the Sunday morning services and enjoy a church luncheon. 

There is also a new building that has recently been erected in order to serve as a small community health center office to allow people to come and get their blood pressure checked and see a community nurse periodically. The community health center building is owned by the Redwood Community Center, Inc. and Redwood Baptist Church hosts the building on their property as the church location is well known and convenient to the area.  

The leaders of the church noticed a few years ago that during the summer months, when school is not in session, the children of the neighborhood were languishing spiritually and physically so they decided to embark on a neighborhood ministry to try to help the neighborhood. In all too many cases, the children of the neighborhood do not get the proper nutrition they need and for a disproportionate number of them, a school lunch may be the only meal they get to eat every day. The church decided to start what they call The Good Neighbors ministry, in partnership with the San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District. 

Every weekday during the summer from early June, after the school year has been completed, until the middle of August when the school year begins again, the church provides a venue for children of the community to come and eat a free, nutritious lunch prepared by San Marcos CISD employees. 

At 11:00 AM a small nondescript white van pulls up to the church pavilion and distributes lunches to any child aged 18 and under for free. This meal is available until 2:00 PM. If there are any adults in the community that wish to eat with their children, they can do so for a cost of $2.75. Unfortunately, in today's economic times there are many adults who are unemployed and cannot even afford to pay the small nominal fee, but they are not turned away hungry. The church also has a van that will go to various areas in the community, too far away from the church for small children to walk, and pick up kids and bring them to the church so they can eat their lunch. The drivers for these rides are all volunteers.

During this period of time for 3 hours, the church also provides space for a reading program to take place where adults from Redwood Baptist Church and other local San Marcos area churches oversee and assist children who might have trouble reading and, using a curriculum developed by the American Bible Society, gives the children the opportunity to practice their reading skills while school is out of session. This helps keep the children engaged in learning over the summer months so they don't languish scholastically. For many of these children, English is a second language and it provides additional reinforcement for them. 

The church also benefits from this ministry as it provides an opportunity for children to hear the Gospel message of Jesus Christ through activities such as learning songs, reading Bible stories and even learning how to play soccer.

Brother Jim provided me with some photographs he had taken over the past summer and my wife, Kristie, had also taken some when we went out there on several occasions to play music for the kids. I had also taken some video to use for promoting the ministry, but ultimately, I didn't use it as I really wanted to keep the final video under 5 minutes long.

Here is what I ended up doing to create the video that can be viewed here.

How I Created the Video

First, I used Microsoft Photo Story 3 ( it was originally produced for Windows XP and is still available for download from Microsoft. )

Apparently, under Windows 7 it has a problem and it would not mix the background audio I wanted to use. It kept crashing. It does run under Virtual PC in XP Mode (Windows 7 Professional and higher required to run XP Mode), but if you do a "Preview" of your production, it is a bit 'choppy' on the audio portion because of the time slicing of the CPU to service the virtual machine. But, if you put your pictures in and apply the audio, and render it, it outputs just fine.

So, I ended up sequencing the photos and the photo animations using Photo Story. I'm sure you could do the same thing with the Microsoft Live Essentials Movie Maker that you can download for Windows 7, but I haven't tried it yet. I may try it just to see what I can get out of it.
 
Next, I output the video to a DV (AVI) file and pulled it into my video editor of choice, Edit Studio 6.  I use an older release of the product that was issued prior to them losing their licensing for the MPEG-2 rendering. 

I was able to edit the audio using Audacity, to copy the chorus of "Everythng is Beautiful", a song recorded by Ray Stevens in 1970, to make the song longer to match up with the video output of the photos. I also utilized the audio of another video I saw on YouTube of kids singing "Jesus Loves The Little Children"

I recorded my voice-over audio track using Audacity with my Audio Technica AT-2005 USB microphone and I used the Promptware Plus teleprompter software from Listec on my Nexus 7 to manage the output of my script so I could read all of the text I needed to read within my 5 minute limit. 

I then pulled in my audio files to Edit Studio 6 and set the levels in a music layer on the timeline for the background music and trimmed the "in" and "out" markers on the music tracks.

I then pulled in my voice-over track into a new audio layer I named "Voice-over"
 I rendered the video with Edit Studio 6 out to a DV AVI file with the audio and then I decided it would probably be a good idea to also implement the use of subtitles on the DVD for those who might be hearing impaired. There are actually two different ways to apply subtitles. You can 'hard subtitle', which actually renders the subtitles into the video or you can 'soft subtitle' which would allow you to create subtitles of multiple languages and have them rendered at the time the DVD is played.

Since this was something I had never done before, I did some digging around and I found a program called Subtitle Workshop that would allow me to preview the video and enter my script of text into subtitles with the start and ending timing notations and output a file in the SubRip SRT subtitle file format my video converter, Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate, could use to render the subtitles to do 'hard subtitling'.

I didn't like the way the subtitles were rendered with Video Converter, so I decided to investigate other methods of implementing subtitles for the DVD.

Since I had already built the .SRT file, I had all of the timings and the subtitle information for each of the 77 subtitles in the video. I did a little bit more research and found that Edit Studio 6 could do 'hard subtitling' but it didn't use a file to pull the information in, you have to create subtitle markers in the timeline at the specific points where you want the subtitles to be displayed. There was a small problem with that. 

The SubRip subtitle file timecode notation for the subtitle positions were formatted as (hh:mm:ss,fff) :

Edit Studio 6 - Subtitle Marker Dialog

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,000 for the start and end times.

Edit Studio 6 uses timecode notations formatted as: 

00h 00m 00s 000 for both the start and end times.

These start and end times are entered into a dialog box when creating subtitle markers in the timeline of the video, which complicated things in terms of implementing the subtitle information I already had, in Edit Studio 6. 

I figured if there was a way to convert from one timecode format to the other I could probably do it with a  Regular Expression (Regex)

I fired up my text editor EditPad Pro from JGSoft and looked at doing a Regular Expression search and replace for the ":" and "," in the input and output timings while at the same time preserving the numeric values and reformatting them to the Edit Studio 6 timecode notation. Using a companion program Regex Buddy, also from JGSoft within EditPad Pro, I was able to build and test the working regular expression 

It took me about an hour to come up with the correct Regex, which was: 
Search Regex: ([\d]*):([\d]*):([\d]*),([\d]*)  
Replace Regex: $1h $2m $3s $4 

So, I now had a new subtitle text file with the correct timings in the correct notation for Edit Studio 6. 

Next I had to create 77 subtitle markers in Edit Studio 6, on the timeline, by pressing "B" to bring up the Subtitle Marker dialog box and then copy and paste the start and end times and the subtitle text into the marker. It actually was a lot easier to do it this way than it would have been to type all of those timings and text into each marker manually.

Edit Studio 6 - Subtitle Markers above the timeline.

I then rendered the Edit Studio 6 project out to a DV AVI file with the subtitles and what you see on YouTube is the result. I actually had to render the video output twice because I didn't know I also had to set some Subtitle Properties in Edit Studio 6 prior to rendering to get it to actually output the subtitles hard-rendered into the video.

I could now take the video file with the subtitles and burn it to a blank DVD disc. 

But I wasn't finished. My curiosity got the better of me and I decided I then wanted to see if there was a way to use the SubRip SRT file I had created to build the subtitles for 'soft subtitling' with some DVD authoring software. 

The authoring software I usually use (and I really like using it) is Sony DVD Architect Studio. BUT, it turns out it DOESN'T DO SUBTITLES! What!?! $40.00 and it doesn't fully implement DVD authoring... Apparently, DVD Architect Studio is a 'subset' stand alone program of a component program built into Sony Vegas video editing software.  

So, back to Google I went and I found a really great DVD authoring tool called DVD Flick, which is FREE and it will generate subtitles using the SRT subtitle format file. It renders them beautifully. Oh, did I mention it's FREE? So, in the past 3 days I've gotten quite an education on Subtitling a DVD...

The whole project has been a blessing to me and to Brother Jim. He loved the output and he now has a video he can send out to some of the other local churches to try to garner some additional support and resources. Ideally, Redwood Baptist Church would like to expand the ministry to cover 5 different locations  

God Does Take Care of You!

The events related herein are not intended to be an indictment of my parents. I am simply relating the facts as I experienced them throughout my childhood. Some facts came to light only as a result of examining medical documentation. Other facts were extracted from written correspondence between my mother and father that came into my possession about 10 years prior to the death of my father.

My mother was 15 and my father was 26 when I was born in January of 1957 at 25 weeks, about 6 months into my mother’s pregnancy. My life seemed at the outset to have not started off very well. Fortunately, God had plans of His own.

The difficulties of my birth were complicated by a congenital heart defect known as a Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) or hole in the wall between the left and right ventricles of the heart, a malformed pulmonary valve, an Atrial Septal Defect (ASD) or hole between the two upper chambers of the heart, stenosis or narrowing of the Aorta (the main artery leading from the heart to the rest of the body, respiratory irregularities caused by the limited development of the small airways in my lungs and retinopathy of the premature which cost the sight in my right eye and caused severe nearsightedness in my left eye. I thank God every day He didn’t take a notion to scramble some brains while He was at it. 

I came in to the world at 2 lbs, 2oz. and 11 ½ inches long. Due to reactions to the formula they were feeding me, my weight decreased to 1 lb, 3 oz. The doctors told my parents there was nothing they could do to save me. But God had a purpose and He intervened, and I struggled back and after three and a half months I was able to leave the hospital and go home. 

I came to learn, much later in life, that this initial three month period in the hospital would affect my future relationships for many years to come. Psychologists and other mental health professionals now know the effects of long term, early mother – infant separation and the impact it has in the creation of bonds with other human beings. Since I was unable to bond with my mother, this has had a profound effect on my personal relationships with others in my life, to this day.

I was also unfortunate enough to have been born to parents1 that were abusive not only to each other, but to myself and my siblings as well. According to the birth records I have been able to obtain from the hospital where I was born, I also suffered from broken legs, apparently caused by a beating received by my mother at the hands of my father, in order to effect an abortion, six months into her pregnancy with me.

My first 3 years of life were punctuated by several hospitalizations for pneumonia and other respiratory problems, constant doctor visits, countless trips to the heart clinic and the eye doctor, bouts of jaundice, and other sicknesses. I vividly recall taking little brown football-shaped pills that would supposedly make me ‘as strong as Superman’. 

All of this ‘inconvenience’, experienced by my mother, served to fuel the years of physical and mental abuse that was to come. The preconceived notions that my mother had regarding motherhood were shattered forever with the birth of her first child. A child, neither she nor my father really ever wanted because it spoiled their ‘idyllic’ relationship. 

Apparently, my father was trying to create the ‘ultimate wife’ by running away to Michigan and marrying my mother when she was 14 years old, legal age there at the time. This was in reaction to his first failed marriage and the disappointment it caused him. This may have been his first ‘flirtation’ with a minor, but it was certainly not his last. I was to find these facts out later in letters that were written between them prior to my father’s death in 1992.

The physical abuse my father perpetrated upon my mother continued throughout my early childhood and, although he only spanked me on one occasion that I can recall when I was 4 years old, I vividly recall the many instances of abuse I witnessed him deliver to my mother. 

At night I would hear my mother calling for me to come and help her fight my father off from beating on her. When I was about 4 years old my father decided to put a bolt lock on the bedroom doors so I or my brother and sister could not come out and see what was going on. Each night we were locked in our rooms. 

My father worked second shift for a printing company as a paper cutting machine operator and would sleep most of the day and then go to work around 4 PM. When he came home for his lunch at 7:30 or 8 o’clock, we would be put to bed and the bedroom door would be locked. It would not matter if we had to go to the bathroom later in the night. We were instructed that we would have to wait until morning. 

My father would return home around midnight, and my mother’s cries for help and her screaming would awaken me, but I was unable to leave my bedroom. I didn’t know at the time but later on learned that he was trying to force my mother into bizarre sexual practices in which she didn’t want to participate and certainly didn’t understand at that stage in her life. When he was finished with her, he would leave again to go back out to work a second job cleaning coin-op laundry businesses or bowling alleys. He would then come home early in the morning around 6:00 AM and go to bed.

My elementary school years were incredibly difficult for me and by the time I entered the second grade I had already been a subject of psychological counseling for behavioral problems ultimately diagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Unfortunately, this diagnosis did not come until I was 40 years old. 

The psychologist, who was appropriately named Dr. Nutter, told my parents and the school officials that I had an ‘authority complex’ and other behavioral problems evidenced by outbursts in class and the almost daily episodes of wetting or soiling my pants prior to my leaving school for home near the end of the school day throughout the 1st grade. These episodes also resulted in incredibly cruel teasing by the other children in the school. He also told them I had an above average IQ and that I should be placed in some accelerated subjects in order to keep me from being bored. 

A major factor in the cause of my behavioral problems was my fear of returning home each day due to the abuse that was always present there, either directed at me by my mother or by my father directed at my mother. I loved going to school because it had become a haven for me against the abuse I would experience at home. I hated to leave it every day.

Each day I would come home having gone to the bathroom in my pants, my mother would beat me, not merely a spanking, as it was usually administered with an object other than her hand. If she did happen to hit me with her hand, she would invariably switch to using something else, such as her shoe or slipper, because she would break the blood vessels in her hand. She would get even angrier because it caused her pain which she felt I should be feeling instead of her. On more than one occasion she made me eat the fecal matter in my underwear. 

Apparently, her idea of parenting was closely related to that of housebreaking a dog that by today’s standards would also be considered cruelty to animals. Both of my sisters and one of my brothers wet the bed for many years up until they were in their early teens and I am sure this was due, in no small part, to the abuse that was inflicted upon all of us.

The only ‘saving grace’ to my situation was that I was a ‘gifted’ child and learned how to read very quickly and fell in love with books. They ultimately became my ‘escape vehicle’ from the constant abuse. I became a voracious reader and I would hide in my room and read for hours on end. It didn’t matter what the subject was, just as long as I could stay ‘hidden’ in the world that beckoned me from the printed page. It was a world that was safe and couldn’t inflict pain. I was to learn much later in life the falsehood of that assumption.

Due to the physical frailties as a result of my premature birth and the total lack of vision of my right eye and the severe nearsightedness in my left eye, I was restricted by my parents and school officials from participating in any kinds of outdoor or sports activities. This severely limited my ability to learn how to deal with social relationships and situations. For physical education I was told that I could not participate and would have to sit in the gym teacher’s office or on the occasion when I was allowed to join in I was always the last person chosen for the team. 

These situations only served to add fuel to the fire of ridicule from my classmates and deepen the notion that I was somehow flawed and not a worthwhile person. All of this served to drive me further towards the unattainable ‘perfection’ in my schoolwork that I erroneously believed would ensure acceptance from my parents and others. 

Unfortunately, although I was able to consistently be a very good student excelling in many subjects, I was never able to perform well enough to please my mother. 

One aspect of my schoolwork that regularly caused extreme frustration and routinely brought out the anger of my mother, which usually resulted in a beating, was my penmanship. 

In the years when I attended elementary school a student was graded on their penmanship and it always kept me from being on the ‘honor roll’. So I would take home a report card with all A’s or B’s and a C in penmanship and received the obligatory beating for my failure to execute letters properly. 

It never occurred to her that some help from her at home might be useful. In her mind it was the job of the school to teach me how to write. She was the product of a Catholic school and her experience there was acutely unpleasant because she was left-handed. She used to expound upon the virtues of a parochial education and how much I would benefit from it were I to have received the swatting she had endured, delivered dutifully by the Nuns. She was left-handed, but by God she learned to write right-handed and I would too. And since we were not enrolled in Catholic school, it was her place to administer the punishment for failure to learn to write. “You are going to learn to write and get on the honor roll if it kills you.” I heard her say on more than one occasion. 

I never made the honor roll until I was in my freshman year of high school where they didn’t grade you on penmanship. To this day, my penmanship is terrible and most of the time I simply type everything. The only time I actually write anything, I print unless it is my signature and that is impossible to decipher.

These years were incredibly tumultuous and as a result of family issues and the periodic separation of my parents, my 2 brothers, 2 sisters and I were bounced around from city to city and state to state from relative to relative. This constant round-robin between extended family members resulted in an incredible disruption in my education but I did the best I could and sometimes I was successful. I usually spent time with an aunt and uncle in New Hampshire or with my maternal grandparents.

During one of the periods I was home, together with all of the family, my father owned an older car, a 1959 Nash Ambassador. Now when the car was made it didn’t have seat belts and in the mid-60’s it was all the rage that vehicles came from the factory with seat belts. My father, not to be outdone, decided to put seat belts in the Nash. He successfully installed two seat belts for the front seat. 

On the first day of school for in 1965 he decided to take my sister Julie and I to school. My sister and I argued over who was going to wear the seat belt on the passenger side of the front seat and my father said to me “You wouldn’t want your pretty little sister to get hurt if we had an accident, would you? Why don’t you share the seat belt with her?” Well, I decided to be stubborn and not share the seat belt, but to let her have the whole thing. I was not about to share it with her! So I sat in the middle portion of the front seat without the seat belt. 

About 10 minutes later I found myself outstretched on the hood of the Nash, fully conscious, with my front teeth smashed up through my upper jawbone, having impacted the windshield and gone completely through. The only thing that kept me from continuing on to hit the tow truck that my father had rear-ended was my feet becoming entangled with the top of the steering wheel. The hand of God had protected me once again.

I remember everything that happened that day. The ride to the hospital in the police car with me laying on my father’s lap bleeding all over his white shirt and a pink towel that someone had brought over from the Laundromat, in front of which, the accident had occurred. By the time we arrived at the hospital my father’s shirt was blood from his neck to his waist. 

Although my father’s health insurance from his employer would have covered all of the dental reconstruction and other work that would have been necessary to correct what had happened, my father just never got around to doing the paperwork or taking the necessary steps to make things right. Later, before his death, he told me this was one of the things he had regretted most in life.

Months later when my teeth finally came back down they were all broken and jagged. This physical aspect of my appearance would become yet another reason for my mother and my classmates to ridicule me throughout the years. 

For nearly every school picture that was taken after that, I would receive a beating for smiling in the picture. My mother would tell me not to smile for school pictures to hide my broken teeth and the photographer and the teachers would tell me to smile for the picture, and tell me that my teeth didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to them, but it surely mattered to me when I got home with the envelope containing the school pictures a few weeks later.

From the time I was about 6 years old my parents started attending services at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses at the urging of one of my uncles. It was, I later learned, an attempt to help my parents straighten out their lives by applying ‘God’ to their problems. Both of my parents had been raised Catholic however, neither of them ever practiced Catholicism while I was growing up. During the times when my parents didn’t “get along” we were ‘farmed out’ to two of our uncles who were also involved in Jehovah’s Witnesses. At this point in my life, this was the only indoctrination to ‘religion’ that I had ever received.

As circumstances of life would have it, my mother and father finally divorced when I was 8 years of age and my father told my mother that as long as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was in business we would not starve to death. He had decided it was time to leave the state, and so he moved to Arizona in the spring of 1966, thus ending, in his mind, the responsibility for supporting and raising his children. This turn of events meant we immediately went into the Aid to Dependent Children and Families program administered by the state welfare department.

From the time I was 8 until I was 16 I was subjected to physical, emotional and mental abuse almost daily, some of which would be considered to be absolute torture by today’s standards. There were many instances of school officials contacting my mother and questioning her abilities as a parent regarding bruises or the nearly always present ‘fat lip’ I had received as a result of her parental ministrations. Times being what they were in the 60’s and early 70’s, child abuse was seemingly not investigated or prosecuted as vociferously as it is today. On several occasions school officials sent notes home with my sister, just to make sure that my mother received them as they thought I might not present them to her. As soon as I got home, after my mother had received the notes, I was once again subjected to her wrath for the embarrassment she felt regarding the issues addressed by the communication from school officials.

I was constantly the object of her ire because she had given birth to me when she was 15 years old and she blamed me for destroying her childhood and robbing her of all the ‘normal’ experiences of a teenage girl. She made it clear to me on many occasions that I had ruined her life by being born. Her rationale was that if she had never had gotten pregnant with me she would have not had to marry my father and she would have been saved from the experience of having had 6 children by the time she was 22 years of age. (She ultimately had a total of 9 children by the time she was 30 years old.) Unfortunately, for me, she also had named me after my father, to whom she had attributed all of her misfortunes. My given name was a constant reminder to her of all the pain and anguish he had inflicted upon her. And she made sure I knew it every chance she got.

At the time, due to my being named after my father, all of the anger my mother felt toward him was directed almost entirely at me. This resulted in nearly daily occasions of physical abuse, at least one requiring trips to the hospital emergency room for a broken ear drum (which affects me to this day) from a smack upside the head, as well as constant mental and emotional abuse. 

After a while, my mother decided it would be best to ship me off to live with my father. She told him I was too much of a hassle to handle and she didn’t want to deal with it any more. He wrote in his reply that if she was having a problem with me that the best thing to do would be to place me in an orphanage or a home for wayward boys. I ended up getting shipped off to my grandparents again and after a period of time, when my mother saw that I was not giving my grandparents any ‘trouble’ she would tell them she wanted me there at home with her again and the cycle would start all over again. 

It was during this time that she met my stepfather, the meanest, cruelest man I have ever known or would ever encounter in my entire life. My mother could not hold a candle to him.

Once I was home again and my mother would start inflicting her brand of motherhood upon me, naturally my behavior changed to reflect her actions. My stepfather’s reaction was to inflict even more pain and suffering on me in an attempt to ‘straighten me out’. When a ‘spanking’ would not work (I was used to those by now) he would develop bizarre physical punishments, which could certainly be considered forms of torture, in order to discipline me and my siblings. 

My siblings and I spent countless hours kneeling on hardwood or linoleum floors, sometimes with a broomstick under my knees, or on uncooked rice placed under them with our arms outstretched like a pair of wings. To this day I can still kneel on the floor for long periods of time and ignore the discomfort of the position. If you would like to get an idea of what this was like, try it for five minutes. Then multiply it by several hours a day.

There were times when I was punished for days at a time. Every day after school I would have to come home and immediately assume this kneeling position until it was time for dinner. After dinner was finished I would have to resume the kneeling until bedtime. 

After a while, the kneeling didn’t bother me at all. He then devised other, more ‘impossible’ things for me to do. The one I disliked the most was where I had to stand exactly one foot away facing the inner part of the door jamb and lean forward, without bending at the waist, with my hands clasped behind my back until my nose just touched the frame of the door. If I happened to lean too far and rest my forehead against the door frame or if I lost my balance and fell, another hour was added to my punishment. 

Through all of this physical torture I vowed to hate my stepfather for the rest of my life and when he suffered a heart attack at age 33, I hoped with all my heart that he would die. Unfortunately, for me, he didn’t. Before I turned 16 he and my mother separated and ultimately divorced.

When I turned 12 years old, my stepfather, who was also raised Catholic, decided that it was time that I and my siblings start participating in Catholicism. Since I was never baptized and my parents had never pursued any sort of religious instruction when I was younger, he made special arrangements with the church for me and my brother and sister to attend special classes at one of the convents in town. Every day after school we had to walk to the convent where the nuns would teach us about Catholicism so we could be baptized and make our First Communion. This was the first real inkling that I ever had that there was a higher being who was responsible for our creation.

When I was in the 8th grade I became eligible for a special program for underprivileged students who showed strong scholastic promise in order to qualify for special college scholarships. This program was called “Upward Bound”. It consisted of spending a period of several weeks, during the summer, away from home in an atmosphere of serious academic study in some more advanced level subjects. Upward Bound also provided an introductory experience as to what college life would be like away from home. 

I spent the summer between the 8th grade and my freshman year in high school, and the following summer, involved in the program which was headquartered at Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts. Groton School is one of the leading private college preparatory schools in the United States. Things were at least starting to look promising from an educational standpoint for me. Unfortunately, fate would once again intervene. 

By the time I entered my freshman year of high school I had attended more than 30 schools in at least a dozen different school systems. The local high school where I grew up most of my life was riddled with drugs in the early 70’s and my mother decided that it would not be good for me or my sister to attend school there so we were sent to live, once again, with my maternal grandparents. 

The change in venue turned out to be very difficult for me and my grades plummeted. At the Christmas break my sister decided she didn’t want to stay with my grandparents any longer so my mother said ‘If one of you comes home, you both have to come home’. This change actually made things better for me for the second half of the year and I was able to bring my grades up and move forward into my junior year. 

As a result of my premature birth, I also seemed to always be the smallest child in class, which led to constant ridicule and abuse at the hands of my classmates. I was unable to defend myself against these attacks and the negative impact on my self-esteem was only deepened by these events. All of these circumstances would have drastic impact on my adult life. 

The only negatively impacting occurrences that stand out in my mind, apart from the physical and mental abuse at home to which I had by now become accustomed, were the continued events of ridicule and taunting by my classmates. I endured daily beatings by one classmate in particular which ultimately earned him a rather lengthy period of probation, thanks to the Lowell District Court of Middlesex County.

In my junior year of high school I was subjected to one of these incidents of ridicule and in a very explosive and wholly unexpected burst of self-preservation, I struck back and punched my antagonist in the mouth at the end of a U. S. History class one morning just prior to lunch. It just so happened that the person who was taunting me by poking me in the back of the neck with a very sharp pencil was a girl (I am unsure to this day as to what her actual motives were). Due to the fact that I had a ring of keys in my hand, in preparation to visit my locker and deposit my books prior to going to lunch, the girl lost six teeth. As a result of my actions and the effects of my retaliation, I was expelled from school for 10 days just prior to my 16th birthday. 

This expulsion turned out to be the ‘last straw’ for my mother, who along with my stepfather had developed an alcohol abuse problem, and she decided the best thing to do in her situation would be to kill me. 

Since it was the winter in Massachusetts, she deemed it appropriate that she crash the car with me in the passenger side into a utility pole in an effort to kill me. Her question to me at the time just prior to the crash was “Are you afraid to die?”

The next thing I knew, I was jolted by the impact of the car and I could hear my mother crying (she was drunk of course). Fortunately, I was wearing my seat belt this time and my mother was not. She was bruised up pretty good from the steering wheel but since most of the impact had been directed at my side of the car most of the damage was to the passenger side of the vehicle. Once again, God had protected me.

This event turned out to be pivotal in my life. It was at that moment that I knew I had to get away from her and the rest of the family otherwise my days would be numbered. I truly believed I would not live to see 21. I subsequently made arrangements to go and live with my aunt and uncle in New Hampshire again and work for them in their bakery since I had quit school a few days after I turned 16. 

I thank God every day for my Uncle Al and Aunt Pauline. They always took the time to make sure I knew what was right and wrong and Uncle Al always told me that if I was going to do something for someone, especially for work, that I had to be sure to do it to the best of my ability because the person was paying me for my best work. But most importantly, they both took the time, whenever I was living with them, throughout the many times in my life, to just love me the way I was, just as they did with their own children. Even after I set the seat of the neighbor’s tractor on fire while playing with some matches with my cousins.

During the time I spent working for my aunt and uncle, my mother tried to commit suicide. It was the first of many attempts and it was a miserable failure, which only served to cripple the use of her thumbs due to the tendons she severed in the attempt. When one of my sisters called me to let me know what had happened the only thing I could do was laugh. I laughed so hard I had an asthma attack and I was not sorry in the least.

I spent several months working with my uncle and then my father returned from Arizona because his mother was dying. At that point I decided it would be better to go and live with him. So for the next year I lived with my father in a small 17 x 8 foot travel trailer in the middle of the desert about 40 miles outside of Phoenix in a small town known as Circle City. When the next school year started, I enrolled to finish high school in Wickenburg, about 15 miles away. Unfortunately, this was not in the cards. 

Unbeknownst to me, my father suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The stresses of my being there in Arizona with him pushed him deep into depression and then into some very extreme mania. At 17 years old, I was not able to understand what was happening to him, nor was I legally able to get him the help that he desperately needed. 

During the time I stayed with my father, he ‘preached’ his religion to me. This ‘religion’ was a mixture of Catholicism and Jehovah’s Witness theology and in his mind was the salvation of everyone that ever heard it. Of course all of the texts he used were published by The Watchtower Society. He nearly drove me crazy with it.

Some people in the trailer park where we lived saw my plight, as well as the very bizarre and dangerous behavior my father was exhibiting and they decided the best thing for me was to go back to Massachusetts to relatives. So, back to New England I went.

I was about a month and a half away from my 18th birthday when I got back to Massachusetts. I immediately enrolled in the high school to continue my school year. While I was attending school, I was staying, once again, with my mother. During this time, I was to learn, quite by accident, that my youngest brother, who was 10 years old at the time, was being molested by a man who was supposedly the little league baseball coach.

When I found out about what was going on with my brother, I immediately told my mother about the sexual abuse to which my little brother was being subjected, in some instances right in my brother’s own bedroom, when this degenerate would come to visit. 

My mother’s reaction to these accusations was one of complete denial. It was her belief that something like that could never go on under her roof with my little brother. Even after he told her what had been going on she would not believe that it happened. After all, she had met the guy several times and she knew he was a nice guy. Since she had decided that it simply had not happened, she didn’t do anything about the situation. 

Ultimately, I ended up taking my little brother down to the courthouse and after recounting his story to the clerk, filed a complaint against the guy for child molestation. He was arrested and subsequently, during the investigation, we learned that he was molesting at least a dozen little boys, all of them between the ages of 6 and 10 years old. We also found out that he was wanted in California for rape. There were more than 20 charges filed against him for sodomy and other lascivious acts against minors. He was released on bail and promptly disappeared from the area and was never apprehended. My little brother continues to suffer from the emotional trauma caused by this incident.

As you can imagine, the situation was not without friction between my mother and I. We had many arguments about her inaction and her lack of ability as a parent. Several of these arguments escalated in to physical ‘altercations’ that she won by brute force, but there was one time that I finally stood up for myself and hit her back. This action was a big mistake. She grabbed me by the throat and picked me up off of my feet and held me up against the bathroom door (my mother was about 5’8” and about 180 lbs, I was 5 feet and about 100 lbs.) and strangled me until I passed out. I never raised my hand to defend myself against her again.

A couple of weeks later, I turned 18. On my 18th birthday she told me it was time to move out. I happened to be sick with the flu at the time and asked if I could stay a couple of more days until I felt a little better and was able to find a place to stay. Thankfully, she granted that particular request.

A couple of days later, I moved into an apartment that some acquaintances of mine were renting for about 3 weeks. I went down to the local unemployment office and was told that what I should do was to stay in school and finish my education. They suggested that I go to the State Welfare office and see if there was any way I could get assistance to stay in school. The one thing I knew was that I had to stay away from the influences that other teens were facing at that time. Drugs were rampant in the neighborhood and the peer pressure was tremendous. But once again, God was protecting me.

I went to the Welfare office and they were able to put me on a program that would allow me to stay in school. They paid me $55.00 every two weeks and I had to stay in school. The only problem was I could not live with my friends in their apartment. I had to find my own place to stay. So, armed with this pittance, I was able to secure a room in a huge rooming house where mostly old drunks and derelicts lived. I was petrified that one of these guys would fall asleep with a cigarette and burn the whole place down. But, it kept me going to school and that was the key objective.

About this time I was feeling pretty badly about myself and my life up to this point. Here I was, 18 years old and living in this decrepit rooming house with a bunch of strangers and virtually no friends in the world. It was, to say the least, a pretty miserable existence.

The rooming house was nothing more than a bunch of small rooms about 15 x 12 with a bed, a small sink and a bare light bulb in a socket attached to the ceiling. There was also a rather large closet, large considering the size of the room about 6 x 8. Everyone on the floor shared a bathroom down the hallway with a shower.

The rent for the room was $44.00 for every two weeks. This left me $11.00 to eat between each check I received from the state. I decided that if I spent a dollar a day that I could eat throughout this period of time and that if I bought something to eat that I could somehow separate into portions I could eat a couple of times a day. 

Since the rooming house had no cooking facilities and didn’t allow the use of a hotplate in the rooms, I had to be sure to purchase something that I didn’t have to cook and that also would not spoil. 

At that time of my life I didn’t have any real skills with regard to home economics apart from doing dishes, making my bed and taking out the trash, the most logical solution for me at the time, after weighing all of my options, was to buy a coffee cake that came in a small cardboard box and was made in the shape of a ring. 

I reasoned that if I cut the ring into quarters I could have something to eat for breakfast, eat lunch at school and then have something for dinner later on. The fourth piece would be used on the following day since there was a period of 4 days in the two week period between checks from the state where I would not be able to spend any money to get something to eat. I had to make sure I could stretch things out. There were a few times when my lack of willpower got the better of me and I ate the whole thing in one day which resulted in my learning about being hungry the next day. It was a lesson that stuck with me.

After living like this for a little more than a month or so you can imagine that I was pretty demoralized. One of these dreary, cold and drizzly late winter days in New England I set out to walk to the store where I purchased my daily coffee cake. I didn’t realize, until my arrival at the store, that I had forgotten it was closed that day each week. The discovery that I had walked several blocks in the rain for nothing did nothing but darken my mood even more than the rain had done. I made the decision at that point to end my misery. 

I walked down the street towards the bridge that spanned the river that ran through the center of town. Since I never learned how to swim I figured the best thing to do would be to jump off the bridge into the river below and drown.

When I arrived at the bridge, I walked to about the middle of the span. There were actually two parallel sections of the river at that point in the stream. The structures of the bridge were on top of a dam that split the river into two different configurations. On one side, the flow of the river was diverted by the dam to feed the network of canals that ran through the downtown area used to generate power for the mill buildings that were built there. The other side was where the dam controlled the flow of the river continuing downstream and was substantially shallower than the canal side. I had a decision to make, do I jump off the bridge and land on the rocks 50 feet below or do I jump off the bridge where the canal was 30 feet deep and let the water flood my lungs.

As I was contemplating this decision, I swung my legs over the top railing of the bridge and looked down into the river below. I was afraid of dying and the thought of drowning was incredibly fearful, especially since I had a great fear of water from a ‘swimming lesson’ when my father had tried to teach me to swim at the age of 4 or 5. I stared at the river and happened to see a fish swimming in the shallow portion of the river. The fish was trying to get to the fish ladder to get to the other side of the dam. 

As I was sitting there on the bridge railing several cars stopped on the bridge and people had gotten out of them and started trying to talk with me telling me to not jump off. I could barely hear them in the background as I contemplated suicide. “What would it matter to the world if I were dead?” I asked myself. I didn’t have any friends. I wasn’t allowed to see my brothers and sisters following my exile from the family. Who would care? Once again the fish caught my eye.

“Look at this fish” I thought to myself, “He doesn’t have a care in the world. All he has to do all day is swim around and eat. God takes care of him, why doesn’t God take care of me?” I just sat and stared at the fish. 

At this point the bridge was now pretty well jammed up with traffic due to the cars that had stopped. I started hearing horns honking and more people where there trying to talk me out of jumping off. Since I was sitting on the top railing of the bridge with both legs hanging off on the side overlooking death, nobody dared approach me for fear of what my reaction might be. I was transfixed by the fish. I could not see anything else. The thoughts of death, the fear of the water, everything around me paled as I focused on the fish swimming in the river. “God, please help me too?” I thought to myself.

As soon as I had finished asking God for help, I realized what was going on around me. I turned to look at all of the traffic on the bridge and the people that were trying to talk to me. I waved them off and swung my legs back over the railing of the bridge and started walking home again. The people crowded around me, demanding to know what was wrong. I just pushed through them roughly and headed back up the hill toward the rooming house. I would give God one more chance to prove that he cared about me as much as he cared about the fish in the river.

As I approached the rooming house about 15 minutes later, walking in the rain, I noticed a car parked in front of the doorway with a flat tire. As I got closer I noticed two men in the doorway huddled against the rain. It turned out that the men had borrowed the car from someone and they only had the key to the ignition and could not access the spare tire in the trunk of the car. 

I walked up to the door to go inside and one of the men spoke to me. I looked up and recognized him as someone that I had met during a visit I had made to the unemployment office a few days prior where we had spent some time shooting dice on the desk while waiting to get through the bureaucracy to speak with someone about a part time job. 

“Hey!” he said. “I want you to meet someone.” I looked at the other man who immediately presented his hand for me to shake. I shook his hand and before he even gave me his name he said to me, “If you died today, do you know where you would spend eternity?” I said “No”. He said “Would you like to know?” I said “Anyone would like to know that wouldn’t they?” He said “Can I show you something in the Bible that will tell you?”

Immediately my mind went back to all of the preaching my father had done to me the previous year spent in Arizona with him. I wanted to just say no to this stranger, who still had not given me his name, but for some strange reason I felt it was important to hear him through so I said “Yes”. 

He then told me his name and he turned out to be a pastor of a new church that had just been started in town. About that time a small van had pulled up across the street and he said, “Let’s go inside the van and we can get out of the rain.” There was a pretty, dark-haired woman who turned out to be the pastor’s wife. She had brought the key to the trunk so they could change the tire.

The pastor and I went into the van and he proceeded to show me verses in the Bible that explained the process of salvation and what I must do to be ensured of a place in heaven after my death. We talked about them for about 45 minutes or so and then I prayed and accepted the Lord into my life and became a ‘born again’ Christian. This turned out to be a pivotal moment in my life that has since carried me through many hardships. It was then that I came to realize the God had been protecting me through all of the hardships I had experienced throughout my life and He protects me still today.

I don’t know what purpose God has for me in this life, I only pray that in some small way I will have made a difference in the life of someone else by my witness and my testimony of God’s love for me.

It has been more than a decade since I’ve spoken with my mother… by her choice. I’ve long since forgiven her for the abuse I experienced at her hands. I continue to pray for my mother and my six brothers and sisters that they might come to have a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have had many more hardships since the day I became a Christian. Through many of them, God has shown me great evidence of his love and protection. He has also used them to instruct and guide me in His will. God has been faithful to me, even more so when my own faith has wavered. I know that I am saved by His grace, nurtured by His love and have been protected by His wisdom for many years. I give Jesus Christ all of the glory for my life, because without his love I would have never been.

Yours, in Christ,

Ben E. Brady