My father had his 92nd birthday this past week. Mine is this coming Sunday, August 2nd. I will be older, but not as old as my dad. My sister threw a big party for my Dad’s 90th birthday and my kids surprised me on my 60th with a party of my own. The night before I thought I was having a little low country shrimp boil with family to celebrate my birthday. That was true but there was a surprise party waiting for me as well. At that party I drank too much beer, ate too much food at the Italian Restaurant where my family and friends gathered, many from out of town. It was great.

Looking back over time to when I was a child, I don’t remember my family making a big deal out of my Dad’s birthday, or my Mom’s. Poor Mom, her birthday is December 10th, it is so close to Christmas, that it is almost overlooked I guess.

My parents did not make a big deal about their own birthdays, but they sure did for their kids. We lived in a tight knit Navy neighborhood not far from the Norfolk Naval Station. When one of my friends had a birthday, everyone came to their party. I can remember one of mine when I was very young, in first or second grade. Mom decorated our car port with lots of balloons and crepe paper ribbon. I had a big cake with ice cream and I seem to remember that one of my gifts was one of those marble race games, that came in pieces, you put it together, put different colored marbles in the top, they spun down the track and lined up so you could see whose marble won. I received a bicycle for one birthday. It was a used one that Dad bought from someone. He repainted it, made the fenders white and the frame day glow orange, the same colors as many Navy planes back then. Dad was ahead of his time choosing those colors. You could see the thing at night. My friends thought it was weird and made fun of me. I think they were just plain jealous.

On my 12th birthday we went to the Navy Exchange where I was allowed to pick out six Hardy Boys books. That was great. I also had a party where I received a Mattel Guerrilla Warfare WWII Thompson machine gun that fired Greenie stick-on caps. It came with a camo poncho, a k-bar knife and a Special Ops Beret with insignia. It was as good or better than a Red Ryder single action BB gun with the compass in the stock.

Yes, my Dad knew how to throw a birthday party, when he was home. Some birthdays he was away at sea or overseas. He did his best to make his homecoming special, brought things home in his sea bag, a French Beret or a Fez, an Italian plate, or a special toy or something unique to hang on the wall or sit on the coffee table.

I remember a very special birthday, it was not mine. I was three and half years old at the time. It was the day my brother Rodney was born, or just a few days afterwards. I was in the back yard on a warm day. My brother was in a bassinet, it was gently moving and I was patting his back. I love him, although there would be times, not many, in the distant future when I wanted to pat him on the nose, if you know what I mean.

Three and a half years old. That was such a very long time ago when I was that age. I suppose it was around that time that my Dad would put me to bed and sing me to sleep. He would put his mouth next to my ear and softly sing this song:

My Dad also taught me to pray, sometimes by the side of my bed:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my Soul to keep
If I should die before I 'wake,
I pray the Lord my Soul to take.

God Bless Mommy and Daddy, and Rodney, all my friends………

Seems like a terrible prayer, If I should die before I wake? I pray the Lord my Soul to take? What kind of prayer is that? Die while I am sleeping? I was born in 1953 six days after the end of the Korean War, seven years and eleven months after the end of World War II. If I had been a child living in Korea or a child in London during the Blitz, that prayer would have had a very strong significance, because I could have died before I woke and yes I would want the Lord to take my soul to be with him.

One chilly day, I may have been close to five years of age, we heard a great boom. One of the ladies down the street came rushing into the house and talked to my Mom. Dad was not home. He may have been on base, I don’t remember. I do remember that Mom put our coats on, jammed a warm hat on my head, took my hand and we started walking down the street next to our house. Lennox Avenue, actually. We walked for a long time, until we got to Granby Street. A terrible site awaited us. The street was on fire. Three was the smell of fuel, steaming water and foam. Two houses were on fire and cars were smashed. Firetrucks were hosing down or spraying foam on the burning houses. There was a truck hauling potatoes with a large plane on top it. Potatoes were flying, spinning and sliding all over the hot burning street, sizzling like giant brown fries as they skidded by us.

A plane had crashed on its approach to Norfolk Naval Air Station. It hit those houses and exploded, killing a child while in its crib, then sliced the potato hauling truck in half. There were other casualties as well, including the crew of the plane and another child.

I remembered to say my prayer that night, and I said it without being prompted.

If I should die before I wake……

I would say that prayer again one afternoon and again that night. I was nine. It was in October, 1962. We had a fallout drill in school that day, one of many. I was huddled under my school desk after being told it would protect me from a Russian missile fired from Cuba. Like I really believed that.

It is a good prayer and I am glad my father taught it to me, I suspect that in my future I will need to say it again when I may be near my last night on this earth.

My brother and I shared a small bedroom in our little bungalow in Ocean View. Hanging on the wall to the left of the door was a painting of Jesus and the Little Children. It was somewhat primitive, might have been a paint by numbers picture that someone gave us. I don’t remember. What I do remember is that in the evening, when I was lying in bed, and when there was barely any light coming thru our bedroom window that the people in the picture seemed to move. The little girl would shift on Jesus’ lap, and I could swear that sometimes it seemed that He turned his head ever so slowly, looked right at me and smiled.

My Father and Mother took me to church where I learned the Lord’s Prayer. I was joined to the children’s choir, not voluntarily, but it was good for me. I went to Vacation Bible School, where I learned to use my Bible, took part in many Sword Drills, and learned the basic foundations of my church and families faith. Those lessons are a huge part of me still.

Dad helped me have a new birthday on my sixth birthday.

My Father was the person who told me what Salvation is, Dad is the one who made Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross real to me, Dad was the one who helped me to understand why it happened and what it meant for me. That was the best birthday present anyone could give.

When I was nine, we were spending the summer in North Carolina with my Grandparents. I was sick on August 2nd of 1962. I remember, because I was just getting over the Mumps. I had been sick for sometime, and this was the first day in a long while that I had left the house. I, in my pajamas, rested on a mattress in the back yard, while all around me my aunts were cleaning and cutting up cabbage, that had just been harvested from my Grandfather’s farm. They were getting it ready to can, they were making Sauerkraut. I didn’t like the smell of any of it. I also didn’t like that my brother was getting presents on my birthday, as many as me. That didn’t seem right somehow. I think one of my cousins felt sorry for me. Was it Pam, or Sonja? She thought I should get to do something special so she and her boyfriend took me to a drive-in near by that night to see an Elvis Presley movie. I don’t remember which one, he starred in three that year. It had singing in it, a boat race, and lots of girls. I thought it was boring. I think I slept thru most of it.

I remember other birthdays as well. My seventeenth, after weeks of driving school, Dad took me to the DMV to get my license, which I successfully acquired. And as a reward and for my birthday I was allowed to take the car, my Dad’s huge gold Delta 88, to the home of a young lady whom I had great affection for. I went to Marty’s home that night and hit a tree at the edge of her driveway while parking the car. I don’t suppose I will ever forget that birthday.

Exactly one year later, Dad decided to throw a taco dinner party in honor of my eighteenth birthday. I invited three friends from my high school. A couple named Dale and Marilyn, who happened to be two of my best friends, attended along with one other person. That person was a very attractive eighteen year old young lady named Diane. We had dinner and then I drove us all to see an R rated movie “The Summer of 42”. Both girls cried like, well, girls, at the end of that film.

A year later just before my 19th birthday, I asked that girl named Diane to marry me. We were standing under the live oaks on the grounds of the Hermitage Museum in Norfolk, Virginia.

I think I put the proposal this way.

“I think we should get married”

She agreed.

I have had many nice birthdays since then, all because of that young lady named Diane, and I suspect the best part of the one coming Sunday will be for the same reason.

Derrick

Mom and I were there when this news footage was shot.