Clothes Make the Man

A little while after the Furman, there was the Hayes.  Fully loaded with cable, the Furman left Portsmouth Harbor bound for the Far East on a rainy spring morning.  Miss Patty and I watched from the lighthouse base in New Castle.  A largely new crew had been assigned to the ship, and those of us who had been sick were taken off.  It was with mixed feelings that we watched the Furman sail away.  The time I had spent aboard this ship was also the longest interval that she and I had been together since the day we met.  That would soon change, though.

The Hayes had also been secured to a pier for a long time, but her pier was at company headquarters in Bayonne, New Jersey.  I moved back into the family headquarters on Long Island and commuted to the ship by automobile each afternoon and returned to the house late at night.  Commander Whitten, still recovering from his heart surgery and related problems, was also reassigned from the Furman to the Hayes.  Nick the Greek had gone to the Hayes ahead of us but did not stay long.  He eventually took a medical retirement.

Unlike the Furman, which had been in a semi-active status while slowly loading cable, the Hayes had been all but taken out of service.  She was waiting to be towed to a shipyard for a major rebuilding, but it was not a high priority job.  The wheels of the office bureaucracy turned very slowly, and the Hayes simply sat there and waited for something to happen. Consequently, there was very little work for us to do.  The Hayes was thus even more of a hospital ship than the Furman had been.

The mates’ schedule on the Hayes rotated so that everyone would have three days off once every three weeks.  I used these occasions to return to New Hampshire, visit Miss Patty, and complete the bedroom for the baby which we were by this time expecting.  As an alternative to more driving in the middle of the night, I often rode the trains between New York and Boston.  Enroute to New Hampshire, I would leave Manhattan aboard the Night Owl at 3:00am on Saturday.  Miss Patty would meet me at South Station in Boston at 8:00am and convey me to our house in Nashua.  While this may sound like a terrible schedule, it was actually quite convenient.  Aboard the Night Owl, I slept very well.

Of the several times that I travelled from New York to Boston aboard the Night Owl, one in particular stands out.  On most of these journeys I dressed decently but informally.  On this particular night, however, I wore a navy blue suit and a dress shirt. I brought my few other belongings in an airline carry-on bag marked with the Pan Am name and emblem.  Once aboard the train, I took the window seat in a two-seat section, removed my jacket and tie, and set them down with the Pan Am bag on the empty adjacent seat.  Nothing remarkable, really; I just wanted to get comfortable and go to sleep.

As the Night Owl eased her way out of the Pennsylvania Station and into the tunnels, the conductor came through the car to collect tickets and fares.  He, of course, was dressed in a formal railroad uniform as he carried out these duties.  I saw him go from seat to seat and heard him speak to all the passengers as he collected their fares and punched their tickets.  He was unfailingly polite and professional in all of these transactions.  Then he came to the section where I was sitting. 

He paused for just a moment and looked at me and at the dark blue jacket and necktie and Pan Am bag on the adjacent seat.  I said “Good evening” to him and held out the money for my fare.  Seeming slightly startled, he smiled broadly and responded enthusiastically, “Good evening, sir.  Welcome aboard.  We’re very glad to have you with us tonight, sir.  Are you going to Boston, sir?  That’ll be so many dollars, sir.” I gave him the money, and as he punched my ticket he continued, “Thank you, sir.  We expect to arrive in Boston right on time at eight o’clock.  If there’s anything you need, sir, please let us know.  Have a very pleasant journey, sir, and thank you very much for travelling on Amtrak.”

            I thanked him, too, and he continued with his duties.  As I sat back to doze off, I wondered what his excessive politeness toward me was all about.  I had heard him speak to the other passengers before he reached me, and afterwards I listened more carefully as he spoke with the passengers sitting behind me.  He was consistently polite and courteous to all of them, but not to the same degree.  He did not call any of them “sir” or “ma’am,” did not advise them of the expected arrival time, did not offer assistance with anything they needed, and did not address them with an obviously elevated level of enthusiasm.  As he got farther away from me his voice grew less audible.  Soon thereafter, I fell asleep.

I woke up briefly a while later when the Night Owl made a station stop.  I looked out the window to see how far the train had gone, then shifted in my seat to go back to sleep.  In this brief interval, the same conductor walked through the coach again.  As he passed my seat he looked in my direction, smiled at me again, and nodded in acknowledgement.  I returned the greeting, got comfortable, and went back to sleep.  When I next woke up, it was time to disembark in Boston.

In the car enroute from Boston to Nashua, I told Miss Patty about this curious incident.  She had a ready answer.  “He probably thought you were a pilot.  You could have been on your way from JFK to Logan for your next flight.  He probably doesn’t see too many pilots riding the trains.  You looked the part, though, and he noticed it.” 

This sounded reasonable, even quite likely.  But if true, the conductor had been very much mistaken.  My brother Robert was the Pan Am pilot, and he had given me the Pan Am bag. The resemblance of my clothing—which admittedly could have been folded to conceal insignia—to a pilot’s uniform was purely coincidental.  Looked at in this light, the train conductor’s politeness to me over and above his standard courteous manner with the other passengers seemed amusing.  I had not been at all what I appeared to be.  It was my clothing and my one accessory that had unintentionally transformed me into the image of an airline pilot.

The simple fact of the matter, though, is that what a person wears says something about him.  This can be either deliberate or accidental; either way, clothes communicate.  If they do not literally make the man, they at least project an image of the man.  I was fortunate aboard the Night Owl in that I had unintentionally projected a good and honorable image.  Better to be mistaken for an airline pilot than a bank robber!

What a person wears says something about him not only to others, but also to himself.  A man who would attend church on Sunday unshaven and dressed in sweat pants and a tank top, for example, conveys the message to both himself and others that church is not important to him.  Another man, dressed in a suit and tie and properly groomed, conveys an entirely different message.  By his appearance, he says in essence that church is important and worth the time and effort spent on preparation for it.  His appearance further indicates an attitude of respect and reverence for the things of God.  By contrast, the unshaven fellow in the sweats gives the impression of laziness and displays a disrespectful and uncaring attitude toward religion.

In a statement of reprimand, the Lord asserted, “you have treated lightly the things you have received” (D&C 84:54).  When we consider what exactly we have received in the fullness of the Gospel and the opportunity to attend the temple, treating it all lightly should not even enter the picture.  It is a given that the Lord deserves to be shown respect by his people; good grooming and decent dress form an obvious expression of this respect.  Furthermore, as children of Heavenly Father, we owe it to ourselves and each other to be decently dressed and well groomed.  This indicates self-respect and respect for others, reciprocal acknowledgements of self-worth, fitting for a species created “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27).

Taking a different point of view, the secular world judges people by their appearances and treats them accordingly.  Dress and grooming can make or break appearances.  Of course, this is all superficial and does not necessarily represent the true inner self of a person, but the world is frequently a superficial place.  People often like or dislike other people because of their appearances, which is irrational. 

For more rational reasons, employees in honest and important professions dress according to company policies or in company uniforms.  The railroad and airline personnel are but two examples of this.  What they wear while on duty not only identifies them to their passengers, but also indicates that they have met certain standards and can be entrusted with public safety.  Their attire demonstrates respect for their professions and elicits both the respect and trust of the travelling public.   

My father has often asserted that if the average American were invited to a state dinner at the White House, he and his family would dress up in the best clothes they owned for the occasion.  Some folks would even go shopping and purchase entirely new outfits.  If people think that the President of the United States is deserving of such a display of respect and good manners, he would then ask, how much more so is God?

While not alone in this thinking, my father often feels outnumbered.  Several years ago two missionaries in Nashua, Elder Zoldana and Elder Cockane, paid a visit to Saint Francis Xavier Church one Saturday afternoon.  This building was one hundred years old and had recently undergone an extensive refurbishing.  Restored to its original grandeur inside and out, it was truly beautiful, and the missionaries, like many others, wanted to see it.  In the interest of discretion, they removed their name tags as they entered the church after Mass had finished.  They walked around quietly and admired the art and architecture of the building.  Presently, the parish priest came along and engaged them in a friendly conversation.  At one point he said to them, “Are you fellows Mormons?”

“Yes,” they replied, and one of them asked, “How could you tell?”

“Well,” sighed the priest sadly, “it seems like the Mormons are the only people who get dressed up for church anymore.”

The Lord has instructed us, “Trifle not with sacred things” (D&C 6:10).  Dressing and grooming properly for the Lord, for church, for ourselves, and for one another raises people above the level of trifles and demonstrates respect and reverence for the Lord and those created in his image.  In a world where such a standard is often sadly absent, doing so does not go unnoticed.  The reactions of the parish priest at Saint Francis Xavier to the visiting missionaries and of the conductor aboard the Night Owl to a passenger he evidently mistook for a Pan Am pilot demonstrate this point.

Red Carpet Treatment

The cable ship Furman had been moored in Newington, New Hampshire, for a considerable time before I reported aboard.  Local jokesters asserted that she was “welded to the pier.”  Several miles upstream from downtown Portsmouth, the cable pier to which the ship was moored sat at the end of a dirt road, hidden by the Simplex Wire and Cable Company building that supplied it.  The only activity besides shipping was provided by a short branch line of the Boston and Maine Railroad that carried raw materials to the cable factory and a few other industries.  Otherwise, the Furman rested quietly in a secluded location.

There was very little work to be done aboard the Furman.  A few deck seamen tended to general maintenance, and a small engine room crew took care of the mechanical side of things.  The actual loading of the cable into the cargo holds, however, was done by employees of the cable company.  This was a slow process, and one that was interrupted often.  Occasionally, the operation was suspended for several days at a time when another cable ship with a higher operational priority needed to use the pier.  When this happened, the Furman was either moored to the offshore side of the ship using the pier, or sent downstream to berth temporarily at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.  This inactivity made the Furman ideal for use as a hospital ship.

Most of the men assigned to the Furman during the months that she sat in Newington lived in the region.  For them, it was an easy commute to a stationary job, and their families were glad to have them home from the sea for an extended time.  A few of the fellows came from other parts of the country.  With little interest in the Portsmouth area, they did their duty and then rotated out.  Then there were those of us who were recovering from serious illnesses.

Nick the Greek was the Captain of this ship that never sailed.  He had undergone cancer surgery prior to taking command of the Furman, and periodically during this assignment he would travel to the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York for chemotherapy.  He had family in both Athens and New York, so he was well attended to during his treatments.  Commander Whit Whitten was the second mate.  He had undergone open heart surgery and was in very delicate condition.  Unable to do anything strenuous, he was assigned to the Furman for a period of general rest and relaxation.   Then there was me, by far the youngest of the three patients.  I had undergone cancer surgery and completed radiation treatments, but still needed to be examined at frequent intervals.  Since the Furman was tied to a pier only 50 miles from home, she was the perfect assignment for me.

Like the others who lived in the area, I commuted daily—or nightly, depending on my shift—between the Furman and our house in Nashua.  As the ship sat about mid-way between our house and my in-laws’ house in Sanford, Maine, Miss Patty also had occasion to come aboard many times.

Miss Patty knew very well the not unkind but nonetheless gruff manners of merchant seamen.  As one example, several years earlier, when I had escorted her up the gangway of the Waccamaw in the drydock in Norfolk, she had a witnessed a new crewman on duty challenge me with a belligerent “Who are you?  What do you want here?”  When I stated simply, “I’m the second mate, and this is my wife,” he replied with a much less bellicose but still gruff, “Oh, okay.”  So Miss Patty knew what seamen were like, and she expected the crew of the Furman to be just as much a group of roughnecks as the crew of any other ship in our fleet.

This expectation was accurate.  The Furman’s crew could carry on in the same crude and course manner as every other crew, but the presence of a beautiful young lady as a regular visitor to the ship had a mollifying effect on their customary behavior.  When Miss Patty came up the gangway, the seaman on watch always greeted her with the utmost courtesy and respect and with his cleanest language.  She was always addressed as “Mrs. Ogden;” she always had doors held open for her; and in the lounge she was always offered something to eat or drink as a gesture of hospitality.  Were it not for the general shabbiness of the surroundings, she could easily have felt that she’d walked into a high class hotel.

When Captain Nick went away on vacation for month, his place was taken by Captain Freiburg, who brought his wife with him.  They rented a house ashore for this interval, but Mrs. Freiburg, like Mrs. Ogden, became a regular visitor to the ship.  She, too, was greeted and treated with great courtesy and respect by the crew.  An Englishwoman from an affluent background who had been around ships most of her life, Mrs. Freiburg was not at all surprised by this and knew exactly how to conduct herself.  Mrs. Ogden, on the other hand, came from more modest circumstances and expressed bewilderment at the red carpet treatment that was being lavished upon her.  Not that she disliked it, however; it was just a new experience for her.

One day Miss Patty asked me about this.  “Why are these guys so polite to me all the time?  Why do they go to such lengths to be so nice to me?  What did I do to deserve all this wonderful treatment?”

I assured her that I had not put them up to it, and explaining about Mrs. Freiburg, I added that she was not alone.  The simple fact of the matter was that Miss Patty received this red carpet treatment because she was an officer’s wife.  Beyond that, however, Miss Patty was consistently courteous and friendly toward all the crewmen with whom she came in contact, and they had a natural inclination to return the favor.  Furthermore, the crewmen came to genuinely like her above and beyond her social position as an officer’s wife because of the way she treated them.  Most of the women who came near a ship were of two extremes, either selling their services to the seamen or looking down their noses at them.  Miss Patty’s friendly attitude and her treatment of everyone as her equal regardless of rank endeared her to the Furman’s crew.

Miss Patty had not been conscious of her part in this, however.  She had always gotten along well with people in general; it just came naturally to her.  But the explanation made sense.  In the secular world, rank consciousness is a way of life.  In the Gospel, however, this is different.

The Lord stated twice in the Doctrine and Covenants, “I am no respecter of persons” (D&C 1:35 & 38:16).  Long before these revelations were recorded, the author of Job had Elihu describe the Lord as “him that accepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor” because “they all are the work of his hands” (Job 34:19).  In a world that has always regarded the rich more than the poor, the famous more than the unknown, and the highly placed more than the lower ranking, this idea stands out as radical.  Throughout history, humans have always managed to organize themselves into a class system of one kind or another.  Even in a country like the United States, where equality among all people has long stood as one of the founding principles of the nation, there have always been class divisions.  Whether based on race, religion, ethnicity, education, or wealth, these divisions among people really should not exist.  Yet they persist.

In the New Testament, the Lord took his point one step further.  Accepting that class distinctions and social rankings did exist, he asserted on the subjects of kindness and charity, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:40).  The logic of this is beautiful.  The Lord, the highest ranking of all, equated himself with the lowest ranking on the human social scale.  He created all people, including those at the bottom of the social strata, and made the highly placed out of the same dust of the Earth as the lowly placed.  It stands to reason, then, that all people are equal in his sight.  Class distinctions thus remain a human invention, not a divine design.

Taking this reasoning yet another step, the Lord asserted, “whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (Matt. 20:26-27).  If his initial point was radical, this further elucidation must be extremist, for this overturns the human hierarchy completely.  Only by this reasoning could Mother Teresa have said of the “poorest of the poor,” “it is by serving them that we serve Christ.”¹  No one could reasonably claim that Mother Teresa was anything less than a great woman, and yet she was willingly the servant of the Lord’s brethren in the lowest socio-economic level.

While the “poorest of the poor” did not make up the crew of the Furman, or for that matter, the crews of any our ships, the point remains valid.  The crewmen of all our ships came from all levels of society, of course, but it often seemed that the origins of the majority of them lay in the lower end of the scale.  The hierarchical organization of shipboard personnel reflected this already existing stratification.  Admittedly, one could improve his position in the Merchant Marine, but not everyone chose to do so or even was competent to do so.  This did not make those who achieved a higher position better people than those who did not, however, nor did it make those who remained in the lower ranking positions less deserving of common courtesy and decent treatment than those who moved up in the hierarchy.  In the eyes of God, then, the Captain and Chief Engineer remained the equals of the ordinary seamen and wipers.  The eyes of the secular world, however, saw all these positions differently; hence the preferential treatment for the visiting wives.

One of my favorite examples of the egalitarianism wrought by the Gospel centers on two brethren in our ward.  At first glance, they could not be more different from each other.  One of them has a doctorate in physics, speaks three languages fluently, and holds a high paying managerial position.  The other had no educational opportunities beyond the elementary grades, struggles to speak articulate English, and has earned an extremely modest living through farming, janitorial work, and truck driving.  The secular world would pigeonhole these brethren according to its class system, revering the one while disregarding the other, and ask rhetorically, “What could they possibly have in common?”

The Church would answer in all seriousness that they have the most important things in the world in common.  Both hold the Melchizedek Priesthood, serve faithfully in Church callings, and have steadfast testimonies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Both are family men with high moral standards, have raised righteous children from infancy to adulthood, and have participated in all the ordinances of the temple for themselves and their families.  Both participate regularly in Sunday School lessons and High Priest Group lessons.  The one always speaks with great knowledge and beautiful eloquence on any Church subject; the other speaks willingly but haltingly, making every effort to understand and to be understood.  Both are modest and humble men, equals in their belief in God and their sincerity of purpose.  They share a mutual respect for each other, always greet each other warmly and courteously, and never display even the faintest trace of class consciousness.

The one brother always treated the other, and for that matter, everyone else with whom he came in contact, as his equals.  In much the same way, Miss Patty had treated the crew of the Furman as her equals.  In both cases, this treatment was well received and reciprocated, and a genuine affection and respect grew out of it.  How vastly different is this approach to one’s neighbor from the secular way!  History shows us numerous examples of class distinctions, when taken to extremes, leading to violent national revolutions.  The Gospel shows us what the opposite can do.  We can make the world a better place not by cataloging people along socio-economic lines, but by the simple application of the golden rule: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31).

---

¹ Daphne Rae, Love Until it Hurts, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981, p. 9.

My Little Red Book

Accompanying me when I reported aboard the oceanographic survey ship Bartlett was a slender new volume which Miss Patty had given to me while I was on vacation.  I had once or twice expressed an interest in owning a copy of the New Testament.  Without the Old Testament, I reasoned, the New Testament would fit in a small book and would be easy to carry with me when I was traveling.  I was very glad to receive this book from her, and I brought it with me when I went back to sea.  I planned to read it in its entirety in my off duty hours aboard ship.

I came across a few additional items of reading material aboard the Bartlett.  Most of this was light weight stuff, though, which at this distance of time I can scarcely remember.  But I cannot forget my New Testament. I was proud of this little volume.  It quickly became my favorite.  Wherever it was put down, it stood out with its bright red cover and gold lettering.  It was the Saint Joseph Pocket Edition of the New American Bible translation of the New Testament.  After I had become settled in aboard the Bartlett, I started reading.

            I soon discovered that unlike many other books, this one contained no wasted words.  Every chapter and every verse said something significant.  I found a wealth of outstanding material on its pages, and it was a lot to absorb.  So I did not read it quickly.  Instead, I proceeded slowly and reread many passages in order to extract all I could from them.  This took time, of course, but I had all the time in the world with no place to go.  I savored what I read, and it was a very pleasant and uplifting experience.  The time I spent reading my New Testament quickly became the highlight of each day.

I started at the beginning of Matthew, which of course, is a masterpiece.  By first narrating the birth of the Lord, Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, and the family’s flight to and safe return from Egypt, and secondly presenting the baptism of the Lord and following it with Satan’s temptations in the desert, Matthew demonstrates that the forces of evil were intent on stopping the Lord’s work on the Earth even before it had begun.  Matthew alternates good events and bad events, maintaining what initially appears to be an equilibrium.  But then, following the success of the Lord’s fast in the desert and his victory over Satan’s temptations is the glorious Sermon on the Mount.  A magnificent triumph of good over evil, the preaching of the Sermon on the Mount stands as an early climax in Matthew’s narrative, one of several climactic moments in Matthew, and a forerunner of the ultimate triumph of good over evil that concludes the story.  The Sermon on the Mount itself stands supreme in literature as containing many of the most beautiful thoughts ever expressed.  A new and better way of life; in essence, a plan of happiness—this is what the Lord teaches the multitude.  Little wonder that Matthew finishes this section by saying that the Lord “left the crowds spellbound at his teaching” (Matt. 7:28).¹  Reading it in translation after nearly twenty centuries is spellbinding enough; imagine what it was like to actually be there!

In the subsequent chapters, as Matthew relates the teachings of the Lord and the events that took place during his ministry, I found myself being drawn into each event, each parable, each conversation with his Apostles, and wanting not only to remember every detail, but also to know more.  I read and reread passages, taking everything in, but at the same time regretting my ignorance of the Old Testament as, for example, when Matthew quotes Isaiah and Jeremiah.  I made a mental note that I must someday read up on the ancient prophets.  On one of Isaiah’s points, though, I was very clear:

A people living in darkness has seen a great light.  On those who inhabit a land overshadowed by death, light has arisen (Matt. 4:16).

A lifelong Christian, I never considered myself as living in darkness, and I recognized light when I saw it.  Reading Matthew and the subsequent Gospels end to end, however, gave me more light that yielded greater knowledge, increased understanding, and a certain feeling of inner peacefulness and contentedness that was difficult to describe.  I’ve since come to realize that what I felt then was the Holy Spirit.

I did not spend all my leisure time waxing philosophical, however.  Mostly I just enjoyed reading, recognizing the inherent and unique beauty in Matthew’s version of the life of Christ.  Even at the end, where the tale turns tragic, there is beauty to be seen in the ultimate triumph of good over evil and the victory of life over death.  As he does in the beginning, Matthew alternates good events and bad events, but not in an equilibrium this time.  Instead, he presents us with a series of bad events beginning with the Lord’s prediction of his betrayal and ending in his crucifixion.  Finally, when these terrible events are concluded but the sorrow of the women visiting the tomb continues, Matthew records the greatest news the world has ever received:

Suddenly there was a mighty earthquake, as the angel of the Lord descended from heaven.  He came to the stone, rolled it back, and sat on it.  In appearance he resembled a flash of lightning while his garments were as dazzling as snow.  Then the angel spoke, addressing the women: “Do not be frightened.  I know you are looking for Jesus the crucified, but he is not here.  He has been raised, exactly as he promised.  Come and see the place where he was laid.  Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has been raised from the dead and now goes ahead of you to Galilee, where you will see him.’  That is the message I have for you” (Matt. 28:2-3, 5-7).

What a note on which to conclude!  By this singular event, mankind’s uncertainties and fears are overcome and its hopes and dreams are realized.  In the entire history of the world, the resurrection of Christ stands as unique.  Reading this climactic conclusion to Matthew’s life of Christ cannot compare to reading any secular work.  There is simply nothing to surpass it.

I thought about this as I gazed out to sea from the bridge of the Bartlett.  In reading this account of the news of the Lord’s resurrection, I experienced once again the feeling of inner peacefulness and contentedness, but more strongly.  In those days I did not think in terms of “feeling the Spirit,” but in retrospect I understand that that was exactly what happened.  Finishing Matthew on such a note made me anxious to start reading Mark.

A mere sixteen chapters compared to Matthew’s twenty-eight, Mark initially impressed me as a capsule summary, a condensed version.  But that was all right.  It still contained plenty of overlap, and since repetition yields learning, I was happy to have a repeated reading of much of the material I had just covered.  Some of my favorite verses of scripture come from Mark; more accurately, Mark is the source from which I best remember them.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that since I was on a ship one of my favorite events in the life of Christ is his calming of the wind and waves on the water.  As Mark relates it:

It happened that a bad squall blew up.  The waves were breaking over the boat and it began to ship water badly.  Jesus was in the stern through it all, sound asleep on a cushion.  They finally woke him and said to him, “Teacher, does it not matter to you that we are going to drown?  He awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea: “Quiet!  Be still!”  The wind fell off and everything grew calm (Mark 4:37-39).

As a seaman, I could understand the disciples’ fear at what appeared to be their impending doom in an open boat on an angry sea.  They did not as yet have a very clear idea of who Jesus was, as their reaction would indicate:

A great awe overcame them at this.  They kept saying to one another, “Who can this be that the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41).

I love this response.  In time, of course, the Apostles did gain a testimony of their Master, as did others.  My favorite statement of belief is a simple and straightforward one from an unlikely source.  Immediately following the death of the Lord not by the forces of nature by at the hands of men comes this brief account:

The centurion who stood guard over him, on seeing the manner of his death, declared, “Clearly this man was the son of God!” (Mark 15:39).

I wish I knew more about this Roman soldier.  What became of him after the crucifixion?  Did he become a Christian?  Did what he had just witnessed change his life?  Certainly it should have, just as the comparatively uneventful reading of it should change our lives.

There was ample time and opportunity aboard the Bartlett to contemplate this and other points.  The little vessel was conducting survey work in the placid waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  This consisted in large degree of towing instruments in repeated back-and-forth course patterns for days and weeks on end.  It was not exciting or adventurous, but the weather remained calm during the winter months.  That’s always an advantage that cannot be overstated.  This made for a comfortable ride and a stress-free atmosphere, conditions clearly conducive to studying the scriptures in one’s off duty hours.

Moving on to Luke, then, I started of course with the famous infancy narrative.  I discovered quickly that it was fun to flip back and forth between Luke and Matthew and mentally piece together their versions of the Lord’s birth.  Luke has more characters, like Zechariah, Elizabeth, the angel, and the shepherds, whereas Matthew has the three wise men.  Luke also tells us more of the circumstances that preceded the birth, such as the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary and Mary’s subsequent visit to Elizabeth.  By twentieth century biographical standards, however, very little is recorded of the Lord’s birth.  That makes the information that we do have all the more precious.

It became a stimulating intellectual exercise to compare Luke with both Matthew and Mark.  While there were variations, the purpose remained to read their accounts of the life of Christ and be edified by them.  Despite their differences, their three Gospels all tell the same story, spread the same good news, and make the same point.  In reviewing this material from three separate authors, it became impossible to not be edified by the teachings, the works, and the values of Christ.

In his final chapter, Luke tells us that the Lord “opened their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).  As I finished reading Luke on the heels of Matthew and Mark, I felt that my mind also was being opened to this understanding.  

I would often think about what I had read when on duty and gazing seaward from the bridge of the Bartlett.  Of course, there was actual work to do, too, but overall this ship was a fairly easy job, especially when on station in the survey area.  There were a few interruptions along the way that broke up the monotony.  One night we rescued someone from a disabled small boat.  Another time, instead of returning to Port Everglades to refuel, the Bartlett was ordered to Key West.  That was an interesting place—very bohemian.  Much of my time, though, whether on or off duty, was unhurried.  There was certainly ample opportunity to “read, ponder, and pray,” and I took advantage of it.

Next I started reading John.  I took a very special liking to John, and his Gospel quickly became my favorite of the four.  The most striking feature of John is the sheer beauty of his writing.  He writes so differently about our Lord from the others and in the most poetic prose I’ve ever seen.  The thoughts he expresses, the pictures he paints, and the turns of expression he uses express abstract concepts in readily understandable prose, yet it is prose that reads like poetry.  This characteristic of John’s writing distinguishes him from the other evangelists and makes him unique.  His opening lines set the tone for the entire work:

In the beginning was the Word;

The Word was in God’s presence,

and the Word was God (John 1:1).

One could spend hours contemplating the metaphorical imagery that John employs.  Describing the Lord as the word, the light, the truth, the way, the lamb of God, the true vine, the good shepherd, and so on is certainly beautiful imagery; moreover, it embodies abstract concepts in the person of Christ, thereby elevating them to the highest possible level, and it raises the tangible but commonplace, including the common man, the shepherd, from the ground level to the divine.  But:

To his own he came,

yet his own did not accept him.

Any who did accept him

he empowered to become children of God (John 1:11-12).

Why would anyone decline the offer to become a child of God?  Why would anyone want to settle for second best?  And yet, there were many who did turn him down and settle for far less than what he would have made them.

To a world that suffers from such negative aspects of human nature as greed, selfishness, apathy, prejudice, crime, and so forth, John unequivocally presents the God of love.  This he makes clear early on:

God so loved the world

that he gave his only Son

that whoever believes in him may not die

but have eternal life (John 3:16).

John builds on this in a later chapter, and has the Lord issuing a new commandment, not a “thou shalt not,” but something much more proactive:

I give you a new commandment:

Love one another.

Such as been my love has been for you,

so must your love be for each other (John 13:34).

In between these remarks on love, and in fact interspersed throughout John, are assurances that despite the perennially imperfect condition of the secular world,  all will turn out well in the end if we simply follow the Lord’s teachings:

I solemnly assure you,

the man who hears my word

and has faith in him who sent me

possess eternal life (John 5:24).

I solemnly assure you,

if a man is true to my word

he shall never see death (John 8:51).

I am the resurrection and the life:

whoever believes in me,

though he should die, will come to life;

and whoever is alive and believes in me

will never die (John 11:26).

I love these lines and many others like them.  They are truthful and timeless.  They build faith and they resound with reassurance.  They are exactly what an often skeptical world needs to hear.  No matter how many times I read them, whether aboard the Bartlett in the Gulf of Mexico or ashore in the years since then, they never grow tiresome.  On the contrary, they have a certain steadfastness about them.  If John is my favorite Gospel, then these rank among my favorite verses.  My all time favorite verse from John, however, is that beautiful statement of our Lord:

I am the way, and the truth, and the life;

no one comes to the Father but through me (John 14:6).

Shortly after I finished reading John, my time on the Bartlett drew to a close.  This was unexpected.  I had planned to remain aboard through a shipyard overhaul and then go back to sea with the vessel.  I was signed on as second mate, and before reporting aboard I had passed the examinations and received my license as chief mate.  My career plan, of course, had been to accumulate more time and experience at sea so that one day I could sit for the license as Master.  My reading plan had been to continue with the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles.  But fate intervened and prevented this.

Soon after the Bartlett went into the shipyard in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, I was able to take a few days off and fly home for a brief visit.  During this interval I went for a routine medical checkup.  This consultation took place in the late afternoon of an otherwise enjoyable day.  The next morning, with all plans of returning to the Bartlett and going back to sea abruptly cancelled, I reported to the Nashua Memorial Hospital and underwent cancer surgery.  I was 27 years old.

I was not worried.  What I had just read in my little red book was fresh in my mind.  The four messengers who had conveyed the Lord’s promises of a better life to follow this one had effectively removed any fears of death that I might otherwise have entertained.    Furthermore, during the time of my hospitalization, I often had the thought come to me that I was not finished in this life just yet.  I repeatedly received the impression that there were more things that I still needed to do in this world—important things, too.  I had a vague notion that these thoughts were coming to me unbidden from a higher realm, and I took them seriously.  So I was not worried.  Instead, I expected to survive the cancer, and I did.

Over the years since then, I wondered what these important things were that I still needed to do.  When the children came along, I assumed that taking care of them and raising them to become responsible adults was my important work.  It was very important, of course, but I often felt that there was still something more that I needed to do.  Then I became involved in genealogy.

To make a long story short, I researched my genealogy and Miss Patty researched hers.  We learned the names and basic life stories and burial information of many ancestors and relatives.  Then we joined the Church.  We attended the temple many times, and we started the great chain of ordinances that would accomplish all that was needed for all the people we had researched to receive the blessings the Lord wanted them to have.  With twenty-twenty hindsight, I am now satisfied that the genealogical research and the subsequent temple ordinances were the important things that I still needed to do.

I like to think that it all started with my little red New Testament at sea aboard the Bartlett.  This magnificent book enabled me to be in the spiritual state necessary first, to not fear the possibility of death at a young age, and second, to receive the revelation that the Lord had a plan for me which I must fulfill.  I still maintain a special fondness for this little volume, and since my illness I have read it in its entirety and reread and highlighted many parts of it.   Perhaps this was too much for it, though.  In time the pages started working loose from the spine, and the book eventually fell apart.  Even disintegrated, however, the little red book remains a masterpiece.

---

¹ All quotations taken from the New Testament, Saint Joseph Pocket Edition of The New American Bible, New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1970.

Walking on Air

Sitting in the hot seat was never a pleasant experience, but always a memorable one.  Anyone who had taken the exams, be they for third mate or second mate or chief mate, could never forget what it was like.  Everything depended on the successful completion of these examinations—one’s employment, one’s livelihood, one’s finances, one’s family, one’s advancement, one’s career—even one’s very life, it seemed.  Little wonder, then, that merchant seamen sweated uncomfortably even in air conditioned exam rooms.  For no matter how much they had studied, and no matter how proficient they were in their duties aboard ship, the exams would always confront them with something obsolete or otherwise irrelevant that even the most competent officer at the height of his career could not reasonably be expected to know.  A few oddball questions like this could—and sometimes did—mean the difference between success and failure.  Failing one section of the test once would be an inconvenience, but not a disaster.  Failing it on the retake, however, was tantamount to failing the entire exam, and one would then need to restart from scratch.  With limited shore leave, no one had the time to waste on failure.

An old joke in the Merchant Marine held that “the Navy knows nothing about ships, and the Coast Guard knows even less than that.”  Like it or not, however, the Merchant Marine has long been subject to Coast Guard regulation, and to this day the Coast Guard conducts the licensing procedures for Merchant Marine officers.  The examinations one must take to become a licensed officer, and subsequently, to upgrade one’s license, are brutal.  And they should be.  A mate on a tanker filled with 50,000 tons of crude oil, for example, bears too heavy a burden and has too much responsibility for incompetence to be tolerated.  One seemingly small mistake could cause a wreck that would cost dearly in both human life and property damage.  But while these exams are necessarily difficult, they are written and administered by a federal bureaucracy that does not go to sea for its livelihood.  Hence, the questions for which one simply cannot prepare.  Hence, also, the widespread fear and even loathing of the examiners.  As some shipboard wags used to put it, “the Coast Guard giveth, and the Coast Guard taketh away.  Cursed be the name of the Coast Guard.”  My apologies to Job.

I was all of 21 years old when I sat for “the thirds,” the series of examinations for an original license as third mate.  This took place in Castine, Maine, at the school I had attended to prepare for this objective.  I was too young and too inexperienced to be more than only somewhat nervous.  Nonetheless, I prepared judiciously.  Everything I needed to know was fresh in my mind, but even with that I realized that I could not take anything for granted.  The test was three days long.  Two sections of the test were given each day, Tuesday through Thursday.  Three of these sections required a passing grade of 70%; the other three sections required a passing grade of 90%.  Then I waited.  In those days the completed exams were sent to Oklahoma City for grading. 

When I learned that I had passed the thirds, I felt mildly relieved.  When I actually held the license in my hand and saw my name inscribed along with the magical words “third mate,” I felt euphoric.  I had done it!  I had become something!  But it was really only the start of things.  I had proved myself on paper; I had yet to prove myself aboard ship.

Three years and five ships later, I sat for the seconds in Portland, Maine.  I was 24, three years older, wiser, and more experienced than I had been, and so I had a much clearer idea of what exactly was riding on these exams.  For this reason, I was also more nervous than I had been the first time around.  In preparation, I established a strict regimen of study in an empty room of the house, a room replete with peace, quiet, and solitude.  I spent many hours there.

By a happy coincidence, several of my former school chums were in Portland taking the seconds at the same time.  Some were engineers; some were mates; all were sweating it out together.  We would meet over lunch at a diner on Congress Street to compare notes on each morning’s section of the test.  Evenings we spent in isolation from one another, reviewing material for the next day’s work.  I had hidden myself away in a downtown hotel room for this purpose.  Seconds, after all, was more difficult than thirds.  Rightly so, too, for the second mate aboard a merchant ship has a lot of responsibility, and it’s taken for granted that he knows what to do and how to do it.

One thing I did not know, however, was that a revised version of the rules of the road had gone into effect while I was on vacation.  My friends and I had noticed some very strange questions on that section of the test.  It therefore came as no great surprise that I did not attain the required 90% on the new rules of the road.  To correct this deficiency, I retook rules the following month in Boston.  It all worked out all right in the end, but it was a nerve-wracking interval.

By this time I had proved myself aboard ship as a third mate, and I felt confident that I could move upward.  When at last, after taking the rules section twice, I held the new license in my hand and saw the magical phrase “second mate” instead of “third,” it was like a tonic.  I was no longer at the bottom of the deck officers’ hierarchy.  I had taken a major career step forward and was walking on air as I left the Coast Guard building.  Then, with the employment situation being what it was, I went back to sea as third mate.

Two years and two ships later, I sat for the chief mate’s exam in Boston.  I was 26 years old and about to embark upon the most difficult undertaking of my life.  This exam was more comprehensive than the first two.  It had eight separate sections and was administered Tuesday through Friday.  Three of these sections required a passing grade of 90%; two required 80%; and three required 70%.  Not surprisingly, the sections with the highest minimum passing grade involved navigation and rules of the road.  Once again, I sequestered myself in an empty room in the house to study.  I spent 40 hours and more per week at this for over a month.  I needed to master much new material, for example, shipboard stability, which is heavy in applied physics and advanced mathematics, as well as review in depth a host of other subjects.  It was a busy time.

On the first morning of the exam, I drove to Lowell to get the train into Boston.  No sooner did I arrive at the Lowell station than I went in the rest room and got sick.  That’s how intense the nervous strain of the chief mate’s exam was.  So much depended on the successful outcome of this test, and so much time and effort had already been invested in it.  Failure was not an option, but in the back of my mind it always threatened as an ominous possibility.  A few bad questions on a critical section of the exam were all it would need.

One of the navigation sections contained ten questions for me to work out.  These involved lengthy calculations and were time-consuming.  I had no problems with nine of them, but one gave me a lot of trouble.  This question required me to calculate the great circle distance between San Francisco and Sydney and, with a given date and time of departure and speed of advance, calculate an expected arrival time.  This was not a difficult task.  I worked it out using the standard spherical trigonometric formulas, arrived at a conclusion, and looked for my answer among the four choices given.  It was not there.  The nearest distance listed among the multiple choice answers was incorrect by ten miles. The Coast Guard required navigational accuracy within one tenth of one mile, so an error of ten miles was unacceptable.  I had brought two calculators with me.  I solved the problem again using my backup calculator.  It gave me a distance less than a mile different from my first one.  This was still unacceptable.  Dispensing with the calculators, I worked out the problem manually using the logarithmic tables.  This method also yielded a distance less than a mile different from my first one.  At this point I concluded that all the possible answers provided by the Coast Guard were wrong.  I had mathematical proof of it.  But I had to make a choice and pass in the exam.

By this time the Coast Guard was no longer mailing the completed examinations to Oklahoma City for processing, but was grading them locally, almost immediately after they were turned in.  This was a much better system; it eliminated the long wait for the results.  I chose the answer that was incorrect by ten miles because that was the closest to correct of the four choices given.  Then I passed in my papers.  I watched with bated breath as the Coast Guardsman placed a template over my answer sheet and graded the test.  I was fully prepared to wage a serious battle if I failed this section because there was no correct answer listed among the choices for this one question.  To my infinite relief, I scored 100%.  Disarmed, I thanked the examiner and left.  On the train going home afterwards, I felt rather pleased with myself.

But it was not over yet.  My next nightmare was the deck-general section.  This contained 100 multiple choice questions each worth one point on a wide range of subjects.  These included oceanography, meteorology, astronomy, shiphandling, seamanship, cargo stowage, electronics, etc.  All of this was very important material that every mate needed to know.  The downside of such a miscellaneous assortment, however, was that a lot of irrelevant and even obsolete questions could be included.  There had been some of these on the thirds and more on the seconds.  Now, on the chief mate’s exam, fully one third of the questions in this section were garbage.  They asked about stuff that no responsible and competent mate had any use for in the performance of his duties.  Some of them had nothing at all to do with shipping, and some were out of date by decades.  My favorite example of this was a question concerning the location of floating minefields in the North Sea!  The bottom line, then, was that I failed this section by one point.  Only one point!  I would have to try it again a month later.

Fortunately, I passed all of the other seven sections with very comfortable margins.  I could therefore concentrate my study efforts on deck-general for the next few weeks.  After the required interval, I retook this section and passed it.  Otherwise, the second time around was not much different from the first. 

I received my new license that same day.  I felt a great sense of achievement, but a much greater sense of relief to finally be done with such a long and mind-boggling series of tests.  I had overcome the worst the Coast Guard had yet thrown at me and had made it to chief mate.  Three down; one to go.  The next exam would be the Master’s.  With my new license in hand, I walked on air all the way back to North Station.  Soon thereafter, the employment situation being what it was, I went back to sea as second mate.

These events took place in the 1980s.  One hundred years earlier, the great seaman and author Joseph Conrad underwent similarly stressful license examinations in London.  In that era the process was a face-to-face encounter with the examining authority.  This procedural difference, however, only proves that the more things change, the more they remain the same.  As Conrad recalled it:

It lasted for hours, for hours.  Had I been a strange microbe with potentialities of deadly mischief to the Merchant Service I could not have been submitted to a more microscopic examination.  Greatly reassured by his apparent benevolence, I had been at first very alert in my answers.  But at length the feeling of my brain getting addled crept upon me.  And still the passionless process went on, with a sense of untold ages having been spent already on mere preliminaries.  Then I got frightened.

When I got out of the room, I felt limply flat, like a squeezed lemon.  It was only when I got out of the building that I began to walk on air.¹

Regardless of the era in which one goes to sea, the burdens and responsibilities carried by licensed officers are heavy ones.  It is for this reason that the license exams must be difficult.  If they were easy, they would fail as standards of expertise and would be useless.  In order to advance in any endeavor in life, one must study and learn a great deal in certain subjects, acquire practical experience, demonstrate proficiency, and overcome obstacles.  Furthermore, for anyone who aspires to a position of responsibility, the scriptural injunction holds true: “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more” (Luke 12:48).  In the Merchant Marine, much is expected of the licensed mates and engineers who are entrusted with the care of ships. 

This burden makes its weight felt early, and as one advances professionally the weight of the burden increases.  Even at the height of one’s career, the burden and the responsibility to bear it well remain, despite human tendencies to bask in the glory that accompanies a lofty position.  Should one falter even momentarily in the bearing of his professional burden, all could be lost.  A second’s inattention, an unforeseeable turn of events, even a circumstance entirely beyond one’s control—anything could happen to bring about one’s downfall.  The Master and Chief Engineer of every merchant ship dread this.  In a court of inquiry their licenses could be revoked and their careers ruined.  Hence the adage, “the Coast Guard giveth, and the Coast Guard taketh away.”  The only time one can truly rest on one’s laurels is in retirement.

In the Gospel, however, it works a bit differently.  We must still study and learn in order to grow spiritually, but as the Lord invites us he also promises us:

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt. 11:28-30).

Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me (D&C 19:23).

Peace, rest, and a light burden—what a difference from the secular world!  In a competitive business environment where the burdens are heavy, mistakes are often disastrous, and forgiveness for imperfections is nonexistent, the Lord’s invitation comes as a welcome relief.  Where the secular world shows no compassion, our Savior does. 

Besides professional burdens, a brief look around reveals a population struggling with many other heavy and unnecessary burdens.  These include smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, promiscuity, credit card debt, and domestic violence, among others.  Such vices yield terrible results and make life burdensome.  These behavior patterns that are detrimental to one’s physical, emotional, and financial health benefit only the purveyors of the vices who profit from their victims’ misery.  The Gospel, however, seeks to free people from these burdens.  Where the secular world would weigh people down, the Gospel would raise them up, give them the yoke of Christ, and lighten their burdens.

By comparison, to accept the Lord’s invitation and commit ourselves to the Gospel is not to assume a burden but to seek freedom from heavy and unproductive burdens.  In order to do this intelligently, though, we must learn what the Gospel teaches.  Just as prospective mates and engineers must study and learn diligently in preparation for the license exams, so must we study and learn diligently of the Gospel.  As the Lord instructed, we need to “learn of [him]” and “listen to [his] words” (D&C 19:23), and we also need to act on this knowledge: “learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God” (Alma 37:35).

A life in the Church is a life of learning and then doing.  While there is no hot seat waiting for us in a Church exam room, we are guaranteed that we will use this learning to exercise our priesthood, participate in service projects, perform temple ordinances, and administer to others in times of need.  This is not a make-us-or-break-us license exam; it is an opportunity to achieve the greater good of helping other children of God.

Essentially, what we learn to do in the Church is to better follow the Law of the Lord. The more we follow the Law of the Lord and adhere to the precepts of the Gospel, the happier will we be.  Also, because the knowledge of the Gospel has been entrusted to us, more will be expected of us, both by the Lord and by others.  But really, we should expect more of ourselves.    This is the key to personal happiness.  By living the Gospel and obeying the Law of the Lord, we can walk on air all the days of our lives.

---

¹ Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1929, p. 113-114.

Missing the Train

The news arrived that the Comet would soon be taken out of service.  Some of her crew would be transferred to another ship in Oakland, the Southern Cross; some would return to headquarters for reassignment to other vessels; and a few would go on vacation.  I was one of the few due for vacation.  With my departure date from the ship about two weeks away, I thought I had ample time to make travel arrangements.  Wanting to do something a little out of the ordinary in this, the jet age, I visited the Amtrak office in San Francisco.

My plan was to ride the trains across the country.  I had never been very far inland in the United States, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to see the country.  The Western deserts, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains—these would all be new to me and an interesting change of scene after several months spent on the water.  I studied the timetables and examined the routes the trains would take.  The first train, the California Zephyr, would convey me from California to Chicago.  There I would change to the Lake Shore Limited, which would bring me to New York.  This journey would last about 72 hours.  Enroute, I would sleep in a roomette in the sleeping car, take my meals in the dining car, and enjoy the view from the observation car.

In the Amtrak office in downtown San Francisco, I spoke with a man at the reservations desk and explained what I had in mind.  He turned to his computer and became very busy.  He pounded the keyboard furiously, stared at the screen intently, pounded the keys some more, and puzzled over the screen again.  He asked me several questions about when I could start my journey and which routes I could take.  I was flexible on both points.  This seemed to help him, and he resumed his pounding and puzzling again.  He spent what seemed like a very long time at this, occasionally remarking that he was trying hard to find something for me, but that it was difficult.

Finally, he gave up.  He sat back and said, “The best I can do for you, Buddy, is give you a seat in coach between here and Salt Lake City.  Everything else west of Chicago is booked up for the next six weeks.”  He explained that he could easily get me space on a train between Chicago and New York, but the Western routes, where people went sightseeing in the summer, were just impossibly booked up.

I had a choice, then.  I could ride the train to Salt Lake City and hope for a cancellation that would open a space for me to continue eastward, or I could disembark in Salt Lake and continue east either by air or by the Greyhound bus.  Riding the train to Salt Lake City only to fly home from there seemed pointless, though, and riding the Greyhound bus a thousand miles or more sounded extremely uncomfortable.  Disappointed, then, I thanked this man for his efforts and went on my way.

In considering this experience afterwards, I thought that maybe I should not be surprised.  Some time earlier, an English Channel pilot, Captain John Rawding, had told me that the same thing had happened to him.  When he was still employed “deep sea” before taking up pilotage in home waters, he had taken his family with him on a voyage to the West Coast of the United States.  They were scheduled to disembark in Los Angeles.  Instead of simply flying back to London, though, he thought it would be a great education for his children to cross the country by train and really see the United States up close.  Then, after leaving the train in New York, they could fly to London.  But when he inquired at the Amtrak office, the same thing happened.  The system was booked up solid many weeks in advance.  So the great railroad journey was not meant to be for either one of us.

In the meantime, I had to make other plans.  As it turned out, when I was finished aboard the Comet, I took a night flight from San Francisco to Dallas, changed planes, and then took a morning flight to New York.  It was a pleasant experience, but not quite what I’d had in mind.

Since that time, I’ve wondered what would have happened if I had taken my chances aboard the California Zephyr and gone as far as Salt Lake City.  Perhaps a cancellation would have opened up a seat for me and allowed me to continue.  Or perhaps not.  Therein stood the difficulty.  I did not want to become stranded in a strange place that I knew nothing about.  Not only did I know nothing about Salt Lake City, I also knew nothing about the Church.  I had not yet learned about the great Mormon hospitality that welcomes everyone and extends helping hands to those in need.  In retrospect, then, I’m inclined to think that I would not have been stranded, but that some good would have come from an impromptu visit to Salt Lake City.

Before I left the Comet to return home I had one other near-miss with the Church, although again, I did not realize it at the time.

One afternoon I rode the subway to the Lake Merritt section of Oakland.  There was a railroad museum in the neighborhood that I had wanted to see.  It was a small facility, so my visit did not take long.  Afterwards, curious about the rest of this attractive part of Oakland, I started walking around the area.  I came across a few museums, a high school, and Lake Merritt itself.  I also noticed another large building, very distinctive in appearance, and completely unlike any other structure that I had ever seen before.  I walked slowly past it and paused several times to study it more carefully.  Naturally, I wondered what it was, but I could find no identification on it.  I was very puzzled.  It was obviously an important building, and I felt myself drawn to it, so to speak, but I couldn’t determine what it was.  After a while I thought that maybe it was another museum.  After all, there were several museums in the neighborhood, so this seemed like a reasonable conclusion.  Satisfied for the moment, I moved on and after a while forgot about this building.

About a dozen years later, Miss Patty became interested in the Church.  As she met with the missionaries and got acquainted with the members in the ward, someone gave her the book Temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.¹  I found this book especially interesting.  I read the text and studied the photographs of the various temples and enjoyed it all very much.  Then I found a photograph of one temple in particular that looked strangely familiar.  As I examined the picture I thought that I had seen this building before.  I quickly dismissed this thought as nonsense, though, because I had never been to a temple, and for that matter, had not even known until very recently what a temple was.  So how could this temple in the photograph look familiar?  Then I read the caption.  It clearly identified this building as the Oakland Temple.  I realized then that there was no mistake about it.  I had seen this building before.  It was the very one I had examined and puzzled over all those years ago when I was wandering around Oakland in my idle time.  And to think that I had dismissed it as just another museum!

About a dozen years after that, my son James attended Brigham Young University for a year and then reported to the Missionary Training Center to start his mission.  Miss Patty decided that since she had brought him to BYU, I should bring him to the MTC.  I arrived in Salt Lake City by air a day in advance of James’ reporting date.  This enabled me to experience what I had missed years earlier when I had not ridden the California Zephyr to Salt Lake City.

First I experienced the famous Mormon hospitality that welcomes everyone.  We stayed at the home of Elder Steve Snyder and his wife and new baby.  Elder Snyder had spent seven months as a missionary in our ward and had taught the discussions to my younger children.  Later, he returned to attend our family’s sealing in the new Boston Temple.  It was good to see him again, as well as meet his wife and daughter.  That day, Elder and Sister Snyder took us on a tour of Salt Lake City.  At long last I got to see Church Headquarters, something I had not even known existed many years earlier.  We also got to see Elder Chet Brooks again, one of the first missionaries that Miss Patty had met with when she became interested in the Church.  Elder Brooks introduced us to his wife and three sons.  Furthermore, over my strenuous objections, he insisted on taking us out to dinner in downtown Salt Lake City, despite having his own family to feed.  More of that famous Mormon hospitality!

The following morning, James gave me a guided tour of the BYU campus.  I had heard of BYU before, although I knew almost nothing about it, and it wouldn’t have meant anything to me at the time anyway.  With a son enrolled there, however, BYU came to mean a great deal to me.  That afternoon, the Snyders and I delivered James to the MTC.  This was also new to me, of course, and like BYU, it meant something to me because my son was enrolled there.

These events lay far in the future, however, when I was packing my bags aboard the Comet.  Furthermore, they were completely unpredictable.  All I had planned to do was embark on a railroad journey across the United States so that I could see more of my own country.  Little did I realize that by missing the train, and in Oakland by missing the temple, the seeds of curiosity were sown.  Years later, I would become interested in Church Headquarters and the temples in part because I had previously missed out on them.  In this way did an invisible power within the Church work “to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness” (D&C 1:30) to my unenlightened mind and unseeing eye.

---

¹ Salt Lake City: Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1988.