My Amazing Father!

I want to share the wonderous Miracles in my life and the life of my family. Today, I want to share something about my father. He is an amazing man and has always been there for our family. There are a lot of things I don't remember about my childhood, I don't know if it is because of my health issues or not, but for some reason, my memory is limited. I do remember having a very happy childhood. There are some things that stay in my memory, some things may be from stories I have heard, but then there are some that I can picture in my mind. My dad was in the military, Navy actually since he and my mom were married. I was eight years old and Mom and dad gathered me, my two sisters and my brother and told us they had something to tell us. Good news, mom was going to have a baby. But as in life, good news is usually accompanied by bad news. Dad would be going to Viet Nam. I don't think we really understood what that meant, but we knew it was bad. We were raised Catholic and my mom had a very strong faith. After dad left, mom would lay on her bed (very pregnant) and the four of us kids, even my 6 year old brother, would kneel around her and we would say the rosary, EVERY NIGHT. After she gave birth to my younger sister, she would sit in a chair and give her a bottle while we knelt around her. We didn't miss a night. Shortly after the birth of Lynn, my younger sister, mom started having problems with her back and ended up having emergency surgery on her back. Red Cross notified dad and he was given an early return from Viet Nam for a family emergency. He was there 10 months. Now, the fact that he returned alive from Viet Nam when so many were killed there in itself is a miracle. But it was only a couple of years ago when I discovered how much of a Miracle it was that he returned safely. There were so many episodes and close calls that happened to him while he was there that he was able to avoid, that each one in themselves was a Miracle. There was a time that he was supposed to go to a certain camp to inoculate everyone because of an outbreak of dysentery (he was in preventive medicine) but was unable to get transport. That night the entire camp was raided and everyone was killed, execution style with their hands tied behind their back and shot in the head. It was a Miracle - God proected him! Another time he was traveling with another Marine and were about to cross the bridge when the driver saw a child planting a bomb underneath the bridge that would have blown up if they had crossed. A Miracle! Yet another time he was standing guard and he was hit over the head by a Viet Cong but was able to make it out alive. Another Miracle! One that gives me chills is the time when Dad and a small medical team had to go to an area of 3 different villages that were grouped together to treat the villagers for Bubonic Plague. They all knew that they had to leave before night fall because of the area being out in the "bad lands", areas infiltrated with the enemy. A very heavy fog came in late afternoon and even though they had arranged for a helicopter to pick them, they knew that the fog was too have the helicopter to fly, vision was down to nothing. All of a sudden, the helicopter they had been hoping for, came through the heavy fog and landed right in the middle of the villages. Dad said there was no way that the helicopter could see where he was going and he had to be guided through it. Once again, he was protected. I am sure that there were even more episodes that happened while he was there. He was so close to the shelling (bombing) that he even lost hearing in one of his ears. God protected Dad throughout his entire deployment. Our rosary prayers and the prayers we all said individually brought back our Dad, the rock of our family.

Our own personal prayer circle.

Dad in Viet Nam