Stories from Saturday

Some of the amazing stories I heard on Saturday, at Bob's Uncle's memorial service:
Bob's Uncle Bill fell out or was shoved out of the back of a truck as a six year old, and the back tire drove over his head. He lost one eye, and the hearing in one ear. But, he grew up normally otherwise, and when WWII came along and his country was threatened, Uncle Bill told the only one lie of his entire life after memorizing the eye chart, and joined the army. He served as an officer of an ambulance brigade and saw the Battle of the Bulge. Bob's dad, Uncle Bill's younger brother, also served as a navigator in the Army Air Corps, B-24s. Both men were relieved that their dear mother had passed so that she would not be worried about them.

But imagine if you will, sharing the same name and signature as your father, and faithfully sending your army paycheck home to the bank in El Paso for the years of WWII. $22 a month. Thinking you'd have a nest egg when the war was over and you finally were able to go back home...but when Uncle Bill got back home, the money was gone. All gone. His father, not a great bookkeeper, had used it all up. It was gone. And his father's second wife had sold all his and his brother's belongings, books, as she did not think they'd be coming back and/or she was a greedy mean woman. That marriage only lasted six months.

But, Uncle Bill was not bitter. He just went about getting a job, getting married to the woman he'd been writing during the war, and raising three amazing children with the daily, purposeful choice each day to be a better father, husband, uncle than any he'd ever known. Depending on a daily reading of God's Word, and prayer, and leaning on the Lord, he continued to be the most humble, gentle man.