A Life Wasted

Married Life Begins

After retrieving our gear we drove straight home. I still had two weeks off work but we couldn't afford to go anywhere so we spent the time together at home. To understand the next foolish thing I did to wreck our lives I need to give a little back story. As soon as I became a Christian I decided to do something about the whole world hunger thing. I read that the United States grew enough grain to feed the world, except we feed most of that grain to cows so we can eat hamburgers. For this reason I became a partial vegetarian. Not a full vegetarian because my beef was with cows. (Pun intended.) I didn't eat pork because pigs were inefficient, but cows were the big problem. Chickens were okay because there's a high feed to meat return. I ate fish. Wild meat was good too because a deer doesn't steal flour from the starving babies in Africa, but I'd never hunted so we didn't have any wild meat.

At the time Mary and I met I hadn't eaten beef or pork in over a year. Mary joined my diet, but it was more to support me. I knew her heart wasn't into it and I think she cheated. I am sure she had an Arby's roast beef sandwich when I wasn't watching. The point is, I was into the whole feed the world thing. With two weeks off work and nothing to do...well, other than what newly married couples do...I had some time to think. It didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that it was time for me to end world hunger. It sounds silly now, but I was serious then. I gave CBN my notice, worked two weeks, so we had exactly two weeks pay when we struck out on our own. I called our non-profit venture the Christian Coordination Center. The name came from my bright idea of a centralized source for ministries with a shared objective. I had never done anything to prepare me for something like this. The CBN driving job was the most sophisticated work I had done. I had never had my own business or worked for myself in any way. Yet I believed I could do this. If Mary had any doubts she kept them to herself. From the beginning she encouraged me to go for it.

The only resource we had was that I knew many important people. I started small with a local concert to raise money. I brought together several of the local Christian bands, advertised on CBN's radio station and held the concert on a field using a borrowed flatbed truck for a stage. It went well, but we needed more to feed the world. It needed to go bigger.

A month earlier I had met Jerry Lucas through my job. Jerry had been a star player for Ohio State who went on to become a professional player with the New York Knicks. He'd retired from basketball, but had written a memory technique book that was currently on the New York Times best seller list. His appearance on CBN was in part to promote his book and memory seminars. In passing he told me he'd like to do a seminar in the Tidewater area. With this in mind I called Jerry. I wasn't surprised when he agreed to let me sponsor a seminar in Norfolk. He had a date open a month out so I took it. I had no idea these things were usually planned a year in advance so I didn't know I couldn't put it together in a month. Not knowing I couldn't do it, I pulled it off. The venue was at the Scope convention center in Norfolk. The details elude me now, but we did well enough that Jerry was excited.
A week before the seminar everything was going so well that Jerry asked me if I was interested in another tight date. Five weeks. I jumped on it. This one I set up in New Orleans. After paying Jerry his share of the gate I had to put a large deposit on the Riverside Convention Center (I think that was the name of the venue) in New Orleans and started advertising. Three weeks before the New Orleans seminar, Jerry told me he'd forgotten a previous commitment at Ohio State on the same day as the New Orleans seminar. Ironic a memory expert would forget. His thing at Ohio State was in the morning and my thing in New Orleans was in the evening, so I asked if he could do both if I could get him there. He said sure, but he'd already checked the airlines and there wasn't a flight that would work. Leave it to me, I said.
Another person I knew was Mary Crowley. Mrs. Crowley owned American Home Products. When she flew to CBN it was on her new Gulfstream II, the best private jet on the market at the time. When she took me on board for a tour I told her I wanted one, to which she replied, "then earn it". Needing a jet, I called her. She wasn't home in Dallas, but attending an annual company seminar in western North Carolina. A place so reclusive they didn't have phones. Her office did give me the address.