John / Rohn - I get it

I want to write about my dad. His name was John. John, Rohn, get it?

I imagine him in his aspirational phase: young, newly married, intent on raising a family and finding a congregation to minister unto, his ordination in hand.

He did find a place, in Hudson, Michigan. A Baptist church in need of a pastor. I don’t know why. They hired him on and that was his first time. Being a pastor and all, doing all the things a pastor does. And making babies. Must have been fun.

He was handsome and athletic. She was playful and funny. I imagine them being happy and excited in their house, the parsonage, feeling secure in their social station. I’ll bet they were a great pair, he was a minister of the church and she was the mother of healthy babies. I think there were two of them by now.

I imagine those were the best years of his life, young and in love and prosperous enough to raise a family. My father was orphaned at a young age and never experienced growing up as part of a family. I suspect he was curious to find out what that was like.

Probably why he got married. Besides the fact that he was a young man and in full possession of his virility. So they settled down in Hudson, Michigan not far from the old homestead in Hillsdale County where his new wife grew up.

And the story goes on, little of it I know. Precious little. I heard that he was working in the State Hospital in Milan when he met her. He asked a friend if he knew any girls. He was out of his territory having grown up in northern Illinois. His friend responded that yes he did know one - his sister. His twin sister actually, my mom Thelma. He asked for a picture of her, being too shy of course to approach her directly, and my mom, being the trickster that she is, gave him a baby picture of herself to show him.

I don’t know how he got from northern Illinois to southern Michigan but I do know he spent a year at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He had an athletic scholarship from some nuns at Notre Dame. Something like that. I called him from campus once, up on top of the hill. It might have been around 1982. He had one pair of socks. I think that was meant to mean he was lonely. After his lonely year on top of the hill at a very Catholic school in a very far away place, he returned home and ended up in southern Michigan.

It must have made an impression on him. Maybe that was his time of questing and questioning because not long after, he took his new wife that he met at the State Hospital and went to Chicago to receive his education and his ordination into the ministry.

He fathered six children and pastored four churches and time passed and kids grew up and things changed. He was no longer young, handsome or vibrant. Apparantly. He lost the church, the last one he was at. They turned him loose and he had to find employment.

Kids turned out to be a mixed bag. All of us. One got divorced. In disobedience of God. One stole the family car and ended up in Indiana. We all slipped and slid down the path our own ways. I was the most promising one to become a preacher but I turned into a hippie.

He had wanted to be a minister, a pastor and look after his flock and deliver his sermon on Sunday morning from the pulpit. He wanted to save people and baptize them and marry them. Bury them if need be. I’m sure he felt called and blessed in his undertaking. That’s how we’re similar. I used to run a dive shop in Mexico and took alot of people scuba diving for the first time. They were baptized. They were definitely baptized. And I like to preach. Witness this newsletter.

See what I mean? John, Rohn.

He went thru his dark night of the soul although he never spoke about it. That’s what I think happened, in the end. He lost his vocation, he lost his happy family or whatever there was of it or had been. I think he was bewildered and stunned by the turns that life can take. He argued with his wife because there was no money. People brought food and left it at our door and my mother cried. Now we were poor people in need of mercy from those better off.

This is a story about my dad and the thing is I know so little about my him. Did he suffer like me? Did he find his salvation? Fatherless and motherless from a young age, passed around among the aunts and uncles, an extra kid, not really belonging, cared for but not loved.

How can you not be influenced by your childhood ? It’s inevitable. I spell my name like him John/Rohn. How can you not repeat the same behavior patterns they had in their lives in some way ?? It’s inevitable.

podcast music from the fantastic collection by N Λ T U R R I T U - Leyenda