Category: memories

Posted in memories

The last supper – and it was a good one

Posted on by William Douthwaite

“Don’t forget to bring a sport coat.”

“Okay. Thanks. See you tomorrow.”

I decided to wear my navy blazer on the plane rather than packing it. I knew that I would one day be making this trip up to dad’s. It was time to move him out of the house he had lived in for the last forty-eight years.

How do you do that? How do you convince your ninety-year-old father that he can’t take care of the house all by himself? How do you say he shouldn’t be living alone? How do you get him to agree to moving in with my brother’s family? My dad was never disagreeable to the idea. But every time we brought it up, he said it would happen “someday,” “later,” or “soon.” Just not right now.

But when my brother went up to visit dad, he could see it was time. Dad hadn’t shaved for a week. Dad, who went to the barber every two weeks, hadn’t been in months. He wasn’t eating the meals stored up for him in the freezer. The lawn needed cutting. Dust-covered surfaces insisted, “Clean me!” It was time.

We put it on his calendar. Months before, we highlighted Saturday, November 9 on the refrigerator calendar. We wrote “Moving day” in the big, bold letters. For my dad, the calendar was reality. It announced birthdays, appointments, and holidays. And moving day. If he questioned us (my brother, sister, or I), we simply showed him, “It’s on the calendar, dad,” and the discussion was over.

The night before we loaded up a rental truck to move his belongings, we gathered for supper at Aronimink Country Club in Newtown Square, just outside of Philadelphia. My cousin Jack the lawyer was a member there and invited our family for a last meal together where my dad had lived his entire life. My brother, sister, and I were joined by Jack’s wife, Rita, and Jack’s youngest sister Rene with her husband Bill. We hadn’t gathered with this part of our extended family since my mom’s funeral eight years before.

Aronimink is an exclusive club. Membership is by invitation only. Men are required to wear a sport coat in the dining room. No cell phones allowed. No photography, either, so I have no snapshots of that evening.

It is by far the nicest place I’ve ever dined at. The valet parked my sister’s car. As we walked in, we were expected and warmly welcomed. A fire blazed in the hearth as we found our seats around a large round table. When a waiter puts the napkin in your lap, you know you’re in a fancy place. The menus were printed for that night only. No prices were printed on the menu, just choices for appetizers, entrees, sides, and dessert.

The selections included the usual beef, fowl, pork, and vegetarian options. We could choose shrimp, bruschetta, mushrooms, or cheese for appetizers. Sides were seasonal vegetables and potatoes. The desserts included cheesecake, mousse, and ice cream.

I had a medium-rare sirloin steak and a Guinness that night. According to my journal, it was the first red meat I had eaten in a while. My dad ordered a 20 ounce porterhouse steak. That is a big piece of beef, especially on top of a salad and baked potato. He enjoyed every bite but didn’t even finish half the meal. Put the rest in a take-home box? No one was brave enough to ask.

My dad was the youngest of seven children, the only one still living on this day. He was the patriarch of the family and commanded respect. My cousin Rene remembered how she always thought her Uncle Bill was so cool, with a young wife (mom was ten years younger than him) and a great car (a light blue 1956 Mercury Montclair). After this night and this move, I would have minimal family connection to what I call my hometown, Philadelphia.

Dad would never return to this house, just a half mile from where he was born. My brother gave away his car, so he would no longer be driving. Dad didn’t mind, as long as he had a set of keys. He would be leaving the church where he worshiped and served for nearly fifty years. Dad didn’t mind, because he would go to the church my brother pastored. Dad left behind a big flower and vegetable gardens, a basement woodworking shop filled with tools and hardware, and the area he had called home for ninety years. He didn’t mind, since his interest in those pursuits had waned in the past few years.

For the move, we took Dad’s bed, dresser, desk, television, and favorite recliner. His world shrank to a room with a few pieces of furniture. My brother’s home had a suite where the garage used to be. Dad would have a new place of his own, without a two-story house, quarter-acre yard to take care of, and long driveway to blow snow off in the winter.

This would be the beginning of a new chapter in Dad’s life. It would be a significant change for all of us children. How many times did we go “home” from college or for holiday celebrations? I still tell people I’m grew up in Philadelphia. I still root for the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers, and Sixers. When I see Tastykakes in the stores, “Philly” cheesesteaks on menus, and order a soft pretzel at a brewery, I think of home and dad.

After a few years at my brother’s house, we had to move dad into assisted living, where for three years he would be well cared for. When I went to visit him, he showed me a handwritten account of all the islands and atolls he had been to in the south Pacific during World War two. My dad’s life had taken him from the other side of the globe to a small room in northern Virginia.

That last supper was a good one, a vivid memory from ten years ago.

Posted in Life, memories

My other career: leaving Bell Labs

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels

As I approached three years of working at Bell Labs, a colleague, Fred H. came to me and asked if I would come with him to Austin, TX, and be a part of a startup company. We had worked together on some projects and he wanted me to come and be his programmer.

I was flattered, the offer was more than I was making, and I was bored with R&D that had no deadlines, few priorities, and from my point of view, not many goals. I was encouraged to get my master’s degree electrical engineering so I could be promoted to the next level. But after I took a few classes at Rutgers, I knew my heart wasn’t in it.

At this new company, I would work with engineers who were making deep oil well pressure monitors. I would be programming in 8086 assembly language. The challenge of a new project and traveling to a new place to live appealed to me, and I accepted the job.

Looking back, this decision changed the whole trajectory of my life. Just two months after moving to Texas in January 1982, the company went out of business. The founders had found better places to invest their money. I worked another job at Houston Instruments for a few months, but most of my time in Texas was getting ready to go to seminary in Fort Wayne, IN that fall. Three and a half-years in the real world showed me that I enjoyed my work with the church more than any of my programming work. I was young and single with enough money to live, so I enjoyed my eight months in Austin.

I wasn’t journaling during this chapter of my life, other than to keep track of my running mileage. So these past four blog posts have all been from memory, which in some moments is vivid, and others foggy. My other career served me well in pastoral ministry, giving me insights into the working world of church members. However, once the congregation found out I had been a computer programmer, I got more questions about tech than about theology. My phone rang about everything from, “My printer won’t print” to “My screen is frozen” to “How do you change the font?”

And once a tech guy, always a tech guy. Even in retirement after thirty-six years of full time ministry, I still get questions about bluetooth, wifi, printers, fonts and formatting. The blessings of my first career still echo in my life today.

Posted in Life, memories

My other career: (not) working at Bell Labs

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by cottonbro studio on pexels.com

The Bell Labs office in Holmdel, NJ was stunning, designed by architect Eero Saarinen. There’s a joke about an employee who brought a guest to show them their officed. Wowed by the structure, the guest asked, “How many people work here?”

“About ten percent.”

About six thousand people worked at that labs location. But I worked at an overflow location in West Long Branch, NJ, not far from Asbury Park and the Jersey shore. As I reflect on the three years I worked there, there were times when we really didn’t work that hard.

The loosely-defined work day was 9 am to 5 pm. However, upon arriving, getting coffee was a priority, enjoyed while reading the newspaper in the cafeteria or at your desk. The New York Times was the go to paper, but the Asbury Park Press showed up on a regular basis.

There was plenty of time for chit-chat about current events, family, past and upcoming meetings, hobbies and other interests. Typically, I had run a program before leaving the night before. Upon arriving, I had to get the printout from the computer lab and see what bugs I needed to work on. On the way, I would stop by and chat with others in my group and department. I would get to meet their colleagues from other departments. Before you knew it, it was time for lunch.

Sometimes I brought a light lunch since I often went out for a run during the lunch hour. The cafeteria was pretty good, and sometimes we would go out. The Western Electric guys were a little rougher around the edges, and liked to frequent some of the bars on the boardwalk. I remember one place they took me, the Blue Dolphin in Long Branch. It was a dive on the ocean, complete with go-go girls, pool tables, and a juke box. The dancers weren’t naked, but they were ugly. The food (mostly burgers) was edible, and a few beers later, we were ready to go back to work.

After lunch, I’d run another iteration of a program and visit with other coworkers while I waited for the printout. Later in the afternoon, I’d run the program one more time, and head home.

We had to turn in a weekly time card, but that was just to track paid time off. No one really paid much attention to our coming and going. Apparently in research and development, at least in the early 1980s, productivity wasn’t a big deal. As long as someone in the organization produced something, it was all good. Bell Labs had the reputation of producing one patent per day. A lot of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and programmers, could ride that wave with ease. And we did.

One of the reasons I left the labs was that I wasn’t doing much and what I did didn’t matter much. That was my perspective from the bottom of the food chain.

The early 80s was ground zero for the running boom. I ran a lot in my twenties, as did a lot of my coworkers. Since our office building had showers, I would run during lunch hour. A high school track across the street was the perfect place to run 220 and 440 intervals. Just beyond that was a hill that I ran repeat sprints on. I would meet up with a lot of running coworkers at races up and down the Jersey shore every Saturday.

A few of us really got into biking, too. I rode my bike (ten miles one way) to work on good weather days. I met a few other bikers at work and we planned and completed a century ride (100 miles) through central New Jersey. It’s amazing how much time you can spend talking about bikes, gears, derailleurs, and wheels.

In one of my offices in West Long Branch, there was a wall sized chalk board. Instead of being covered in mathematical formulas, my coworkers and I used colored chalk to create a fantasy world of buildings, people, plants, and scenery. Everyone would stop by to add something to the mural. Somebody somewhere has a picture of our masterpiece.

While I don’t remember too much about my actual work at Bell Labs, I remember much about the people I met and all the time I spent not working!

Posted in Life, memories

My other career: working at Bell Labs

Posted on by William Douthwaite

I began working for Bell Laboratories in February 1979. My department was titled Network Modeling. At the time, AT&T had a monopoly on long distance telephone service in the United States. Just about every call was made on their equipment on their networks. Network modeling involved coming up with algorithms to figure out how much equipment was needed to handle long distance demand and how much it would cost. Since every call traveled over copper wire through switching offices, a lot of equipment was involved. Remember, this was long before the days of cell phones, wireless carriers, fiber networks, and unlimited calls and data.

Since every phone call traveled through AT&T equipment, the justice department had filed a lawsuit to break up the monopoly. The purpose of my department’s network modeling was to show that breaking up the Bell system would make long distance calls unaffordable for most people, and therefore was not in the best interest of the nation.

Engineers and mathematicians in my department would come up with ways to determine and present how much equipment was needed and how much it cost to handle all the telephone calls being made across the country. Then people like me would code computer programs to analyze this information.

Since I was totally new to this, I really appreciate the time the others in my department took to explain how it all worked. Every explanation began with, “You have two wires…” Every phone had two wires that would connect to a local switching office to connect with other switching offices to the two wires of the other person’s phone.

When hired, I thought I would be working for Gerd Printz, but when I arrived, I was put in Ron Skoog’s group. I had a title: Senior Technical Associate. It sounds impressive, but it’s only one level above the lowest tier of employees. There were plenty of levels above me, all those with masters and Ph.D degrees.

They handed me half-inch thick printout on 11×17 tractor feed printer paper filled with thousands of lines of Fortran code. It was my job to finish the coding, test it, and write it up. I worked alongside many group members who were level higher than me. I’m amazed I remember so many of their names: Joan Bazely, Pam Turner, Ted Ahern, George Askance, Joe Scholl, Gina Langlois, Lachsman Sinha, Eric Grimmelman. A few guys from Western Electric who knew a lot about equipment in the field were around the office a lot, too.

I had an office, a CRT terminal to work on, and shelves filled with IBM manuals. I would work on the code, test parts of it, and then have to go down to the computer room to pick up printouts of what I had worked on.

Once I had the program up and running, I wrote it up for internal publication and made a presentation to some who were higher up the organization who were preparing to go up against the justice department.

Our network model was a stepping stone for my next assignment. Now we began to look at how solar flares and electromagnetic pulses (EMP) would affect telecommunications. If an enemy detonated an EMP device over the United States, it could disrupt communication. But how much? And for how long? Some of this project must have had a connection with the Department of Defense, because I had to get top secret clearance. I felt pretty important for a moment, until I realized no one was going to tell me any secrets.

Anyway, to study this, we found a long distance cable between Aurora, IL and Clinton, IA that was perfectly east and west. I programmed an HP minicomputer in Basic that we installed in Aurora. The staff there would send us a cassette tape filled with data every week that we would analyze along with solar flare activity. I don’t remember what we learned from the whole effort, but it was a fun project to work on.

While I was working on those projects, I go to see other Bell Labs facilities in Holmdel and Murray Hill, both in New Jersey. Those are the places where engineers and scientists invented transistors and lasers, and developed digital communication. I also got to go the main switching office in Manhattan to see all kinds of different phone switches in action. For three years I was a beneficiary of the massive amount of money AT&T poured into it’s research arm. I met a lot of brilliant people and learned so much from them.

Posted in Life, memories

My other career: getting to Bell Labs

Posted on by William Douthwaite
My West Long Branch Bell Labs location looked something like this
IBM 360s – check out the size of the hard drive disks!

I was sitting eating supper with some of the men in my small group when Jim, across the table from me, asked, “You’re from south Florida, right?”

I chuckled, “Almost. Not south Florida. I grew up in south Philly.”

Knowing that I’m a retired pastor, he asked, “Did you serve a church in that area?”

“No, I left there after high school to go to college in Lancaster. Then I worked for Bell Labs in New Jersey for a few years before I found my way to the seminary.”

The mention of Bell Labs sparked interest at the table. “What did you do there?”

I explained, “I was a programmer, working with a bunch of people who were way smarter than me. Like the guy up the hall who developed digital voice communication for Apollo 8. I worked on some projects for the antitrust case against AT&T, and then some telephone network survivability studies.”

One of the guys asked, “Whatever happened to Bell Labs?”

“AT&T lost the antitrust case and had to spin off Western Electric, a bunch of Baby Bells, and Bell Labs, later renamed Lucent Technologies. But that was after I had left them for another job.”

That brief discussion brought back memories of my first career at Bell Labs after graduating from Franklin and Marshall College in 1979. At the time I did not realize how prestigious the labs were. I was an overconfident graduate from a small liberal arts college with a degree in math and experience in programming in an organization filled with geniuses.

Keep in mind that programming in the early 80’s was Fortran, Cobol, and PL/1 on big old IBM 360s and 370s, with disk storage the size of forty-five pound barbell plates and long term tape drive memory. (IBM’s first desktop computers were released in August of 1981.) I could also program in Basic, which would come in handy a little later on.

My programming portfolio included compiling some survey data a friend of mine collected for the college radio station, some statistics for the basketball team, and some numerical analysis for some math classes. In retrospect, that doesn’t seem like much. But it was more than many of my classmates could do.

I only had to take three classes in the fall of 1978 to finish up my degree a semester early. I spent most of that fall applying for jobs. With just a manual typewriter, I cranked out dozens of cover letters to send out with my resume. I don’t remember how I found out where to apply for jobs. I must have found opportunities in math and science journals. I really swung for the fences, applying to Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, Lawrence Livermore in California, Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, New Jersey Bell, and a load of other places I can’t remember. I think I also sent away for master’s programs at universities all over the country. I had a pretty impressive collection of college catalogues. I had no idea how I would get there or pay for more education, but I would worry about that later.

I finished up my course work and moved back home in December of 1978. The next six weeks dragged on as I waited to hear from someone, anyone. Finally, at the end of January, I got a call from New Jersey Bell and Bell Labs in the same week, inviting me to come and interview.

My interview with New Jersey Bell came first. I drove up the NJ turnpike from south Philly to Newark. First, I took a test of general knowledge, simply math problems, vocabulary and grammar, and current events. After talking with a few people, I was taken to a room with about a dozen other interviewees to work on a test problem. The problem was a math and physics exercise about telephone poles and lines and cables. Wrote up my answer and headed home.

The Bell Labs interview was much different, lasting two days, talking to people from four different departments. They offered to put me up in a hotel in the area, but it was less than an hour away, so I elected to drive up each day. The first day of interviews was at the Holmdel, NJ location. It was impressive inside and out. I don’t remember much about the first day of interviews since I didn’t go to work at that location. The second day of interviews was in the Holmdel overflow location in West Long Branch, NJ.

I interviewed with two different groups in a department called Network Modeling. Just so you know, I had no idea what that meant. I interviewed with Gerd Printz and Ron Skoog, two group supervisors. They brought along Ted Ahern and Pam Turner, two of the group members I would be working with. I also talked with Bill Ross, the head of that department. As I sit here writing this, I am amazed that I remember these names from forty-four years ago!

Could I actually land a job there? I had no idea. But a couple of weeks later, a offer letter came in the mail and I had my first post-college job. I was on my way to Monmouth County New Jersey, my first apartment and life on my own.

Now that I’ve written this much, I think I’ll write about working at Bell Labs and leaving there in two subsequent parts.

Posted in Life, memories

The joy of pumpkins

Posted on by William Douthwaite

There wasn’t much the grands didn’t enjoy about the pumpkin farm yesterday. But they were super excited to pick out and purchase a pumpkin to bring home. While gourds of every size, shape, and color were available, their dad let them choose one from the $1 mini-pumpkin pile.

It’s harder to pick one out than you think. Each grandchild changed their mind several times as they sorted through the huge pile. When they made their final decision, only the youngest actually chose a traditional orange pumpkin, about three inches in diameter. The others found oddly shaped multi-colored gourds covered in “pimples.” Each promptly named their pumpkin. We brought home Ice Cream Cone, Sunshine Pimpleberry, and Little Pumpkin. On our way out of the farm, no one let go of their pumpkin, carefully taking it along for one last tractor ride and time on a big wooden swing. The ride home was filled with conversation about each pumpkin, its adventures, and future plans. Once we got home, the oldest carefully arranged them all to create a photo spot in the front yard.

Why are kids so excited about pumpkins? What makes them so fascinating? I suppose that the traditional Halloween sight of a jack-o-lantern gives them personality. So we display them proudly inside and outside our homes. For a few weeks, we treat them like a pet before they are forgotten in Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations.

My college fraternity boasted an annual pumpkin raid each fall. After a few beers, brothers and pledges would pile into cars and caravan out into the central Pennsylvania farm country. In complete darkness, we would stop by a patch to abscond with what we hoped would be decent looking pumpkins. Back at the house, after a few more beers, most of the fruit ended up being tossed from the roof onto the street below. It seems silly now, but at the time it was great fun.

I read that a pumpkin farmer can net $240,000 a year from a well run fall festival and sales to processing plants. Not too shabby. From the prices charged for pumpkins these days, I can understand how they do very well.

Posted in memories, Ministry

Visiting: Not as easy as it looks

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Image by Freepik

I wish I had kept count of how many people I visited in hospitals and nursing homes as a pastor. Very few weeks went by that I didn’t have someone to go see.

Some of those visits were very hard to make. I had to jump through a lot of hoops just to get in a building or room.

Like Ray, who was in a nursing home during the pandemic. When the doors finally opened for visitors again, I had to call and make an appointment to come and see him. One visitor per day. Period. When I arrived, I had to take a Covid-19 test. Once that read negative, they took my temperature and had me complete a health questionnaire. A nurse took me into a bathroom to show me how to and then watch me wash my hands properly. And this was for an outdoors visit. I sat at one end of a folding table set up in the front yard of the facility, wearing my mask, while Ray was wheeled out to sit at the other end. Conversing from eight feet away was okay, as long as there wasn’t too much traffic on the road. I confess, when I thought no one was looking, I snuck over and gave him Holy Communion.

Or Wyatt, born at the twenty-sixth week of mom’s pregnancy. I had to scrub in like a surgeon before I went into the neonatal intensive care unit with his mother. I was covered with gown, cap, booties, gloves, and a mask. He was covered with all kinds of wires and tubes. But I got to hold and pray over a little guy who came into the world three months before his birthday. When I saw him last year, he was a handsome thirteen year old young man.

I’ve only made a couple of visits to the jail. First, the person had to put my name on a list as an approved visitor. Then I had to make an appointment on his only weekly visitation day. Upon arriving, I had to put my belt, ring, watch, wallet, and keys in a special locker assigned to me. All that just so I could sit on the other side of thick glass window and speak to someone over a telephone handset for ten minutes.

Another visit during the Covid-19 pandemic was to Mark, hospitalized and in bad shape. He was in a room in a dedicated Covid wing. He could only have one visitor per day at a designated time. His wife surrendered her usual visit so I could go and see him. This visit required I sign a waver that I understood the risks I was taking. I then dressed in a sterile gown, cap, booties, gloves, mask, and protective goggles. I had to pass through two special sets of doors before I got to the hallway where his room was. After the visit, I had to take off all my protective gear in a special area before leaving that isolation wing.

Every visit was interesting, nerve-wracking, and educational. I left each place with a greater appreciation for health-care workers, prison guards, medical technology – and Jesus. After all, this is the exactly world he stepped into so he could be with, love, and save us.

Posted in Life, memories

Summer memories

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Limor Zellermayer on Unsplash

I’m a summer kind of person. While most of the people around me in Florida are complaining about the heat, I’m enjoying the warmer weather. I love the feel of the sun on my skin, getting sweaty while walking or working outdoors, and warming up after I’ve left a frigid air conditioned room. I know, I might feel differently about this if I cut lawns all day or roofed houses. Maybe not. I’ve always like summer.

A newsletter recently asked its readers to share their favorite summer memory. Summers are when there’s no school and families often take vacations. I have some great summer memories.

In junior and senior high school, my music teacher directed a summer band program, open to anyone of any age who wanted to come and play. We weren’t preparing for a concert. We got to play a lot of different music. Early on, you got to play with the big kids, musicians who were much better than you. When older, you got to show the noobs how it was done. It was just a lot of fun and the days and weeks were never long enough.

I spend most of my high school and college summers working concessions at Veteran’s Stadium in Philadelphia. That meant I got to see a whole season of home games and get paid for it. Most of the time, I was a cashier on a level that looked out over the field from behind home plate. Customers came in-between innings, so we got to watch most of the game. Oh, and eat whatever mediocre stadium food we wanted.

One year, instead of taking us away on vacation, my dad put up a swimming pool in the backyard. Our yard was a hill, so we first had to level out an area. I think the was only about twelve feet across and maybe three feet deep. Not olympic-sized, but we didn’t care. My brother, sister, and I spent a lot of that and the next few summers in that pool.

Band camp before my senior year in high school is burned into my memory, too. That was the first year of a week-long sleep-over camp devoted entirely to preparing a halftime show for the fall. Music and marching all day, volleyball games in the off times, and way too little adult supervision in the cabins. Perfect formula for summer memories.

I have one negative summer memory. I was in fourth or fifth grade, and my dad took us to Ocean City, New Jersey for a week of vacation. At that time and in that place (suburban Philadelphia), families vacationed at the Jersey shore. He didn’t even get to pick the week. He got vacation when his company shut down for two weeks.

Anyway, my parents enrolled us in a vacation bible school that week to get us out of their hair every morning. In hindsight, they were geniuses. But in the moment, we thought it was cruel to drop us off with a bunch of strangers while they enjoyed their vacation. That VBS was actually a two-week program, so we got off easy. I know how exhausting one week is. I can’t even imagine doubling that!

In the summer, families get to spend more time together, and I’ll bet that’s what forges some of our best memories.

Posted in Life, memories

“I got to watch a delivery!”

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Craig Pattenaude on Unsplash

I sat in on a nursing school labor and delivery class yesterday. The professor was my wife, so I had permission to be there. Just before the lecture began, I listened as the students talked about their clinical experiences.

“I got to watch a delivery!” Timing is everything. There is no guarantee that a baby will arrive during your birth center clinical hours, so not everyone gets to witness a birth.

“I got to hold a mother’s leg to help her push.” Even rarer is the chance to assist in a birth. The nurse you’re following may want to watch from over there and stay out of the way. Or, they may give you the chance to be a part of the moment. You never know.

I smiled and whispered to my wife, “I got to watch three!” The memories of the births of my three children are vivid. I may have written about this sometime in the past, but it’s worth remembering again.

My oldest was born in the dead of winter on a snowy February day in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sitting upright and cross-legged within my wife, he wasn’t going anywhere without surgery. When we arrived at the hospital, I was told, “Put this on, sit there, don’t move, and don’t touch anything.” In a yellow gown and cap, I sat on a stool just to the left of my wife. I sat up really tall and could just see into the sterile field as the doctor made an incision and suddenly I was a dad.

Number two, a daughter was born less than two years later in Manchester, Connecticut. She also didn’t get the memo about turning to be head down for her birthday. While the doctor knew how to turn a baby in utero, she too was born by c-section. In scrubs this time, I got to sit a little closer and had a better view of the birth. When the big moment arrived, the doctor said, “Get your camera; here we go.” I took a whole roll of film to capture her birth. In a few minutes, I was ushered out of the room, but not before the nurses handed me my cleaned-up and wrapped-up daughter and said, “Hold her while we take care of your wife.” Gladly! I rocked her for forty-five minutes until my wife was ready to meet number two.

Our youngest arrived eight years later. In the late-90’s, before lawyers got involved, vaginal birth after caesarian (VBAC) was encouraged. With a week to go, my wife was induced and I got to be an active part of a delivery. About eight hours in, it was time to push and I got to help hold my wife’s legs and hands as she pushed. Another daughter arrived, I cut the cord, and watched as she met her mom face-to-face for the first time.

I’m blessed to have experienced these moments, too!