The Prisoner’s Cross
Peter B. Unger
The Prisoner’s Cross
Copyright © 2019 Peter B. Unger. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
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199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-9613-8
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-9614-5
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-9615-2
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 11/11/19
For my father whose life and ministry enriched so many lives, and without whose journal and iron cross this work would not have been possible.
A special thanks to Don Seagreaves without whose support and imput this book would not have been realized.
The Call
It was the worst phone call of his life. The date May 12, 1993, the time 4:30 in the afternoon were seared onto his heart and mind. Don had just come home from his summer job, a daytime shift at the local Ford plant. His father, Jim Campbell, had worked at the plant, just outside of Boden, Kentucky, for decades. Don had grabbed milk from the fridge and drunk directly from the carton. His mother would teasingly chastise him whenever she caught him in the act, but she was not home. Alberta, or Berta, as everyone called her, often picked up her fifteen-year-old daughter from school, and was usually home by now. “She must be running some errands,” Don thought.
Both Berta and Jim were products of a working-class background. Berta’s father had worked for many years as an auto mechanic. His last job, as he neared retirement, had been at the newly opened Ford plant. Berta’s mother had worked mainly as a homemaker. She had a natural intelligence and reflective nature that she had passed on to her daughter. Berta’s father was a kindly affable man. Alberta had inherited the best of both her parents’ traits. A warm, loving person with a quick smile and an easy, gentle laugh, Berta was also a natural nurturer. Don was close to his mother. The two would often sit and talk at the kitchen table for long periods. Their conversations started with Berta asking about Don’s day. More recently Berta had been asking Don how his studies were going at the local community college, where he was nearing the end of his first year. Their conversations would then naturally flow in a variety of directions. The big questions of life held an interest for both Berta and her son. For Berta this had always been framed by her deep faith and involvement at the First Baptist Church off Main Street in the center of town. Berta had an open-mindedness to hearing ideas that others from her background might find threatening.
Don had taken Intro to Philo his first semester and Intro to Comparative Religion his second semester. What he had learned had both challenged his faith and broadened it. In his comparative religion study he had seen parallels between all the world religions, such as the common values they all seemed to espouse. He had also discovered big differences. He found himself wondering, “Could the same God be at work in all these religions.” If so, he had thought, how would this account for the Buddhist lack of belief in any God. He had shared these thoughts and questions with his mother. Berta would lean forward, cupping her head in her hands as she listened to him. She seemed to eagerly soak up all Don was sharing as if learning vicariously through him. Typical of her responses were remarks like, “Don, God is much greater than we can imagine, and we should not put him in a box,” and, “I am okay with other folks’ beliefs as long as they’re okay with mine.”
Berta had recognized Don’s intellectual and academic ability during his high school years. She had urged him to consider seminary as an option down the road. Don had grown up in Boden’s First Baptist Church, attended Sunday School there, and been active in the youth group. More telling was that he had continued to attend the church each Sunday with his mother and sister throughout his teen years after finishing Sunday School. Although as a young man he did not feel he was ready for adult baptism. During his teenage years Berta had seen him reading his Bible regularly, which he kept on the table by his bed.
Through most of Don’s growing-up years his father, Jim, had worked the day shift at the local Ford manufacturing plant. He would often come home from work, walk into the kitchen of their small ranch house, and grab a couple beers out of the fridge. Ignoring his wife and son, Jim would then retreat to the living room where he would flick on the TV, usually to a cop show or a Western, and sit back and watch TV until dinner time. He would repeat this ritual after dinner, making return raids to the fridge for more beer. Jim remained incapable of understanding the close bond mother and son shared and was jealous of it. By early evening, while Berta was cleaning up in the kitchen, Jim had drunk himself into a stupor. Jim and Berta had met in high school in their junior year. They had dated throughout their junior and senior years. In the two years following graduation they had broken up and gotten back together a few times before deciding they would stay together. Soon thereafter Jim decided to join the National Guard and before enlisting Berta and Jim had gotten married. Fertility problems had delayed their having children and accounted for the nearly five-year difference between Don and his sister, Sue. Don had often wondered what his mother had ever seen in his father. Their essential natures stood in stark contrast to each other. Where she was warm and loving, he was often sullen and indifferent. Raised in a working-class family, Jim hardly ever talked about his parents and two brothers, one of whom had done some time in prison.
His father had been an alcoholic ever since Don could remember, and Don had learned from his mother that Jim’s father had also been a “drunk,” as she put it, and could be physically abusive. Don knew even as a teenager that his father’s decline was due to his dysfunctional family background, and alcoholism and had little to do with his job or working-class background. He knew of too many families from the same economic class as his whose home life was functional and happy. Given a small town’s tendency for bad news to travel fast, he knew some of the wealthiest families in town had had more than their share of tragedy and scandal. A son of one of the executives at the plant had been arrested for dealing drugs while away at college. The unfolding drama of his trial and prison sentence had made the local papers.
Jim, when drunk, while never physically abusive, had often been verbally abusive. A bad day at work was all it took to bring out the worst in Jim. By mid-evening the target of this abuse was Berta, who by this time was usually sitting quietly on the coach knitting. His slurred verbal attacks most often focused on some dust or dirt he had spotted somewhere in the living room. Rising to his feet and then stumbling around he would tell her that “she was a lousy housekeeper, that this was her only job, and she couldn’t even do that right.” Don and his sister, knowing such scenes were almost routine, had by this time retreated to their bedrooms. They could still hear the muffled sounds of their parents arguing behind their closed doors. The arguments always seemed to wind down in the same way, with Berta repeatedly telling Jim to calm down, and go to bed, and with Jim finally waiving his hand dismissively at her as he stumbled off toward their bedroom. The answer Berta had given to Don, whenever he asked what she had ever seen in his father, was that “he was not the man then that he is now,” and that “life had worn him down.”
Perhaps, Don thought, but the cruel streak his father often exhibited was something he could not forgive. One of Don’s earliest memories painfully reminded him of his father’s cruel streak. Don was only four or five. He had been jumping up and down on the couch in their small living room. His father had come over to scold him. In his childish exuberance, Don hadn’t realized his father’s intent. Then the memory comes sharply into focus. As his father stood in front of him, Don had yelled several times, “Daddy, catch me,” and then with the impulsive energy of a young child Don had leaped toward his