Is God on Vacation?

The question which has torn at my very being, born in poverty, having such a tough life all through my years of university, and then the military and the fact that I have lived my life from then until now, as a totally blind person. Why me? Is God on Vacation?

I know God wanted me to see the world, to see the depravity of the world, so that I could better help you answer this question. Many books have been written pertaining to the injustice of God. Rabbi Harold Cushing wrote the great book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. As a radio talk show regular for many years, my phone rings with people who want to discuss questions of importance to them. I learned much about other people, especially the disabled, since most restaurants churches, etc. dissuade disabled people from going in them. Even though the disabled community is the largest minority, you see very few disabled people in public. In the county in which I live, it took much doing but I finally found that there are 576 blind people living here. Yet, over and over, I am told by the public, that I am the only blind person they have ever encountered. A friend, Catherine, called me very often because she was lonely in her isolation, and her intelligent mind needed to discuss many things with me. Catherine had been blind her entire life. She had attended the school for the blind and then on to East Carolina University and the UNC-Ch. She spent her active years working as a transcriptionist in a local hospital. An only child, with no relatives, she cared for her parents until their death. Her mother had inherited a house from her family on Market St, prime business property, which Catherine sold and bought a townhouse where she lived until she died. She died alone. As she had already told me, since the public had completely ignored her during her life, the funeral home would bury her at the cemetery without any services, notices or anything else. She had made these preparations ahead of time and paid for them.

I once asked Catherine, during all the years she lived in this city as a totally blind person, had anyone, any church, any club, ever done anything for her. As is the case, with this writer, I have never had anything done for me by any club, any church, any agency supposed to be interested in blind persons. One time in all these years, the state Commission for the Blind contacted me. But, this is about Catherine. She said that when her mother died, one church brought by some food and she told me the name of the church. Catherine was Baptist and had attended a Baptist church when at the school for the blind, but never after that and not one had ever visited her. My driver and I did pick her up one day, and took her by the church of a radio minister; (and my driver described the church to her.) There are many sad things about Catherine's life; but I believe the worst and I believe you will agree with me is the following. She had a seeing eye dog, Alma, and one day Catherine and Alma were run over in the street. It banged up Catherine but killed Alma. The people in the car who ran over them, did not stop. Law enforcement did absolutely nothing for her. She never replaced the dog. Is God on vacation at these crucial times, when the disabled are treated in such a callous way?

I never cease to be amazed at the audacity of the rich. The Chairman of the County Commissioners here, that infamous, Davis family, Spofford Cotton Mills, sold their famous gardens to the county for an incredible amount of money, so they would no longer have to pay tax on that real estate. He has the gall to come on the radio (the radio station is his chief political supporter) every Monday and talks about the life of the “rich and famous” about his fishing, golfing, partying and seems to know very little about county business. The people here, as elsewhere, deserve the government they get. Is God on Vacation, that there is such a disparity among men?

I made the acquaintance of high school biology teacher in Goldsboro, NC while I was still at the university, (Geraldine Jones, long time biologist.) She asked me to speak at a biology seminar and invited several of her outstanding students. It was there I met two young men, orphans from the Odd Fellow's Children's Home in Goldsboro, both interested in health care professions, and two of the most intelligent men I have ever known. In visiting with them in subsequent communications, I learned of the abuse of boys at that facility. I learned early in life and I keep learning it every day, that you are just wasting your time in reporting illegalities to anyone. But every time I see photographs of formally dressed Odd Fellows and Rebeccas I think of how wonderful it is that they would support an orphanage but how unfortunate it is that they do not know what goes on behind the walls of the facility. I learned the same thing about the Catherine Kennedy Home where elderly people live, and the abuse many of them encounter. Is God on vacation or does He expect someone to expose and correct?

Two years ago, three times within a few months, the telephone lines to my house were cut, evidently because my security system is connected to the phone and to law enforcement. It was of considerable interest to several friends; because I fully realize I am an easy mark for robbery. When the lines were restored, I called law enforcement. Both the sheriff's department and the local police told me there was nothing they could do unless I was robbed and probably killed. Then the could work from evidence. (Deputy Owens, Sheriff's Dept.; Lt. May, Police Dept.)

Like everyone else, I need to get out for exercise and sunlight. I made it a practice to walk each day around the block where I live. The Chief of Police sent uniformed Sergeant Buster Yost, here to my house to inform me that I should stay in my house with the doors locked. In other words, someone who is totally blind, a 100% disabled veteran who has worn the uniform of his country for many years, is supposed to be locked up so the criminals can roam the streets. Is God on vacation in this unjustified practice?

Disabled people, particularly blind people, have great difficulty transacting business. You can be sure there is always someone ready to take advantage, someone ready to churn an account, someone looking for a loop hole, in any agreement. Stock brokers have worked me over, over the 50 years of my active securities investing. One of the first securities houses I used, was Merrill Lynch. A broker by the name of Henry, loaded me up with worthless “limited partnerships”. Of course, as you can imagine, the brokers received great commissions for these sales. I knew Thad Eure, NC Secretary of State for 50 years, (oldest rat in the democrat barn). But when Elaine Marshall took over, everything went south. As with the SCC, even though I scanned and sent copies of the certificates, as is the case this very day, with FDIC, (it makes no difference how much supporting evidence you send) nothing is ever done. The very officials who are supposed to exercise oversight over the financial and securities markets are evidently just paid to sleep. Is God on vacation when it comes to the ineptness of government officials, local, state and federal?

I think I became baptized with the inequality of citizens, not because I had seen the bigotry and segregation of our black brothers and sisters, but without question, the most flagrant example of the inequality towards citizens in this state, was at our state tax supported university. I was amazed, stupefied to find that the sons of legislators, judges and political leaders in this state were given special attention by university appointed delegates. In other words, the university wanted to make sure the sons and daughters of those who control the state purse strings were contented in the university regardless of their ability. I understand one UNC-Ch professor received his walking papers by not passing Señor Charlie Justice, in a Spanish class. Is God on vacation when discrimination and bigotry is so flagrantly apparent among His creation?

In college, working in a shoe store, a black person or poor person would come in the store asking to use the bathroom. They always got the same answer, “We don't have one.” I knew better than to say anything because I needed a job. In my youth, I found that even here in this town, the black people and poor people always tried to park close to the court house in order to have a bathroom to use. One day, speaking with the wealthy Jewish owner of one of eastern NC's largest department stores, a black mother came in with a child and asked if she could use the bathroom. In my presence, me knowing the hypocrisy of the Jewish people towards all races he said, “We do not have one.” Supposedly, the Jewish people were racially blind. Is it not significant, that the wealthy Jewish families of eastern NC, all had summer homes on a lily white segregated beach? Is God on vacation, when he allows people to be treated in such a way and yet allows some to so prosper?

In Washington, D.C., on one of my several trips, a New York Jewish friend, who had been brought from Communist Russia by the nation of Israel, was walking me by the Vietnam Memorial with the 58,000 names of the dead. A lady, her daughter and grandchild, came to me and asked me if I was a veteran. She said, “My husband's name is on that memorial, the father of this daughter and granddaughter whom he never saw. My husband, as a dead defender of our country and you as a blind veteran of our country... Where was God when these awful things happened?”

I was in Europe for the 25th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion and stood in the cemetery where 9,000 are buried. I was in Manila where 18,000 are buried. There are 126,000 of our finest buried on foreign soil. They believed in this country. They gave their last measure of devotion to God, family and country with all the honor they had to bestow. God help us if we are on vacation when God expects us to defend.