I was brought up in the Roman Catholic religion and was an altar boy in the church of that faith. I tell you this because I want you to know that I had a “Christian” upbringing. Such religion did me little good in the years ahead.
When I was about fourteen years old, after graduating from junior high, I went on to high school. The first week I was there, I brought a knife to school to show my friend. It was one that my older brother, who was a professional knife-thrower in a carnival, had given me the last time he had come home. As I was showing it, the teacher saw it and demanded it from me. My short temper flared up and I said, “You want it? Then take it!” and saying so, I threw it at him. I missed, but, needless to say, was expelled from school. It was the end of my formal education. Now I would begin my education on the street.
I began to work with my brother-in-law who retrieved cases of contraband whiskey that had been dumped overboard after high-speed chases by the Coast Guard. We then delivered these to the parties to whom they had been consigned. That went on for awhile . . . until we were caught! My brother-in-law was convicted and went to jail and I was released because I was still a minor.
My parents were disgusted with me and I was told to leave their home. I made my way to New York City with ten cents in my pocket. There I found myself standing on a street corner, wondering what to do, when a man came up to me and said, “Say kid, do you want to earn half a buck?” Shaking my head yes, I was handed a potato. He told me to put it in the tailpipe of a car that was parked nearby. Naively, I did what I was told to do, not knowing that the car was an unmarked police car. I stayed around that neighborhood for the rest of that day. The same man came back later and gave me another half dollar, congratulating me on a fine job. This was my first tie-in with the underworld. Unfortunately, it would not be my last.
From then on, I became a runner, doing errands for criminals. Then I ran a book (small-time gambling), became a bagman (transporting illegally obtained money), then was a driver. All this did not happen in a short space of time. I gradually had to make myself available, willing, and then able to do what I was told — and to keep my mouth shut.
In order to support myself in the lean times, I took a job as an orderly in one of the local hospitals. There I met a doctor who took a liking to me and encouraged me to enroll in a nursing course. I did not finish the course completely but accomplished enough to get a certificate to do practical nursing. This came in handy in later days because when the authorities were getting too close, I would hide (as it were) in a hospital and stay there until it was safe to come out and go back to making big money again.
The most responsible job that I had was as a driver. I drove for three successful bank robberies plus many smaller jobs. After one of these jobs, my friend and I went to Mississippi, his home state. There I drove for a bootlegger, delivering whiskey. While on one of these trips, I was shot and had to have the bullet removed by a local quack. The cost was $7000. There my friend was caught and told all about me so that I had to go into hiding again. I picked Paterson NJ, and found a job in a hospital there.
One Sunday, I asked to have a date with one of the nurses. She agreed, and took me to a little building which was a place where people came to hear a man talk about God. I shut out the preacher completely. I did not want to hear anything about Him. All I wanted to do was get out of there.
I still carried my gun with me wherever I went; I was never without it. I even slept with it under my pillow. When she saw it, she told me I should get rid of it. I said I’d rather get rid of her than to lose my best friend — my gun.
One day, I heard one of the other nurses talking about the police asking questions about some of the help. I knew it was probably about me, so I simply slipped away and went up to my old hometown. There I enlisted in the Army. I chose to go as far away from the States as I could, choosing Hawaii as my duty. While there, I continued to make myself available to the devil, and ran the gambling games where I took a percentage of the pot.
Then came that fateful day, December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It was swift and sure. I thought my time had come. Death itself seemed to hold no fear for me; but, all of a sudden, something said to me, “Where are you going to spend eternity?” I said, “In hell.” Then it came back to me: that was what that preacher back in New Jersey was talking about. Take Christ as your Saviour and spend eternity in heaven. All I had to do was accept Christ as my substitute and all my sins would be washed away. Right there, hiding behind a stone pillar with bombs falling around me, I took Jesus as my own Saviour. My life was changed. I’m not going to say that everything turned out rosy — I still had my old self. I knew virtually nothing about Christian living. I learned how to make “kickapoo juice” and sold it to the troops. But every time I made it, something was telling me it was wrong.
The Lord put me through some trying times. I was wounded twice in conflict, stranded in enemy territory for twenty-seven days with no food to eat except some Japanese rice that we found. Through it all, He taught me lessons about His grace and truth.
I tell you this story, not to brag about how bad I was. Instead, I pray that whoever reads this will know that he or she is not too bad a sinner for Christ to save. Paul the apostle could say in 1 Timothy 1:15, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” You do not have to be as bad as I was to qualify as a sinner, for all have sinned and come short of God’s standard. Thank you for letting me say a few words about the Lord who saved me.