The adventuresome sailor from Atlanta fell madly in love with timid, sheltered Milly, three years his senior. She had never had a boyfriend, and was charmed by his Southern accent and his gentlemanly style. She also marveled at his carefree spirit, exactly the opposite of her own repressed nature.
As they swapped stories about their upbringings, she learned that the young Marshall Yancey had a wild streak. He was something of a gambler, a kid who took risks. With no warning, at age fourteen Marshall ran away from home. His mother worried herself sick until, four days later, he called collect from St. Louis, Missouri. “I heard they had a great zoo, one of the best,” he explained. “So I came up to see it.”
Proud of his son’s brash independence, his father wired him the money to take a train home. “That boy has a mind of his own!” he bragged.
Next, Marshall heard about a Whiz Kids program run by the University of Chicago, which let bright high school students take courses in philosophy. One day, after a family argument, he ran away again. Now sixteen, he hitchhiked to Chicago and talked the university into admitting him into the program. For a few months he flourished, until a bout of strep throat did him in. Rather sheepishly, he called his parents again and asked for help getting home. His father smiled. “My son has guts. He’ll try anything.”
After sampling the advanced courses in Chicago, Marshall had no desire to enroll again in Atlanta schools. World War II, winding down in Europe, was still raging on the Pacific front; like every American boy of the time, my father wanted to do his part. When he turned seventeen, he got parental permission to enlist as an underage recruit. “Choose the navy,” his father advised. “That way you’ll always have a bed to sleep in, not like those army foxholes.”
Three weeks into basic training at Naval Station Great Lakes, north of Chicago, Marshall made one more call to Atlanta. “I made a mistake, Dad. Please, get me out of this place! It’s terrible. I have a sinus infection, I hate the North, and the instructors are tyrants.” His father contacted a congressman on his behalf, but to quit the military in wartime is no easy task. For the first time in his life, my father was trapped.
Snow fell early that year, and chunks of ice floated on Lake Michigan. Christmas arrived, his loneliest Christmas ever. One frosty day as he walked along the shoreline, gazing at a fogbank rolling in, it struck him that his entire future was a fog. He lacked even a high school diploma and soon would ship out to war, unsure if he would ever return.
At a friend’s suggestion, he caught a ride into downtown Chicago to visit the Pacific Garden Mission, which he knew about from its popular program, Unshackled. “The longest running radio drama in history,” it mostly told stories of bums and addicts converted to faith at a homeless shelter founded by the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. The stories all had the same plot, and the organ music and sound effects seemed corny—yet there was that promise of “the secret of a new life.”
In uniform, Marshall felt reasonably safe walking through Chicago’s worst slum, though several times he had to step around men lying on heating grates to keep warm. To his surprise, the volunteer host who greeted him at the mission had read some of his favorite philosophers. “They raise a lot of good questions,” the volunteer granted. “But I haven’t yet found a philosopher who tells you how to get rid of guilt. Only God can do that. I sense God is after you, Marshall.” After a long conversation, having nowhere else to turn, my father prayed to become a Christian that day in late 1944.
Over the next few months, and especially after meeting Milly, he devoted his spare time to studying the Bible, trying to figure out this “new life.” Then in June he embarked for war aboard the USS Chloris, an aircraft repair ship. On the way to Hawaii, a sensational news report reached them: The United States had dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, which led to an unconditional surrender. The war was over.
* * *
—
The rest of my father’s naval career consisted of biding time in Norfolk, waiting for his discharge so he could propose to Milly. Letters flew back and forth, and every free weekend he took his leave in Philadelphia.
One roadblock stood in the way of the romance. Mildred had promised God to serve as a missionary in Africa. That continent of snakes, lions, tropical diseases, and political unrest posed a true test of faith for a Christian of the time, and for that very reason it appealed to my mother’s idealism. When she heard others talk about “the dark continent,” she had a strong sense that God wanted her there. No prospect of marriage could weaken her resolve.
In the summer, as the couple sat together on a bench by Keswick Lake in New Jersey, Marshall asked nonchalantly, “Would you consider letting me go to Africa with you as your husband?” She made him wait a couple of days before giving an answer, but there was never any doubt. In September, a scant five months after their first meeting, they got married in her home church. Maranatha Tabernacle sponsored many foreign missionaries, and with the church’s help the young couple cultivated a mailing list of potential supporters.
My parents spent the next three years in Philadelphia, enrolled in college. My father earned a diploma, but the arrival of Marshall Jr. just after their first anniversary put a halt to my mother’s studies. My father decided on further training at a seminary in Indiana. He bought a 1927 Model T Ford for twenty-five dollars. The Ford had only one seat, so he found a cast-off dining-room chair, shortened the legs, and bolted it to the floor. Mildred rode to Indiana in style, holding her eight-month-old baby—my brother—in her lap.
To their dismay, that plan came to nothing. Marshall Jr. developed severe allergies, and a doctor advised them, “If that was my baby, I’d drop everything and move to Arizona.” So they headed west, my mother bouncing along in that dining-room chair while nursing a coughing, sputtering infant.
None of my father’s hoped-for church jobs materialized, and after a few discouraging months in Arizona, they gave up and made the long road trip to Atlanta. Once again an adventure had soured for my father. He taught for a while at Carver Bible Institute, a “Colored school” located in central Atlanta. The school paid no salary but provided housing, which turned out to be two army cots in an upstairs classroom, with a public bathroom down the hall. My mother insisted that they find better accommodations after I was born, in November 1949.
At last, as a new year began, prospects brightened. My father found work at a home for juvenile delinquents. He drew a modest salary and qualified for veterans’ housing in Blair Village. Now the two could plan the next big move—to the mission field. All this while, Mother had been faithfully writing “prayer letters” to people interested in sponsoring young missionaries, a list that had grown into the thousands. Their dream of service in Africa was about to come true.
Instead came polio, two months in an iron lung, a daring leap of faith, and the countdown to death.
* * *
—
In the polio ward at night, sleepless, my father tried to envision life as an invalid. Increasingly he saw himself as an albatross around the neck of his wife, who already had two young children to care for. “I guess you’re sorry you married me now,” he told her one afternoon. “You got no bargain.”
“No!” she protested. “When I vowed ‘for better, for worse, in sickness and in health,’ I meant it.” Alone that night she prayed more fervently, “God, don’t take him away from me!”
They had a faint flicker of hope when a doctor told them about some new state-of-the-art treatment techniques at Warm Springs. “It’s a therapy center south of Atlanta funded by President Roosevelt, who claimed it helped him,” the doctor said. “But it’s very hard to get accepted.”
To qualify for Warm Springs was like winning the lottery. The Grady nurses favored a handsome young teenager. They did his hair, pampered him, flirted with him. He thought he had won the polio lottery, but died in the ambulance halfway to the destination. One by one, other
s in the ward passed away.
Early one morning an aide at Grady called my mother at home. “Ma’am, I could get fired for this,” she said, “but I know your man’s a preacher and I want to hep out. Your husband, why, he died last night. His heart done give out, and they had to bring him back with shots. And when he come back, his first words were ‘Why’d you bring me back?’ ”
Desperate, my mother pleaded with her husband not to give up. “Think of all those people praying for you,” she reminded him. Together, they decided to stake everything on a miracle, their only chance. Didn’t they believe in a God who had the power to heal? Why not put their faith in his hands? Why would God “take” a man so committed to a lifetime of service?
Newly energized, my father settled on two ambitious goals: to get out of the iron lung and to get out of Grady. Although he trusted God for healing, he wanted to do his part, so he pressed the doctor to allow him a few minutes each day outside the hated apparatus. “How else can I gain strength?” he argued.
The first few days he panted and wheezed as his atrophied lungs struggled to regain function. Mother stood guard, ready to dash for help. Day by day, he breathed a little longer on his own: ten minutes, fifteen minutes, then half an hour. Every moment outside the machine risked catastrophe, for nurses did not always respond to a summons. Without prompt attention he could simply stop breathing, or choke to death.
With the help of a portable respirator, he extended his stays to several hours. He celebrated Thanksgiving by managing eight hours free of the iron lung, still lying flat, unmoving. The miracle was happening, albeit gradually, in stages.
On December 2, Mother recorded a watershed event in her diary: “Moved Marshall to Stanford Chiropractic Center. He begged me to remove him from Grady if I loved him. I believe the Lord gave him that one last desire.” It was a giant step of faith, made in the face of disapproving doctors. Grady required them to sign a form stating that the patient was leaving against medical advice.
As the ambulance transported him down Peachtree Street, my father had his first glimpse of sunshine in almost two months and took his first breaths of fresh air. At once he felt weak and anxious, but also free and full of hope.
For the first time since her husband’s hospitalization, Mother was allowed to stay through the night. She sat in a chair by his bedside, fearful that he would die that first night. Instead, he slept soundly, away from the noise and bright lights of the polio ward.
He had achieved both goals, escaping at last from the iron lung and from Grady. God the miracle worker was answering their prayers.
Each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face…
—Shakespeare, Macbeth
CHAPTER 3
DEMISE
As my father planned his move to the chiropractic center, Mother had been working on a better child-care arrangement for Marshall and me. Her sister Violet in Philadelphia offered to travel to Atlanta and stay with us, which seemed the ideal solution—until my grandmother Diem got wind of it. “Not on your life. Mildred’s the one who left home and married that Southern preacher. Let her stew in her own juices for a while.” My Philadelphia grandmother was a hard woman.
My grandfather Diem, who had lost his own father at age twelve, had more sympathy. “Let me work on it,” he said. “We can fly the boys up here, if we can just get permission from the airlines.” No unaccompanied child under the age of five could fly without special authorization, so he wrote a letter of appeal and addressed it to “Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker, President, Eastern Air Lines, New York, New York.” Somehow the letter reached Rickenbacker, who agreed at once. The permission letter arrived the day my father was moved from Grady to the chiropractic center.
On his first full day at the chiropractic center, after two months of isolation, my father was allowed to see and touch his sons. “Show him what you can do, Philip,” Mother said, and for the first time he saw me walk—something he could no longer do. Next, he called Marshall over to his bedside and gave him a pep talk about helping out at home. As we left the room with our Yancey grandparents, Mother kissed us both goodbye.
The next morning, my grandparents brought us to the Atlanta airport, driving out on the tarmac to the steps of the DC-3 airplane. Marshall Jr. carried on board a bag of hard dinner rolls, which he loved to chew. All during the four-hour flight, a stewardess in her smart uniform fussed over us both. She tried to feed us sweet potatoes, but Marshall refused to eat anything except his dinner rolls. A wealthy passenger had offered to look after me. For years afterward, I would brag to schoolmates about my first trip on an airplane, at thirteen months old, when I drooled on a millionaire.
For almost two weeks Marshall and I stayed with our Philadelphia grandparents, doted on by my mother’s two younger sisters. On the fateful day of December 15, the entire family gathered around a radio to listen to a national address by President Harry Truman. The United States was being routed on the battlefields of Korea, and that night President Truman declared a state of emergency. In dire terms he described the threat posed by Communists in the Soviet Union and China.
In the midst of Truman’s radio address, the phone rang and the operator announced those rare words, “Long-distance call.” My grandfather was holding me against his shoulder as he accepted the charges. He listened in silence and mumbled a few phrases as the others stood around awaiting the news. When he hung up the phone, his eyes shone with tears. He looked down at my face and said, “Philip, my boy, you have a rough life ahead of you.”
* * *
—
My father’s move to the chiropractic center had seemed full of promise. No longer bothered by the creaks and groans of the iron lung, the patient slept well. And with her children now in Philadelphia, Mother could give him undivided attention. If he needed suctioning, she buzzed the aides, who proved far more responsive than the staff at Grady. Therapists wrapped his muscles in steamed woolen packs and moved his arms and legs to keep the joints limber.
“We can’t guarantee it, but there’s a chance you can regain the ability to walk,” one doctor told him. Journalists from the Atlanta and Philadelphia papers reported on the young minister’s progress and his hopes for healing.
A week later, however, he took an abrupt turn for the worse. His breathing became more labored, and Mother’s fears surged back. On December 13 they heard carolers outside the window, and for the only time in her husband’s presence, my mother broke down. “What will I do if I have to live without you—with no job, no driver’s license, and two babies to look after?” she sobbed.
He tried to comfort her, assuring her that everything would be settled by Christmas. “We must have faith. Remember my motto, Milly. ‘God’s grace is sufficient.’ ”
Yet he, too, had premonitions. “What will you do if I die?” he asked—“Take our sons to Philadelphia?” He didn’t trust her family, or the North, with his children. She said no. She had left Philadelphia against her parents’ wishes and knew she wouldn’t be welcomed back.
“Will you move in with the Yanceys?” he pressed. He didn’t trust his own family, either, for they didn’t share all his religious beliefs. No, she reassured him, she’d find a way to keep us on her own. “Good. That’s good,” he said, and calmed down.
On Friday, December 15, she got out the razor to give him his morning shave. “Not today,” he said. His response surprised her, but she honored his wish. In a few hours his sister, Doris, joined the two of them in the room, and by afternoon his parents arrived. Despite the cold weather outside, he insisted that they open the windows. All four visitors sat around his bed in their winter coats as he lay in cotton pajamas soaked in sweat, fighting to breathe.
Suddenly his body relaxed and the breathing slowed—he had slipped into a coma. Mother jumped up to hit the emergency button, a
nd a minute later a chiropractic doctor answered the summons. He took one look at his unconscious patient and said, “I’m afraid it’s time to call Grady.”
The doctor placed an emergency call, asking the hospital to send its portable respirator, the only one in Atlanta. The device worked on the same principle as the iron lung, only it was compact, fitting over the torso like a baseball umpire’s chest guard.
My father’s eyes remained open even in his comatose state. A tense silence filled the room, a silence that could be felt. Finally, Doris said, “I don’t think he can see, but hearing is the last sense to go. Let’s keep talking.” They all made an effort, though conversation seemed stilted, fake.
When they heard an ambulance siren through the open window, the family felt a rush of hope. It vanished when the Grady attendants entered the room—they had neglected to bring the respirator.
“We can’t move him to Grady in his condition,” one of the men said. They felt his pulse and checked his temperature, and then for some reason they turned my father over on his stomach, the worst thing you can do to a polio patient. He took one more breath, his last.
A short time later my mother made that long-distance call to Philadelphia.
Her diary has one more entry, dated December 15. “Marshall suddenly went home to be with the Lord. We had a blessed 2 weeks together at this hospital. I was able to spend all my time with him. What precious memories!!…May the boys grow to be like him.”
Where the Light Fell Page 2
