I grew up in Collinsville, Connecticut during the Great Depression, was sworn into the Navy on my seventeenth birthday, and spent three years on the destroyer, USS Ringgold. There is nothing unique about that. Millions of people all over the world survived the Depression. Millions more lived through World War II. Nowhere near as many faced the end of the war as a twenty-year old high school drop out, emotionally hurting, not knowing what to do about it, or that I needed help. This is the story of that struggle; at the age of twenty-five becoming a follower of Jesus through the guidance of a Presbyterian minister, three years later entering college, and then seminary. This is what it was like to be redeemed from the scrap heap of life.
