A Glimpse at a Life

He was born in the little Allegheny mining town of Cadogan, Pennsylvania, on March 16, 1933. The second son of Alvin William Erickson and Frances Best, he romped and stomped his way through childhood with his older brother, David. At the beginning of a life, all the dreams are still up ahead. All the potential still awaits dormant in the soul. All the challenges and opportunities lie unconsidered around the bends in the road. This little boy, Alvin William Erickson, Jr., would certainly see his share of adventure and triumph and joy. But those would each have traveling mates known as mistakes, failures and heartache.

His was a life characterized by service to others. Whether it was his shipmates while he served aboard the USS Pittsburgh during the Korean Conflict, or his classmates while studying for the ministry at Trevecca Nazarene College, or the people to whom he ministered for over thirty years of unbroken ministry, his first impulse when confronted with any need was to help others. His kind heart and giving nature garnered the love and admiration of all who knew him.

And it was this love and admiration that would contribute mightily to his downfall. Unbeknowst to anyone but my mother and her dad, my father had a secret – one that would change all our lives forever.

The teen years were tumultuous, which is normal on some level, but aggravated by an alcoholic and often absent father who verbally and emotionally abused the devoted wife and mother of the home.  Anger over this situation and the impotence to remedy the situation turned to hatred, and the hatred evidenced itself in rebellion, and, as a restless and world hardened seventeen-year-old, my father joined the Marines.

And he was a great one.  No task too difficult, no run too far, no load too heavy, no work too taxing.  My father threw himself into the Corp to exercise his pent-up frustration over the situation at home.  He threw himself into the bottle to drown out the voices – THE Voice that had already called him to the ministry.  Just as Jonah of old, he finally realized that there was no port far enough away and no bottle deep enough to hide him from the prayers of a mother and the call of God.  It was during his second tour, at sea on the USS Pittsburgh, that he succumbed and surrendered.  Letters to his mother evidence this transformation and are filled with praise and unlined by a very real sense of relief at having finally made the decision of a lifetime.

He finished that second tour, left the Marines as a Sergeant, and returned to the States to begin his preparation for the ministry.  Unfortunately, the years of running and drinking had already resulted in the birth of an addiction with which he would struggle and which would finally cost him almost everything he held dear in the world.

There were at least three deliriously happy days in my father’s life.  The first was June 6, 1958 – the day he married my mother, the great love of his life.  They were young.  They were poor.  They didn’t care.  Living in a house in Nashville, Tennessee, that could only be described as minuscule, they loved God and each other and began their lives together.

After the beginning in little house on Gwen Drive in North Nashville, this couple was in almost perpetual motion.  Shortly after I was born in the middle of 1960, the call came from a small Nazarene church in Hampton, Virginia, and my Dad left the evangelistic field for the pastorate.  The next forty-eight years would carve a path through five more churches and two more periods of focused evangelism.  From Hampton we moved on to the much bigger church in Richmond where my only sibling – my precious brother – was born and Dad built a bus ministry at the church that brought in droves of young, unchurched children and exposed them to the Gospel and God’s Love.

Just under three years later, the call came from the First Church of the Nazarene in Jackson, Mississippi, and we packed up again and moved south.  The old inner-city tabernacle-style building was sorely inadequate so Dad threw himself into a building program that resulted in a beautiful new facility on the outskirts of town.  But just before the point of occupancy, another move took us all to Roanoke, Virginia, and the First Church there.

Thirty-three months was all he could take – he said he felt he could do more good in the evangelistic field – and we relocated yet again to the sleepy little river town of Danville, Virginia, where I started and finished high school, where Andy was initiated to the school environment, and where Mom struggled to maintain the home while Dad traveled the country and preached the Word.  Neither my brother nor I noticed the storm clouds building on the horizon.  Too caught up in our own little worlds, we were unaware of the strain in the home and the ever-increasing pressure laid on our mother.  We would eventually find out, but that part will have to wait.

As my high school days came to a close, the church where Papaw – my mother’s father – had pastored for so many years called and asked Dad to step in as their pastor.  So, as I moved north to attend college in Kankakee, Illinois, the rest of the family left Danville behind and headed south to Pascagoula, Mississippi.  The memories there were sweet.  Papaw had just died the Christmas before and being in Pascagoula again, the place he loved so dearly, was a healing salve on the soul of my mother.  Dad fell into the routine of the pastorate and tried to make it all work.  But it wasn’t to be.  What I believed was simple restlessness resulted in yet another move after a short two years.  Intending to reenter the evangelistic field again, Memphis, a major transportation hub, got the nod and north we went.

It took six years for it to happen, but the storm finally hit Memphis and our family was shredded.  The combination of his amazing people skills and his charismatic personality allowed my father to shield the entire world from the knowledge of his addiction to alcohol.  When reduced to the basics, he had, over the course of a lifetime, developed a finely-honed ability to deceive.  Only Mom and Papaw knew the secret.  Papaw was in Heaven and Mom was living through a hell believing she was doing the right thing by not revealing the truth.

It all came to a head in a little church in Kirkwood, Missouri, one night in 1986.  As had happened many times in the past – we later discovered – my father stepped to the pulpit to preach in a high state of inebriation.  He apologized.  Claimed that he was too sick with the flu to preach and dismissed the service.  It had worked before.  No one had ever suspected.  But this night was to be different.  There in that small town was a treatment facility for the chemically dependent.  There in that small church were several doctors employed by that facility.  Together with the pastor of the church, they confronted Dad.  They knew the truth.  They demanded an admission.  They offered to help.

My father remained in Kirkwood and completed the six week treatment.  He was welcomed home by his family, confused and hurt, and the entire church board of Calvary Church of the Nazarene in Memphis.  This absolutely mortified my father.  Always a private person, this problem, the one he had successfully kept under wraps for so long, was a source of embarrassment to him – a sign of weakness.  Instead of embracing the treatment and the help of others, he tried to maintain his privacy and handle it on his own. 

What he hadn’t been able to do for twenty-five years remained an impossibility.  I really believe he tried.  But the pull was too great.  The addiction, coupled with an empty evangelistic slate and, consequently, a lot of idle time, made sobriety an unrealizable dream.  He would drink and try to hide it.  Mom would find out and confront him.  He withdrew from her.  She couldn’t trust him.  The inevitable happened.  My father packed a few things and left.  The dark years began and the path through them would surely break all our hearts if we knew all the details.

We don’t.  In and out of treatment facilities and hospitals, receiving and then turning his back on help, he was living under a bridge in Nashville, Tennessee, when, by direct intervention by the Hand of God, the pastor of the Nazarene church in Danville, the man who was our pastor during those years there, found out.  Driving all night, Rick Withrow picked up my father, drove him back to Danville, and cleaned him up.

That was the turning point.  He had finally hit bottom with nowhere to look but up.  He finally realized that he could not dabble around the edges of the addiction but had to turn his back on alcohol completely.  He finally reached the point where pride died and humility cried out for help.  He finally came to himself and decided that nothing was worth the pain and depravity that always resulted from “just one drink”.

A treatment facility in Danville, Hope Harbor, and the daily Alcoholics’ Anonymous meetings he began to attend kept him sober.  The work at the Harbor and his God-given personality and ability to speak gave him an outlet for his need to minister to others.  A drive that had defined his life – service to others – had been marred and negatively impacted by his addiction.  On September 8, 1990, he said, “No more.”

Unencumbered by the alcohol and the deception that came with it, he threw himself headlong into the lives of others.  The stories he would recount of lives changed and families restored never failed to bring chills to my spine.  Whether in the Harbor or in the grocery store, he would look for and use any and every opportunity to share Jesus.

He loved others.  He served others.  He prayed for others.  The last eighteen years of his life, spent largely alone, were surely the most productive years of his life.  As he was winding down his days here, just hours before he would pass on, he made a five hundred mile round-trip to stand beside the hospital bed of a friend and pray.  Harvey Johnson was dying and Dad wanted to pray with him.

As it turned out, my father beat Harvey to Heaven by just half a day.

Today, as we are missing them, they are standing side by side worshipping their God.  And if I know my Dad, his voice is just a little louder than all the rest.

I thank God for my Dad – for his life, his love, and his neverceasing prayer.  He is missed.  He is loved.  He will be waiting for me.