I was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. Home of the 2015 National Champion Duke Blue Devils. My Dad was and remains the worlds biggest Duke fan. Though not born in Durham, he moved there as a young child. He experiences as a child growing up in the Bethesda Community of Durham were never something he liked to talk about.
His Father was an Alcoholic and a brutal one. He has told me of how he and his Mother used to dig holes in their backyard so they could hide what little money they had. Seems his Dad had a penchant for coming home drunk and physically assaulting her, then scouring the house for meager sums to by his next drink or drinks.
Merriam-Webster defines dirt-poor as "sufferingextreme poverty". I guess the phrase had a special meaning for him as dirt was that special hiding place for his family fortunes. Though his early years were spent during the aftermath of The Great Depression, his father was prone to wanderings. As such, The New Deal and Work Progress Administration (WPA) did not prove to be the social safety net for my dad's family that they were intended to be.
He was the oldest boy in the family of three boys and one girl. Their mom died from Tuberculosis when dad was in the 10th grade which was a significant loss for him. He was and remains a very handsome man, and he met a beautiful girl at Bethesda High School who was from the right side of the tracks. Her dad worked at The American Tobacco Company in Durham.
His passion was basketball, and he played forward for the county team. I was raised on a steady diet of Bob Verga, Steve Vacendak, Jim Spanarkle, Christian Laettner, Gene Banks, Jeff Mullins, Jack Marin and the list goes on and on. Then Duke went and hired this Coach with a last name no student at UNC could possibly spell. The man was a coach at Army. How could this travesty be exacted upon the good people of Durham?
This man with a name no one could say or spell is now so famous that his name is the 11th letter of the alphabet. Though his first few years at Duke were a question mark, he brought something to Duke which has proven to be an invaluable asset: "Character"
Unfortunately for me however, the character of Coach K does not represent the historical and contemporary character of Duke University.
My first encounter with Duke was at the hospital there. I was five years old. I was riding my stick horse and playing that real cowboy hero. But as children often do, I grew tired of one toy and quickly decided to move on to the next. I opened my toy box and as I threw it in to look for another, the stick broke into and pierced my right eye.
The pain was excruciating. The fear was overwhelming. I was taken to the county hospital (Watts Hospital) and there was nothing they could do. They sent us to Duke Hospital and this was before they had The Searle Center at Duke. We were not wealthy patrons nor "Iron Duke" members and I am not sure that we had any insurance.
So Duke turned us away and sent us to McPherson Hospital in Durham which was an Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Specialty Hospital. An attempt was made to save the eye and initially the only visible evidtience of the injury was a relatively small retinal scar.
Bags were placed on each side of my head to avoid any further hemorraghing which had already taken place. Unfortunately, I had a nighmare and I fell victim to the power of "The Music of The Night" What was once a childhood mishap suddenly became a harsh reality of my earthly existence. The hounds of fate began to clutch at my throat, and I was left with a grotesque looking window to my soul which even my sister once said looked like a monster.
Three attempts were made buy surgeons at McPherson to stop the internal bleeding and avoid having to have the eye extracted at such a young age. After these unsuccessful efforts, my father went to Dr. Sam McPherson and asked him if he could intervene. One surgery and the eye was saved. This was important because a young child who has to have an artificial eye must have a new one quite often because of their growth spurt.
I grew to understand bullying as a child. The names "Eyeball" and "One-Eyed Jack" followed me everywhere I went at Bethesda Elementary. The eye was not removed until I turned sixteen and for me, it was my "Angel of Music."
The emotional scars from my childhood past did haunt me but they did not define me. Football was my sport of choice and I was a good athlete. I actually won the Most Valuable Player trophy as a Wide Receiver when I played for the Salvation Army in what was then called the midget football league.
Armed with my new ocular prosthetic, I was now ready for "The Angel of Music" to "Bring Me To Life". I met and soon married a quite stunning Homecoming Queen. I graduated from North Carolina State University with a major in Accounting and a minor in Economics.
I went to work at Central Carolina Bank as an Internal Auditor and quickly rose through the ranks to become Manager of The Internal Audit Department. My wife and I had a beautiful young boy and it seemed as though indeed I had the world at my feet.
Then when my son was six months old, I lost my wife and son to her new quite wealthy and much older boss. My Camelot life became a "Dungeon of Despair" and for me, it was "The Day The Music Died."
As the CFO at the Bank was about to retire, I seized the opportunity to move into the Accounting Division. I was interviewed and accepted the position of Assistant Controller. During my tenure in accounting, I lost myself, but I found the emotional anesthetic that I longed for - Alcohol.
I was eventually dismissed from the Bank for what was officially categorized as "Conduct Unbecoming An Officer of The Bank". I had consumed mixed drinks at a Bank social function while enrolled in an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for Alcohol Abuse. CCB had every right to terminate my employment and I was fully aware of that and extremely disappointed in who I had become. I, once a shell of a boy had become nothing more than a shell of a man.
Within a year after my termination, I was arrested on three separate occasions for DWI. I was told by my attorney that the most time I would serve would be a two week sentence in the Durham County Jail. Fifteen minutes he informed me that we had ran into trouble with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) as they had a new campaign to ensure that high profile offenders were punished in accordance with North Carolina State Law.
As the sentence was handed down by the Judge, I did not hear two week in the county pokey. I heard a two year sentence with my initial three week stay in the jail to be followed by three separate prison stops beginning with the now closed Triangle Correctional Center.
"Orange Was The New Black" for me. I will never forget having to change out of my suit and into my Orange Jumpsuit. One of the first humiliating things I remember is having no place to rest my hands. There was no "Pocket Full of Gold" for me. In fact my new threads had no pockets at all. My second most humiliating experience was being bound together in handcuffs with the other prisoners and marched across Main Street in my "Along The Broken Road" from the courthouse to the disgusting old dirty and dungy Durham County Jail.
The State of North Carolina punished me for my criminal transgressions as had Central Carolina Bank for my professional ones and in each case I fully deserved the resulting consequences of my irresponsible behaviors. I have written a book "The Angel of Music" detailing my time in the North Carolina Penal System but my personal story certainly does not end with my release from The Butner Minimum Security prison.
I can relay a few special memories. At the Triangel Correctional Facility, I was walking behind two black inmates and one commented to the other "This ain't so bad; Three squares and free room and board." The thought occurred to me at that point that there are some for whom prison is a more comfortable place than the reality of their impoverished reality.
For some reason, I had brown shoe strings in my tennis shoes. One night while I was asleep my shoestrings were stolen from under my bed. Everything was a potential commodity in prison and shoestrings were no different. The inmates would make crosses out of them to barter with and brown shoestrings were in such short supply that they were in big demand so thus the market value was higher.
I made friends in prison, three of those I grew closest too, had just been released from "Down In The Hole." They were all model prisoners who were given permission to serve as waiters at a dinner for Governor Hunt. Seems they helped themselves to the alcoholic spirits they were serving and the coalition experiment between state government and the inmate population went terribly wrong.
While they were in for selling drugs and burglary, the prisoners at Triangle were not all relatively short term stays. The man in the bunk across from me seemed to have a gift for making his bunk bed in a most admirable fashion. I thought this rather odd since mine looked quite pitiful. When I asked one of my friends why his bed looked so well manicured, he stated that he had been imprisoned for 20 years. Well he was a rather friendly older man, but it seems he had murdered his wife by pouring gas on her and setting her on fire.
"Workin For A Livin" When I was at the prison in Butner, I was able to work and earn money to buy certain things at the canteen. I do not exactly remember my daily salary, perhaps $1.65, but I do remember the job. I was asked to clean the bathrooms in the Geriatric Ward at the State Mental Health Hospital in Butner and in all honesty I must say the patients often missed the mark.
Little did I realize that only a few months would pass after my release from prison in Butner that I would be a patient at the very same Mental Health Facility I had previously visited during my work release. I had what psychologists call "A Psychotic Break" while living with my parents on Victoria Drive in Hope Valley Farms.
I had always questioned God as to why he allowed me to suffer such a tragic childhood trauma. I was raised in a Fundamentalist Free Will Baptist Church where I was taught and read of the healing power of prayer and I honestly believed that miracles were possible. I still do. As a child however, time and time again I would go into our bathroom on Mason Drive in Bethesda, cover my eye and ask Father God to restore the vision in my right eye and make it just a beautiful as my left.
When I had my psychotic episode, I noticed a conflict arising between "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Phantom of My Opera". Having studied Accounting at NCSU, I was very good with numbers. My interpretations of the numbers however were caught somewhere between the daylight and the dawn.
As I had often done, as I was reading my Bible I what I perceived a spiritual insight into numerology. I saw KJV, NIV, AAA, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ABC, NYC, RDU, BBB, AOL, ATM, ETF, ADT, CPI, etc. This led me to a numerical quest for the of Wall Street, and I found The American Stock Exchange, The New York Stock Exchange and ticker symbols like AIG, MMM, BOA, AAL, AEG, SUN, STI, AXP, JPM, CCF, JCP, ICE.
I had served a stint as an Information Technology auditor at CCB and studied to be a Certified Microsoft Systems Engineer at Durham Technical and suddenly I saw the World Wide Web, and .com, .org, net, .gov and .edu. What had a uncovered. A plot to hijack a Holy Number. For me, it was obviously the number of the Holy Trinity or Three. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I then turned to sports where I found a Hat Trick, a Triple Play, a Three Pointer, A Field Goal, and A Trifecta. I turned to music where I found the Major Chords and I found the Middle C, which is where the music begins and never ends. And I noticed that the C note was the also the third letter of the alphabet . But was C Christ or Christine, The Angel of Music or both.
Then I found the number of completion...Seven...and I noticed that the Seventh letter of the alphabet was G. So I had uncovered a perfect number...10...which was a combination of the God and Christ. This discovery led me to the realization that the Binary Math I had studied at Durham Tech while an invaluable asset for international commerce and trade was incomplete.
While the World Wide Web (WWW) or Internet, did significantly expedite the flow of information and accumulation of wealth internationally, computer code was only binary and that is not how the story ends. The "Prime" number is tertiary. It is the first three prime numbers 2, 3, and 5. The second prime number being three is Hope or Christ. The third prime number being five is also the fifth letter of the English alphabet which is G or God. In Tertiary Math or Triune Math the Perfect number is again 10.
Sorry I have to take a "Byte" out of the old Apple all you computer geeks, but Eight is not a prime number. With all due respect Mr. Kahn, I know a Three Letter Acronymn (TLA) when I see one, and while you were just Taking Care of Business (TCB)with you Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or Internet. You were only off by one number but unfortunately it will soon become the most important TLA for the entire world and I am not ready to reveal it.
I studied the origins and history of the Greek, Hebrew, Latin and English alphabets. My research is well documented in my book "The Angel of Music." However I can tell you that mankind has forever sought to rebuild The Tower of Babel. That was and will not ever happen. In the Beginning was the Word. And the Word Was God (Jehovah, Adonai, Elohim) and the Word was with God. (Jesus Christ). It was God who was and will always be the Alpha and Omega. The Beginning and the end. Man was never going to to able the take the last letter of the alphabet "W " seize it for commercial gain, and make it the "A" Appel of mankind. I have done my homework. I have applied the "Prime" numbers to the alphabets and they are as option traders would say "Spot On." I have discovered the G-Spot of mankind, and it is not money, nor sex, nor drugs nor any other earthly pleasure. It is Eternal Love. This world has brought me to my knees and I have lanquished in a labyrinth of depression and despair but I am "Back on My Feet Again." (Thank you Michael Bolton)
In my first book "The Angel of Music", I will have much more to say about my past, present and future , but for now I must return to this first blog post. Before I do however I would like to introduce you to a Dear Friend of mine. His name is John Nash. There is just something about that name which warms my heart and soul. Here is his Nobel prize acceptance speech from the movie "A Brilliant Mind" starring Russell Crowe. Many thanks Mr. Crowe.
To: The Bride "Christine"
From: The Angel of Music
"I've always believed in numbers, and the equations, and logics that leads to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask: What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me from the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career; the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of Love that any logical reasons can be found. I'm only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons."
