Harold and Nate Against Hate

There are events in history so extraordinary that they mark time. Most people who live through one of these events can tell you how old they were, where they were, and exactly what they were doing when they first heard the news. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kennedy’s assassination, and the attack on the World Trade Center are a few such events in recent times. There are also events in individual’s lives that mark time for them. Some of these are good and some are bad; generally they are all life changing. Such was January 12, 1990, for my family. It was a Friday and began as any other normal Friday that time of year. Our five kids were all off to school; my wife and I were off to work. We were all to hurry home for a quick supper so we could get to our local high school basketball game before all the good seats were gone. My oldest daughter, a high school sophomore, had plans to stay over night with a girl friend. Nate, our oldest son, had arranged to have his best friend stay over at our house and go rabbit hunting the next day. Eric was the starting point guard, and Nate the starting shooting guard on their eighth grade basketball team. Both of them held promise for the high school team in a couple of years.

We arrived home after the game about 10:00 PM and began our normal routines. My twin sons, fifth graders, went for the Nintendo game. My youngest daughter, a seventh grader, got on the telephone. My wife went to the kitchen to fix some snacks, and I flipped on the TV to watch the news. Nate took Eric upstairs to his room to put away his overnight stuff. In a few minutes, Nate and Eric came bounding down the stairs ready to devour anything my wife had fixed. But first, Eric’s shot gun needed to be put in our gun cabinet with our other guns for safe keeping. Eric proudly took his single shot .410 gauge shot gun out of its case to show Nate. His grandfather had given it to him for Christmas. Nate called me over to see it. Eric handed it to me, broken down, just like he had learned in hunter safety class. A big smile came across his face when I admiringly said it was much nicer than the one I had learned to hunt with.

I handed Nate the key to the gun cabinet and told the boys to put Eric’s gun in and lock it up for the night. They went into my study, and I went back to the couch in the living room. A few minutes later a loud pop came from my study, followed a few seconds later by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor. I was airborne in a second. I made it to my study in three steps. As I reached for the door, it opened by itself. Eric was coming out. The shocked look on his face told me more than I wanted to know. He was holding my .22 caliber automatic pistol in his right hand. “It went off when I took hold of it. At first I thought it missed.” I took the gun from his hand, put my hands on his shoulders, pulled him through the door, and said, “It’s going to be all right. Go sit down.” I saw Nate on the floor in a heap between the wall and the gun cabinet. Rushing over to him, I straightened him out and saw a large stream of blood pouring out of the left side of his head halfway between his ear and his temple. I went weak and couldn’t breathe. Knowing I had to be strong, I sucked in a deep breath and yelled for my wife to call 911. While the number was ringing, she asked, “How bad is it?”  I answered, “Really bad.” Steve, one of the twins, came in to see what he could do. The blood was quickly forming a puddle around Nate’s head. He left and brought a towel back in to put under Nate’s head. Then he went and stood guard at the door and wouldn’t let anyone else in. He told them not to go in because they would never forget the sight for the rest of their lives.

Though it seemed like forever, the EMTs arrived in about 20 minutes. They attended to Nate, then moved him out to the ambulance and called Life Flight. Because it was night time and the wind was gusting to over 40 miles per hour, Life Flight couldn’t land. The ambulance then drove Nate to Saint Ann’s Hospital in nearby Westerville, OH.

We wouldn’t know for several days whether Nate would survive. Later, we found out that  few, if any, of the health care providers who attended him thought he would make it. However, he made a marvelous, nearly unbelievable, recovery.  Nate was in a coma for four weeks, in the hospital for three months, and in out-patient rehabilitation for three and a half years.

This story is not about Nate and his accident. Rather it is about his recovery and a man named Harold Woodford. A couple of weeks after Nate came out of the coma, he was transferred to the Dodd Hall Rehabilitation Center at Ohio State University Hospital.

Nate’s rehab was extensive. He had to learn to walk, to talk, to count, and the names of objects as simple as a book or a cup, as well as people’s names. We started by teaching him how to say his mother’s name. In short, it was like teaching a year and a half old child. Our constant questions to the doctors were, “How much will he regain?” and “How long will it take?”  The answer was always, “We don’t know. Every brain injury is different.”

One evening, shortly after Nate had been moved to Dodd Hall, a middle aged black man came to the door of Nate’s room and introduced himself as Harold Woodford. He said that he had met my brother and sister-in-law while they were serving meals for homeless people at a soup kitchen in downtown Columbus. They had told him about Nate’s accident, and he wanted to come by to see if he could be of help. He explained that when he was in the Army he had been injured in a similar way and hoped he could help Nathan with his recovery.  Harold wore dark-tinted glasses, so at first you didn’t notice he was blind in his left eye. But, as you looked closer at his face, you could see that he had no left eye at all. His left eye socket was deformed, and scars ran back the side of his head. Being that we needed all the help we could get, we received him with open arms and rejoiced that we finally had somebody who could tell us something about what we were about to go through.

Harold quickly became Nate’s buddy. He would come three or four times a week, usually staying for several hours at a time. He would help Nate walk down the hall, and practice with him saying words and names of people and objects. He helped Nate learn to count to ten, and every night he would end by playing Nate several games of checkers. Much to Nate’s delight, Harold always managed to lose even though Nate couldn’t always remember which way to move the checkers.

Harold soon endeared himself to our whole family. We marveled how this black man from the city was willing to give so much time to this white kid from the country. As our relationship matured, I finally felt comfortable enough to ask him how he was injured. I sat in stunned silence as he told me the story, angered by what I was hearing.

He had been minding his own business walking with a black friend over to another friend’s house to take a girl home. A white man was on the other side of the street trying to thumb down a ride when a car with three white men stopped. Two of the guys got out and started shouting obscenities and racial slurs at Harold and his friend. Fearing there was going to be a fight, his friend pulled a wooden stake out of the ground and told them to get back in the car and leave. One of the guys from the car pulled out a gun and started firing. A bullet struck Harold in his left eye and exited out the side of his head. He spent nearly five months in the hospital, not knowing whether he would live or die. Finally, after several surgeries, he was released, barely able to walk by himself, unable to talk, and unable to work.

Harold spent the next seventeen years bouncing around living with one family member then another. He was not contributing much, if anything, to life. He began drinking heavily, running around with women, and partying as much as he could. He bought into what the world said would bring happiness and fulfillment---hook, line, and sinker. After all, he deserved to have some fun since life had dealt him such a tough hand. The problem was that he was neither happy nor fulfilled. He was just getting more depressed. One one-night stand wasn’t any different than any another. The parties were all the same. As he neared his fortieth birthday, he realized he had nothing to show for his life. His life had no meaning.

His sister sensed that his depression was deepening and started asking him to go to church with her. Finally, with reservation, he agreed to go and found it wasn’t as bad as he had thought. There were some people who showed a genuine interest in him. He soon was attending regularly and began listening to what was being taught. He began to read the Bible and came across Matthew chapter 18 where Jesus told a story about a king who forgave a servant an enormously large debt. However, that servant went out and refused to forgive a fellow servant even a very small debt, instead having him beaten and thrown into prison. He also noticed the people at church had a joy that lasted, unlike the people he had been hanging out with. Eventually he accepted Jesus as his Savior. He found new interest and meaning in his life through serving others. Drinking and wild parties were no longer fun. He realized he had been using women as sex objects rather than treating them as people, so he destroyed all his porno movies and magazines. He quit indulging in self pity and realized he could make a positive difference in people’s lives.

After listening to his story I was angered by the act of racism that nearly took his life. I wondered if I could forgive someone who had purposely caused me life-long suffering by taking one of my eyes and leaving me with brain damage and a scarred face. With so much hatred and racism already in our society, it would have been easy for Harold to hate the men and their race for what they had done. I asked him how he could come and help a white boy and his family after he had suffered such a wrong. He explained that pain knows no race. Forgiveness is a choice. Jesus forgave him of all the wrong he had done to others, and Jesus gives him the strength to forgive those who have wronged him.

Harold could have lived in self pity, hating the world for the unfairness dealt him. He could have focused his anger and pain against the “white people” and blamed the whole race. Most people on both sides of racism do just that for far less reasons.  But, he realized that bitterness, hatred, and self pity wouldn’t do anything to the man who had shot him. It was, however, destroying his own life.

Nathan spent 3 and a half years in rehabilitation. He was tutored individually, put in Special Ed. classes, and attended summer school for three consecutive years while trying to catch up with his class. In early June 1994, he graduated with his class from Big Walnut High School in Sunbury, OH. As his name was called to receive his diploma, the principal paused and acknowledged his tremendous effort and amazing recovery from his accident. The crowd joined in with a thunderous ovation. At Nate’s graduation party where friends, neighbors, and relatives gathered to celebrate, one person stood out among all others. Harold was the only black person in a crowd of nearly two hundred.

Today, Nathan still lives in Sunbury, OH, with his wife Meggan and daughters Ava and Anna. Harold lives in Columbus and is still making a difference. Every Sunday morning, you will find him in church teaching an adult Bible School class, among other things.

Harold is living proof of the power of Christ to bring positive change in a person’s life.

Several Scriptures come to mind when I think of Harold:

Romans 8:28

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him,”

II Corinthians 5:17ff

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Colossians 1:26 &27

“— the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”