DANNY BOY

"Brother John", he said to me while we were at a small coffee place on the end of Dean Street in Brooklyn, NY.

He snuffed out his Camel cigarette and with trembling hands wanted to tell me that he had started drinking again.  His Irish face was swollen from his tears all the night, and he looked deep into my eyes with such sadness I had to hear him out.

Danny had been a successful businessman for many years up in Harford owning an insurance company; his wife learned she had incurable cancer.  After she passed away, Danny began to drink; not with his usual Irish friends at the local pub, but drank until he would fall down drunk.  His Irish friends warned him that if he kept drinking like that, he would loss his entire business...he did.

He finally moved to the Bowery in NYC and would wait for his social security check, cash it, and buy the cheapest wine he could....he was a Bowery Bum.

About the same time, EBI from Lima, NY had opened a store front on 11th Street on the Lower East Side, a few block from the Bowery.  It was called "The Cave".  We would drive over there every night during the week and open it's doors and light candles on each of the round tables, and prepare coffee, tea and English Muffins for anyone who came in off the street to sit down with one of us and we would try to tell them about our Christian faith.

One cold winter night that man came in from the Bowery and sat down...he was another alcoholic from the Bowery.  One of the female students sat down with and as she chatted with him, she finally asked him, "Danny, have you ever considered just receiving Jesus Christ into your heart?  You have told me all about your pain and anger concerning the death of your wife, and how you finally arrived down here on the Bowery."

Later Danny would explain to others, "I really don't know what happened there, but something happened deep down inside me...I could not stop crying as for the first time in my whole life, I did what she asked me to do, I silently asked for Jesus Christ to come into my heart...and He did!  All that pent up anger and grief just started to be released...oh it felt so good to finally find some relief from those terrible feelings".

Danny had so impressed us there that night that we decided to put him into our Ford van and take him home with us where we lived in Brooklyn.  After a few days there we found out that Danny was a great cook, so he started taking over our small kitchen.  He could cook almost anything, and his attitude was awesome;  laughing and smiling and joking with all of us.  He even knew a place in the Bronx where most of the produce was delivered with truck after truck hauling in the best fruit, vegies, and stacking their large crates on the docks where workers would work their way taking the best and leaving a lot of pretty good residue to be picked up by people who would need it for their charitable work.  So soon he and a couple of make students would drive up there once every week, early in the morning and come back home with the van loaded down with so much that even those who lived up and down the street would be waiting for us to also leave out what we couldn't use.

One of our female staff was in charge of the female students...her name, Connie Stillman...not very good looking because she never wore any make up.  But what a worker; she had grown up in Florida where her parents were poor and she started helping out as soon as she was old enough.  So when I became Director of City Challenge, I had asked her to join me and to watch over the female students.  She worked along side with Danny in our kitchen and really enjoyed working with each other...and I mean really enjoyed each other's company and finally asked me if I would marry them...and I did.

The newlyweds often attended Thursday evening worship services at Teen Challenge which was about7 blocks away from us;  a real big home where heroine addicts were taken in and their healing was spiritual...I would speak there once a month, but Danny and Connie went one evening when it started pouring rain.  They ran most of the way home, singing and praising God and so much in love they just didn't care about the rain.

But as I mentioned earlier; there came that morning when Danny confessed to me that he had started drinking again.  "What are you going to do Danny?" I asked him.  He said that Connie thought they should go back home to where she was from, Florida.  They did.

I called every week and after about three months Connie told me that Danny had passed away.  I hung up the phone and started to cry, but not for too long.  I don't know how he will be judged by our heavenly Father, but if I would forgive Danny for his sliding back into alcohol, how much more our heavenly Father would forgive him.

Connie went on to remarry a real handsome pastor...and after he passed away, she remarried for the third time...another pastor.  I'm positive that she continued to serve the Lord and her husbands with the same love and hard work which made her so dear to me...and to all who remember her.