Steve's Journey

Over the years at Lockheed Martin I worked under numerous supervisors. Only one would engage me in spiritual discussions. Actually, they were quite one-sided because he was long-winded. He was basically a humanist but seemed to be intrigued with what people believed, and he would spend an hour or more (on company time) waxing spiritual on several occasions. He was my boss, so I figured the job paid the same whether I was working or listening. A co-worker, who was an atheist, would hiss and boo whenever he walked by my boss's door if he heard us talking religion.

His greatest argument was the lack of real evidence to prove God or that Jesus actually came from heaven. My response was a modified version of Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher from the 17th century theorized that we had nothing to lose by believing in God because, even if, in the end, there was no God, we would still have lead a fulfilling life of peace and contentment by following His teachings of doing good.

I told my boss that if I believed and, in the end, there was no God, then I would have lived a life of goodness, love and peacefulness by believing in Him (Pascal's Wager). However, I said, if he did not believe, and it turned out that there was a God, then there would be hell to pay --- for eternity. His only reply was, "You may be right." We never talked again of spiritual things, and I was able to get more work done.

After being at Martin for seven years, the family and I decided to take a real vacation. Our goal was to head for Mechanicville, New York, just outside of Albany, on the Hudson river. This was the little town where Lois grew up. It was an opportunity for me to meet more of her side of the family --- all Italians.

Part of the travel took us along the Blue Ridge parkway in the Appalachian mountain chain. We had taken a couple of short trips to that area previously, staying in a cabin provided for us by Dr. D (previous blog) and thoroughly enjoyed it. But this time Lois and I were smitten with the beauty of the mountains and the refreshing weather. Following our trip we began to plot how we could actually live in the mountains.

This meant moving away from both sets of parents (my parents had actually moved to Orlando to be near us --- just around the corner). So we had to do some serious rationalizing in order to pull it off. What started the ball rolling was a comment from a fellow worker at Lockheed Martin when I was relating our vacation experiences. He said that another company, Raytheon, was sharing a major missile project with Martin and happened to have a manufacturing plant in the mountains in Bristol, Tennessee.

Reasons for moving started to flow. We were in a high crime area. The public school system was less than desirable. Private school costs were excessive. The hot weather was oppressive. And --- we just really wanted to go. I contacted Raytheon, flew up for an interview and, one month later, got the job.

We never consulted the children. That was a big mistake. We may have prayed about it, but it would have been one of those prayers where your mind manufactures God's blessing and encouragement to go.

Other than our parents we didn't tell anyone until we were sure I had gotten the job. The notice was too short for the Chapel to give us a going-away party. I flew up to Bristol and began my new job a few weeks ahead of moving my family there.

Dr. D jokingly told us that we had "sand" in our shoes. That meant that we had Florida in our blood and would definitely move back some time over the next few months or years. It's been 25 years now. No sand.

The first order of business after finding a place to rent was finding a church.