Everyday Hero #14

 September 27, 2022

Sucking in his ample belly and squaring his shoulders, he stood toe to toe, his nearly 300 lbs towering over me as he quietly warned, “You don’t try to convert me, and I won’t try to convert you.” His name was Dick Travis, and was my new boss. 

Linda was pregnant with our soon-to-be firstborn, but was having complications. She was a caseworker for Allegany County, and on the road four days each week visiting clients. Her doctor told her, “It’s either your job or the baby,” so she turned in her resignation. Just before doing so, on her way to work, she stopped in to the Minute Man gas station to fill up. As Dick waited on her (they did that back then), he noticed she was crying and asked what was wrong. She spilled everything, including the fact that my job as pastor didn’t pay enough to live on, and we didn’t know what we were going to do.

“Have Jim come in,” Dick said, and when I did, he tore up an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with dozens of names of young men waiting for part time work, and gave me 40 hours per week.

Dick was a hard-living, hard-cussing, hard-drinking, woman-chasing man with a big heart for the underdog. In spite of all that, he hired me, and when Nathan was born in the middle of the Flood of ‘72, he found a way from his home in Friendship, snaking through back roads, dodging boulders dislodged by the torrential rain, to our home in Alma, some 22 miles away. He insisted we take his big Buick Wildcat to the hospital in Olean because it was heavier and more likely to endure a washout. We made it, with roads closing right behind us, and finally having to park it while they took Linda across flooded roads in Portville in an Army Duck. I made my way later, and spent the next few days sandbagging by day and sleeping on a two-person love seat in the hospital at night.

Dick would help out anyone in need, and stood by us when we had nowhere else to turn. I buried his newborn daughter, and worked for him for a couple years before getting a caseworker’s job at the county. After some time there, I went to Chicago for seminary. Four years later, his wife Mabel somehow managed to get my phone number. “Dick is in Olean General, dying of cancer. Will you come?” I did, and in those final days of his earthly life, I finally got the best of him. He never converted me, but I had the privilege of praying with him to receive Christ before he died. All the years I worked for him, he didn’t know Jesus and didn’t want to hear me speak about him, but Dick was, and still remains, one of my Everyday Heroes. And maybe…just maybe, I’ll be one of his.