Coming Home

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
—Isaiah 30:21 (NIV)

God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails.
—Saint Augustine

My son! My son’s home!” Dad called out. He was watching for me from the window, and spotted me as I walked up the driveway of our house at 222 Bower Hill Road in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The entire family gathered at the door to welcome me home. What a joy to be together again! I enjoyed the luxury of Mom’s home cooking—the first real food I’d had in almost two years—and catching up on the latest family news.

America itself seemed new, and the options for my own future were endless. Happily, there was still time to register for the fall semester at the University of Indiana. My brother Waller, who had been so much fun to be with in 1951, had graduated, and I was on my own. I had no problem fitting back in, but campus life had lost its sparkle. And even though the GI Bill covered my tuition, finances were still tight.

Moving home to attend the University of Pittsburgh seemed like the best alternative. Dad said that while he couldn’t help me much financially, I was certainly welcome to live at home. The decision was not a hard one. I enrolled in business administration at “Pitt” for the spring semester of 1954. The following year, in addition to a full load of evening classes, I added a full-time job as an officer in the real estate department of Fidelity Trust Company. On Sundays, I attended the United Presbyterian Church with my family.

It was a busy schedule, yet compared to war, student life in middle America in the 1950s seemed bland and mundane to me. Inwardly, I was longing for something . . . or was it someone?

One summer day, just before I started my senior year, my brother-in-law’s sister, Lois, was visiting our house, and half jokingly I said to her, “I want to meet a redhead. Do you know any?” I have no idea why I made such a bold request of someone I hardly knew. Yet to my surprise, Lois said she had just the girl for me—an attractive, vivacious redhead who lived across town, a 22-year-old schoolteacher named Peggy Close.

The only problem was that Peggy already had a boyfriend. Lois was persuasive, however, and Peggy agreed to join me at a popular local spot. Tucked into a small booth, we talked the evening away. Peggy fascinated me, and we seemed to have a lot in common. She also had attended Pitt and had just graduated with her B.S. degree in education.

We walked together outside in the warm summer evening, and I decided to ask Peggy a question that at the time was radical: “If you died tonight, how would you know if you’d go to Heaven?”

To Peggy, a faithful member of the First Presbyterian Church in Wilkinsburg, the question seemed strangely direct. “If my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds, then I’ll go to Heaven,” she replied matter-of-factly. As we walked, I shared my experience of how I had come to know Christ personally. Peggy was impressed that I could actually quote Bible verses and that I talked about prayer as if it were more than just a ritual. Most of all, she was struck with the assurance that I had from God about my personal salvation.

Before we parted, I asked Peggy to go out with me again the following night. She politely declined, telling me that she already had a date. When I suggested that she just cancel it, she mumbled something about owing him more than that. Somehow, though, I went home that night with an exciting sense that Peggy would become an important part of my future.

The next morning, Peggy phoned her girlfriend Barbara Bruckman and said, “I’m going to marry Ted Fletcher someday.” That night, she informed her boyfriend, Chip Harner, that their relationship was over.

It would be a while before I knew the private longing that Peggy had carried for years—to marry a Christian man who would help to establish a Christian home.

Peggy’s invitation that I join her family for a Labor Day picnic that Monday caught me by surprise. I readily accepted, of course, and was introduced to the Close family: her parents, Malcolm and Frances; her sister, Dorothea, who was 12 years older than Peggy, and her brother Tom, who had fought in General Patton’s army in World War II. I later met Peggy’s other brother, Bobby, who was a colonel in the Army and had also served with Patton.

Peggy’s father had dropped out of school after the third grade, yet became manager of industrial relations (what we would call human resources today) at Mine Safety Appliance Company in Pittsburgh. His engaging personality and love for people made him a popular and much-loved man among the company’s 3,000 employees. Everyone knew “Red” Close. Her mother was a warm-hearted, kind woman, whose life was wrapped up in family and home responsibilities.

Despite the fact that her parents were not churchgoers, Peggy was baptized in the local Presbyterian church not long after birth. On Sundays, her Mom would dress the children and send them off to church. Eventually, the kids started attending a Methodist church where the minister spoke about the need for a personal experience of salvation.

Her aunts, Margaret and Edna Close, influenced her greatly. A special bond existed between these two sisters—unmarried schoolteachers who lived together and attended church together. To Peggy, their devotion to God seemed unusual; they not only read their Bibles faithfully, but they even got on their knees to pray!

One day during Peggy’s elementary school years, her aunts introduced her to a missionary friend, Eva Harding, who was home on furlough from India. Her silk sari and exotic tales from a far-off land enthralled Peggy. Peggy met Miss Harding a number of times while she was growing up. On the last occasion, the elderly missionary said she was returning to India and might never come back to America again. What commitment, Peggy thought, and began dreaming about the possibility of some day becoming a missionary herself.

When the Close family moved to another part of Pittsburgh, Peggy joined her new friends at the local Presbyterian church, and by the time she reached high school, most of her free time was swallowed up in church activities and weekly youth meetings. A yearly highlight was the Westminster Fellowship Youth Conference, held each summer at Grove City College. There, Peggy renewed her devotion to God at campfire dedication services.

During her senior year in high school, Peggy began dating Wayne McCoy. Single and in his first year at seminary, Wayne was the new associate pastor at the other Presbyterian church in town. Wayne encouraged Peggy spiritually, and in the fall of 1951, she enrolled in the College of Wooster, a prestigious Presbyterian school in Wooster, Ohio, to pursue a major in religious education. A year later, she transferred to the University of Pittsburgh to major in education. The Heinz Chapel, a landmark on campus that symbolized the spiritual roots of the university, was home to a well-known choir of 50 of the finest voices on campus. Peggy had a beautiful voice and loved music, so she auditioned and was invited to join the renowned group.

Sundays soon became her busiest day of the week. In the mornings, she would sing around the city in churches that needed vocalists to supplement their own choirs. The five dollars she received helped to cover her weekly streetcar commute to and from school. Later in the day, the Heinz Chapel Choir sang sacred music at the KDKA-TV studio, which was televised on the local station in Pittsburgh. Peggy also sang at the Choir’s afternoon service at Heinz Chapel, and during spring break she joined the Choir on tour throughout the eastern U.S.

She also joined the Delta Zeta sorority, which at the University of Pittsburgh was noted for its scholastic achievement. Outgoing and popular, Peggy kept a full social calendar. When I met her a few months after graduation, I was convinced the Lord had been saving her just for me.

I remember how excited I was to take Peggy home to meet my parents for the first time. Mom had already gone to bed by the time we arrived, but she came downstairs to meet the young woman she had been hearing so much about. Mom and Dad both loved Peggy and treated her as a daughter from that day forward.

Over the next few months, we dated regularly. I never seemed to mind the 45-minute drive across town from my house to hers. Increasingly, I knew that Peggy was the one with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

On Christmas Eve, I gave Peggy a diamond ring, and two months later, on March 1, 1956, we were married at the United Presbyterian Church in Mount Lebanon. We honeymooned (on borrowed cash from my sister Martha) at a little resort hotel in Somerset, Pennsylvania, just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Since Peggy was on spring break from her first teaching assignment, we hurried back to settle into our efficiency apartment at Amberson Gardens. Life seemed grand in those days, and I knew first-hand the truth of Proverbs 18:22: “A man’s greatest treasure is his wife—she is a gift from the Lord” (CEV).