The Worst Phone Call Of My Life

http://coldfusion-guy.blogspot.com/2009/11/marine-cpl-david-kenneth-j-k…

I dated Patty (his Mother) briefly in High School

http://projects.militarytimes.com/valor/soldier/1013373/

Below is FB post from earlier this week

Son of Rev Allen Dunckley / Grandson of Rev Bob Biscoe.

http://coldfusion-guy.blogspot.com/search?q=Dunckley

A peer of my son (who turns 31 tomorrow). My son Roger and Allen played together at camp when I was at a FFBC conference.

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Update. Rev Dunckley’s tribute page for his son

http://www.fundamentalapologetics.org/page3.html

I’ve had the mixed misfortune and blessing to make three similar calls in my lifetime.

God must have something planned for me, because each time He has kept me from what should have been my crippling or death.

The first occurred when I was only in my early teens. A friend was driving my siblings and I home after a church youth gathering on a Sunday night. We came up to the light at a busy intersection in the little compact car and proceeded through the green light, only to be met mid-way through the light by an elderly man in a large SUV (some company’s version of the Suburban) in what was almost a head-on collision. He said he has mistaken the green light for continuing straight for the turn arrow to cross traffic.
I was spared in two ways.
First, the family that owned the vehicle are all short, and I was about six foot at that point. I normally didn’t move the seat around in someone else’s car, but I asked to that night. The dash board was entirely shattered, and if I hadn’t moved the seat back my knees would have been equally shattered.
Secondly (though more importantly), at the very last moment the driver of our vehicle had hit the brakes. The police said that if the SUV had hit us any harder or an inch farther over, the engine would have ended up in my lap from being pushed at an angle into the car by the impact of the turning SUV. The strange thing about it is that I remember the details of the accident very clearly, but my memory contradicts everyone else. All of the other people in the car insist that they heard me tell the driver to look out, and that’s why she put on the brakes. I never said a word. I try my best not to be a sensationalist, but I fully believe that there was an angel there with us that night, and that he spoke the words for me, so that I could make it out of the wreck with not a single scratch.

The second occurred while I was a senior in college at BJU and was a manager for a pizza delivery place. I was delivering a pizza after a rain storm and my car hit a pothole, causing me to hydroplane. My car did one and a half spins before hitting a telephone pole and sliding into a ditch.
For losing control at about 50 miles and hour and spinning like that, there was remarkably little damage. The car was totaled (the frame was bent), but my dad was still able to drive it home that night.
The miracle in that case was that my car came to a stop in exactly the right place to prevent me from serious harm. That telephone pole stopped me just short of running into the gas main for another local university.

The third time technically happened between the first and second, but it was by far the most miraculous.
I was a shift manager for Burger King running the Saturday night shift. It had been a long and slow night, and it was the first time for one of my employees to close the store, so we let her go a little early. The assistant manager had stuck around to fill in, though she let me run things for the night.
We both decided that it would be better to do the paperwork and then clean, so we were both in the office counting the money and taking care of the manager work when I heard the door on the far side of the kitchen open. I looked up to see two men wearing hoodies, masks, gloves, and carrying semi-automatic pistols running through the kitchen to the office. I was standing directly in the office door when the two men stopped about six feet away from me and pointed their guns. They said something that sounded to me like to put my hands up (the police said that no one is that stupid.
That’s when I did the most stupid thing I have ever done in my life. I slammed the office door in their faces. It was the worst possible choice, both from the standpoint of rules and just practically. The door was made out of cheap plywood and the window in it (through which I was easily visible) was cheap plastic that frequently fell out when the door was closed too hard. It would have taken practically no effort to open that door, and I didn’t even have the presence of mind to hide. I simply stood there, with over a thousand dollars sitting in the open on the desk next to me.
Then came the miracle. The two men simply looked at each other, and one said “let’s go.” They turned and ran back out of the front of the door and were gone. When the police arrived, they were utterly confused at the actions of the robbers, since it made no sense. All I know is that God kept them from deciding to shoot me.

Through all of those the presence of mind and the calmness of my father really made an impression on me. When I came apart in the emotion of the moment from al of them, he was there to help me pull it back together.

“Remarkable” and “amazing” seem like lame words, but I can’t seem to come up with better ones. Thanks for sharing these experiences.

As a police chaplain, I have been on the notifying numerous times. It is our practice to do it in person, in pairs, with professionalism and kindness. I normally stay with the family until they have a good support network settled in place. We are almost always thanked that we did the notification in person and not by phone