Justin Reeves overcomes an incredible disability. When he accomplishes what he wanted his whole life, Justin reaches out to his family in a special way on Christmas Day. His gift impacts them all for a lifetime.
Excerpt
It was 1957 when I saw something that I wasn’t meant to see. I have never forgotten this night because it had such an impact on me. I was only seven years old, and what I saw my father doing confused me. Finally, I had enough courage to ask my mother about it. After she explained everything to me, I was shocked and saddened.
What happened after I learned my father’s greatest secret was extraordinary to our family. When my father, Justin L. Reeves, decided to conquer an overwhelming disability in life, he was fifty-four years old. He gave our family an incredible gift to last a lifetime because of what he accomplished at this age.
My name is Debra Reeves Cunningham, and I’m fifty-three years old. It’s not hard to take you back to the beginning when I was seven and my life was good and simple in 1957. We lived on a farm with eighty acres outside of Findlay, Ohio. My petite mother, Lucille, worked hard doing whatever needed to be done on the farm. She was a big help to my dad when it came to dairy chores. With no milking machines, they milked seven cows by hand in the morning and again in the evening.
My siblings didn’t help with this time-consuming job. My oldest sister, Gail, was twenty-five and lived at home, but not by her choice. Whenever she mentioned moving to an apartment, our mother insisted that wouldn’t be proper for a single woman. Gail worked as a secretary at the impressive Ohio Oil Company in Findlay. She always dressed in pretty clothes and went out on dates all the time.
My brother, Carl, at the age of twenty-one was in the Army and he hated it. He wrote me the best letters, and just the past summer, we all traveled in our blue Mercury car to visit him in North Carolina.
Next in the family was my fourteen-year-old sister, Kathy. We shared a bedroom, and she never complained about sharing a room with a younger sister. She only worried about not being able to dance. From the time she was a small child, she wanted to be a dancer. She watched all the Shirley Temple movies and practiced on the kitchen linoleum floor. I was told how her dancing entertained me when I was a fussy baby with teething pain.
A short time after Kathy celebrated her seventh birthday, she was stricken with polio. She wore a brace on her left leg because the polio had weakened these muscles. Dancing was no longer a realistic dream for Kathy.
It’s time to take you back to the night when what I saw made me question everything. From my siblings, I learned sometimes we see only what we want to see, and only face the truth when we can no longer deny it. I remember everything about that time so clearly. In my mind I see my bare feet softly walking down twenty-two steps. I remember how I enjoyed counting the steps and jumping off the last one. It drove Gail crazy whenever she was in a hurry and behind me. “Why do you have to count these stupid steps all the time?”
“I like to count them. I always get twenty-two.”
And so on this particular night I counted them again. With no light on to guide my footsteps, I didn’t want to fall in the dark. I skipped the jump off the last step so I wouldn’t wake my sleeping parents. With a racing heart I slowly opened the stairway door and hoped it wouldn’t make a sound.
Read more about The Christmas of 1957 and Diane Craver HERE.
Copyright 2008 Diane Craver. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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