Something to Live For

Something to Live For

A True Love Story

by Art Heyman

6: The Captain and the Private

Click here to read BJ’s Story: An Unlikely Love Story

Click here to download an epub version of Art’s or BJ’s Story

As the heavy metal door clanged shut, I thought I could literally feel the life being drained from my body. A short time earlier I had been arrested, booked, photographed and fingerprinted. A justice of the peace had set bail at $3,300. Sitting in a county-jail holding cell, all my hopes and dreams for the future felt like they were slipping away. In the state of Texas where I had been arrested, the jail sentence for possession could be anywhere from two years to life. I was so numb I could hardly imagine what was going to happen next. All I could think about was “How did I get here?”

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Chapter One: Growing Up

When I was around eight or nine years old, I saw a painting of Jesus on the bedroom wall of my next-door neighbor. Even at that early age, I knew something was missing from my life. My neighbor was Catholic. His family left Cuba for a new life in the United States. He lived with his mother and little sister in the side-by-side duplex next to the upstairs apartment my family rented. His parents were divorced. My childhood imagination pictured him looking at that painting of Jesus whenever he needed a father figure to look up to. I could relate to that all too well.

Later that day I asked my mother why we didn’t have a painting of Jesus in our house. “The answer is simple,” she told me, “we’re Jewish! You see the difference between the Jews and the Gentiles is that the Gentiles believe that Jesus is the Messiah, while we Jews are still waiting.” Not much of an explanation, but enough to satisfy the curiosity of a young child.

Although my mother sent us to Hebrew School and synagogue services, for the most part I grew up like any normal kid in the 1950’s. Temple Zamora was about halfway between our elementary school and home. Three days a week after regular school was over my sister Julie and I went for Hebrew lessons. We learned the Hebrew alphabet and how to pronounce the words, but we never learned what any of it meant. Temple services were conducted mostly in Hebrew, so we didn’t really learn much about our faith.

For several years, my sister Julie and I attended regularly most Friday evenings and Saturday mornings. Each time we attended a service they gave us stamps that we pasted in a booklet. When the booklet was filled up, we received a reward. One year it was a small miniature Torah (a scroll containing the first five books of Moses). But after a while, even incentives like miniature Torahs lost their appeal and I stopped going to Temple, preferring to hang out at a local playground with my friends on Saturday mornings.

Eventually, I started the seventh grade at Shenandoah Junior High School. When Christmas rolled around, I was excited about the preparations that were being made for our homeroom’s Christmas party. When the day finally came, our homeroom had been transformed. Decorations were everywhere, and in the center of the room was a large Christmas tree. A number of students had brought different kinds of cookies and punch, and we were going to play some games and exchange gifts. As the final preparations were being made, someone spilled a jar of paint on the floor. My homeroom teacher asked me to find one of the janitors and get some rags to use to wipe up the spill.

Grabbing a hall pass, I went quickly up to the fourth floor looking for Mr. Mobley, the head janitor. Since his door was locked, I decided to go down to the main office to see if they knew where I could find him or one of the other janitors. Because homerooms all over the school were decorating for their parties, the janitors were scattered throughout the building helping where needed.

Ours was a big school with three full floors of classrooms in the shape of a large letter “C”. The fourth floor held the band room and the janitor’s office. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find any of the janitors. Several times, I ran back up to the fourth floor to see if Mr. Mobley had returned to his office. No luck. By the time I returned to my homeroom to report my lack of success in getting rags from the janitor, the party was over. The cookies and punch were gone, the games were over, and the students had exchanged and opened their gifts without me. I just stood there trying to hold back my tears, all the while thinking, “This is ridiculous, why should I care? I’m Jewish; we don’t even celebrate Christmas.”

I turned thirteen during the ninth grade, and my mother thought that I should have a bar mitzvah. After a crash course given by the cantor of our Synagogue, a bar mitzvah was planned for a weekday, rather than on a Sabbath because it was less expensive and I wouldn’t have to memorize a long passage out of the Hebrew Bible. It was the last time I ever went to a Jewish worship service.

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Chapter Two: A Ray of Hope

When high school started the next year, I found a home away from home in the concert chorus with Mrs. Rafield. The chorus room became a safe haven, a place I headed whenever I had any free time during lunch or after school. Singing in the chorus, a madrigal group, and a men’s quartet gave me something to look forward to each day and helped me make it through high school.

Unfortunately, my father had a serious gambling problem. Many paychecks went to pay the bookies. He wrote a number of bad checks in order to make ends meet. On several occasions, he had me take some cash into a grocery store to make good on a returned check. Once a store manager asked me where my father was. He wanted to know if he was too ashamed to come in himself.

For a little while it looked like things might be turning around. My father who had worked as a truck driver for local bakeries most of my childhood was now driving a taxicab. He had done fairly well and was in the process of buying his own cab. Then in the middle of the school year, he fell asleep at the wheel and ran head-on into another car. The other driver was killed instantly. My father broke his back and several ribs.

Now there was no money coming in at all. The doctors put my father in a body cast that went from his shoulders to his waist. He was in the hospital for over a month. When he got out of the hospital, a judge sentenced him to six months in the county jail. Fortunately, he didn’t have to serve the entire time behind bars. After a month or two they allowed him to go back to work, but he had to check back into jail each night.

Around that time, the concert chorus was getting ready to go to State Contest in Daytona Beach. In addition to selling candy to make money for the trip, I also had to come up with $20.00, which in those days was a lot of money. I remember having to tell Mrs. Rafield, that I didn’t think I could afford the trip. As embarrassing as it was, I told her about my father’s accident, and his loss of work. Mrs. Rafield rose to the occasion and told me that I was going, even if she had to pay my way herself.

Mrs. Rafield was one of the few adults who had taken an interest in me. Somehow, instead of just seeing a shy skinny kid with a huge inferiority complex, she saw the God given potential of what I might become. And she nurtured that potential throughout my three years at Coral Gables High. Even though I really wasn’t wild about going to college, by the time I graduated high school I thought that if I were to go to college, I would study to become a high school chorus teacher. Mrs. Rafield was a Christian and didn’t mind letting us know. Before each concert she would have us bow our heads and lead us in a prayer. It ended with the phrase, “and we pray this in the name of the Master who taught us to pray.” followed by the Lord’s prayer.

In my senior year, Mrs. Rafield assigned me the part of Captain Brackett in South Pacific. We performed two nights to a packed house in the school auditorium. And then toward the end of that year, Mrs. Rafield recommended to the school administration that I sing the national anthem and lead in the singing of the school’s alma mater during our graduation ceremony. Wow, what an honor!

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Chapter Three: Shocking Discoveries

After high school, I decided to go to college - mainly to avoid the draft. The year was 1965, and the war in Viet Nam was heating up. Some friends told me to go to college. They said by the time I graduated, the war would be long over. (Ha!) Since the only thing I really enjoyed in high school was singing in the chorus, I decided to enroll at Miami-Dade Junior College as a music major. I wanted to be a high school chorus teacher. Two years later, I transferred to the University of Florida in Gainesville.

As a music major, I was at a severe disadvantage. I had never learned to play a musical instrument, and could barely read music. I was also extremely undisciplined when it came to academics or doing anything I really didn’t want to do, such as practicing piano. Those students who could already read music and play an instrument, as well as those who studied and turned in assignments were way ahead of me in their musicianship. To make matters worse I had begun to hang out with a group of students who drank, smoked marijuana, and used a variety of other drugs. Of course, this made it even harder to pass my courses.

After receiving several failing grades, I discovered I would probably never make it as a music major and so dropped out of school. To make matters worse, I thought that if I couldn’t make it in music, which most people thought was an easy major, how could I make it in anything else? Despite having attended four years of college, I was still a long way from graduating, and about the only jobs I could get were delivering pizzas and pulling weeds.

The winter of 1970 was extremely difficult for me. I spent Christmas in Gainesville alone, cold, and depressed. That Christmas was one of the worst times in my life. Despite being Jewish, Christmas in the past had seemed like a magical time when the promise of special gifts beckoned and television specials like Dickens A Christmas Carol and It‘s a Wonderful Life were shown. It was a time when people talked about love and giving. It was a time to be with family, and share in each other’s love. But being alone, my dream of becoming a high school chorus teacher shattered, cut off from family and friends, it had become a confusing and even depressing time.

Now, Christmas for me was like standing alone outside a restaurant in the dark cold night air, while inside a host of merry friends and family celebrated together, giving and receiving wonderful gifts of love and laughter while remembering precious memories of times spent together. It was something I’d told myself I would never be able to experience. I had to harden myself, remind myself again that I was Jewish.

A couple of years earlier, I had overheard a student at Miami Dade Junior College say that only those people who personally trusted in Jesus Christ could be saved. I asked him if this applied to me since I was Jewish. He said it did. I asked how it was that the Jews, who even Christians acknowledged as the chosen people, could end up in hell? After all, what was the point in being one of the chosen people if it didn’t get you into heaven?

He told me he didn’t want to argue, but that the Bible taught that only those people who had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ could be saved. I walked away a bit angry, wondering who he thought he was to say things like that.

On one of my trips back to Miami, I was on my way over to see a friend who lived in nearby Coral Gables. While walking down the street, I saw a car drive up to a parking space about a hundred feet in front of me. It seemed to me that the man who got out of the car was waiting until I got up to him. He looked to be in his forties, wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase.

Just as I feared, as I started to walk by he reached out and began to shake my hand. “Oh, no!” I thought, “This guy’s going to try to sell me life insurance right here on the sidewalk!” However, instead of a sales pitch, he began to tell me about how he had almost completely messed up his life. Because of some really poor choices, he had lost his job and almost his marriage. But then, he prayed to receive Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and God had blessed him so much that he wanted to share this with as many people as he could.

Back in Gainesville I went to visit my sister, who was also a student at UF. She wasn’t there, but her roommate let me into their apartment to wait for my sister to return. A few minutes later, her roommate came over to me with a little booklet in her hand and asked if I had ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws. She began to share with me that “Just as there are physical laws that govern the physical universe, so are there spiritual laws that govern your relationship with God.”

The first law was that “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.”
The second was “Man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life.”
The third was that “Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life.”
And the fourth was that “We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.”

After reading through the booklet, she asked me if I wanted to pray to receive Christ. I told her I wasn’t ready. Actually, I really didn’t understand or believe everything I had just read. Up until that time, if someone started talking about Jesus, I told them I was Jewish and that excused me from having to consider what the person was saying. It was like having a get out of jail free card. Hey, I’m Jewish!

One day I could hardly believe what I was hearing. They were playing a selection on the radio from a new rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. Even though I thought the theme a bit strange, I really did like the music. And for some reason I found myself thinking about Jesus a lot, so much in fact, that I even asked myself why I, a Jewish person, would be so interested in Jesus who lived two thousand years ago.

On the record album, I heard a detailed description of the crucifixion. As I heard the sound of the nails going into Jesus’ hands and feet, it dawned on me that Jesus believed so much in what he was doing (telling people about God and helping people in need) that he was willing to die for it. I began to ask myself what I was willing to die for. It didn’t take but a few seconds to discover that there was nothing in my life that I believed in to the point that I would be willing to die for it. A second later it came to me: if I had nothing worth dying for, then I didn’t have anything to live for either. I realized that I had no purpose for living and didn’t even know why I was on earth. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew I wanted whatever Jesus had.

A few weeks later I realized that Jesus was calling me to follow him. Alone in my apartment I answered his call. A moment later, I laughed out loud. Had I just become a Christian? I think I did. But whom could I tell? My Jewish mother? My hippie friends? Yeah, right!

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Chapter Four: Uncle Sam Wants Me?

Within a few months of quitting school, I received my draft notice, and the war in Viet Nam was still going strong. Even though I didn’t fully understand what had happened, I believed that I was now a Christian. In November of 1971, I was sent to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, for basic training. Everyone in my class of a hundred soldiers was a conscientious objector. Some, like myself, were opposed to the war for philosophical and moral reasons. The kind of conscientious objector I qualified for meant I could still go into combat, I just wouldn’t carry a gun. Just great! Others were there because of the religious group to which they belonged. For some reason I felt superior to the religious types. After all, they were just doing what they were told by the leaders of their religious denomination, and were not thinking for themselves.

Several times, I observed groups of the religious ones arguing about some obscure point in the Bible. At the time, I thought they were rather pathetic. At one such gathering, one of them said that he was not afraid to die, because he believed in Jesus Christ, and that if he were to be killed in the war he knew that he would go to be with God in heaven for all eternity. “Right!” I thought. As a joke, I balled up one hand in a fist and then suddenly let it fly right at his face, thinking he would jump back. My fist stopped about a half inch before his nose. To my great surprise, he just stood there without flinching a bit. “Wow,” I thought, “maybe he does believe what he’s talking about.”

After basic training, we went on to a ten-week advanced training course in which we were prepared to be either field medics or hospital corpsmen. For five weeks they showed us things like how to stop a sucking chest wound, apply a tourniquet, and prepare wounded soldiers for helicopter medevac. Then for the next five weeks they taught us how to take blood pressures, change a bed with a patient in it, and fill out nursing notes. You can guess which training I was hoping to use.

For the past few months, I really hadn’t thought very much about my recent decision to receive Christ. It took just about all the time and energy I had to get though my army training. I coped by smoking pot and drinking. Although there was a group of us using drugs, none of the other soldiers turned us in. And, at the time, I thought I was too smart to ever be caught.

One day in March of 1972, three of us decided to go to downtown San Antonio. There’s a river that runs right through the middle of town that was a popular place to hang out. We took a couple of joints with us, and once at the river we lit up and passed one around. In a few minutes, I was quite stoned. So stoned, that I didn’t even see the policeman until he was about two feet away from us.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asked. “You’re not smoking pot on my river are you?” We tried to deny that we were doing anything wrong, but I’m sure he could smell the marijuana that was still in the air.

For a few moments, it looked like he might let us go. But for some reason, one of the guys with me decided to mouth off to the policeman. Instead of letting us go, he called for a squad car. A half hour later, we found ourselves at the police station being booked for possession of marijuana. Although attitudes towards drug use were beginning to change in the early 1970’s, in the state of Texas the jail sentence for possession could be anywhere from two years to life!

We were told that a justice of the peace would meet with us after they took our fingerprints and photographs. When we finally met him, he told us that he would set bail at $3,300 each. Just great! I didn’t even have $33.00 on me at the time. The thought of spending time in jail suddenly became a real possibility.

After letting us sweat it out for a while, the justice of the peace came back to the holding cell and told us that he had just gotten off the phone with our commanding officer. He was willing to take us into custody and hold us on base until our case came to trial. A couple of hours later three very shaken individuals were escorted back to base by military police and handed over to the army captain in charge of our medical training company.

The thought of having to stand trial for possession in the state of Texas weighed heavily on my thoughts, until one day about a week later our top sergeant called the three of us into his office. First he told us his own thoughts about a soldier who used drugs, “If it was up to me I’d take that man and flush him down the toilet.” Then he told us he’d just gotten a call from the D.A. He said they were dropping the charges.

At first, I was confused. How had the Department of the Army gotten involved in this? Then a few moments later I realized that by D.A., he meant the District Attorney. Apparently, they decided that because we would be leaving the country in the next month or so, that it was better to let us take our chances in Viet Nam or wherever else we were being shipped rather than to than to spend the money it would take to try us and put us in jail for the next so many years.

I was greatly relieved. I felt like I had gotten my life back. However, in other ways I was somewhat bummed out. How could I have been caught smoking pot? And why couldn’t I talk my way out of it? Well, one thing I knew: I might have been caught once, but they weren’t going to catch me again. Did that mean I was going to stop using drugs? No, it just meant that I was going to be more careful than before. Just a couple of days later I once again started smoking pot.

One day, toward the end of our medical training, we were ordered to stand in formation. Our top sergeant had just received our orders for the next eighteen months. He would call several names and then their assignment. Some were being sent to Germany, Hawaii, Alaska, and other far off places. Imagine my surprise when after my name I heard the words “Bangkok, Thailand”.

What was just as surprising, was that I had actually requested Thailand during my induction into the army. Bangkok, Thailand! I wasn’t even sure where it was. The only reason I had put it down was that a friend of mine had served in Thailand when he was in the Air Force. He told me it was a great place to serve.

A few weeks later I found myself in the Overseas Replacement Center in Oakland, California. I was alone and sober. I was afraid to carry drugs on the flight to California and once there I didn’t know anyone I could buy from. I was lonely and depressed as I considered that I was being shipped off to Bangkok, Thailand for the next eighteen months of my life. I didn’t like the army or what it stood for.

Most GI’s spent no more than one or two days in what they called the shipping building. It was a huge structure that housed about a thousand men in bunk beds stacked three high placed in rows all over the place. There were almost no partitions or privacy in the building. The lights were left on 24 hours a day and several times an hour, long lists of names were called for people to report to the shipping window for this or that flight overseas. Somehow, I had gotten there early and had to wait seven days for a flight to fill up for Bangkok.

Each morning they made us get up early and stand in formation in a large parking lot. They would then take a number of rows of men for “police call” (going around the grounds picking up garbage and cigarette butts), the next so many rows would then be marched off for eight hours of “kitchen police” (washing dishes, pots and pans, serving meals, and so on). The rest of the men could go back to the shipping building and do whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t leave the area. The first day they took men from the front of the formation, so the next day we all tried to stand in the back. A couple of days later they started with the back rows, so we never knew where to stand to avoid the extra duty.

On Sunday, someone told me that if you volunteered to go to church, which only lasted about an hour, you would be guaranteed not to pull one of the work details. When they asked who wanted to go to church, I stepped forward and was marched over to a bus that took us to the base chapel.

I don’t remember much about the service, except that the military chaplain used the words of the hymn, I Would Be True, to encourage us to fight extra hard for Uncle Sam. As we exited, I remember telling him I didn’t quite agree that the hymn was written to support a foreign war. When I got back to the shipping building, I found myself in a real state of depression. I was not getting enough sleep. And I was alone and lonely. And I definitely did not want to spend the next year and a half in a green army uniform ten thousand miles from home. I was angry at the army and at my sorry life.

While walking around the huge building, I discovered a small room in one far corner marked “Chapel”. I opened the door and went in. The chapel consisted of a dozen or so chairs with a Bible stand in front of them. I was so depressed that I walked over to the Bible stand and placed my elbows on either side of the large Bible that was in the center of the stand, my head supported on the back of my hands, my eyes closed.

Standing there, I tried to figure out why I was so depressed and angry. After a few minutes, I got the urge to open my eyes and look down at the Bible below. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if this was like some kind of movie? I’d open my eyes and see something in the Bible and then the sky would open and an angel would appear! Yeah, right. With my luck, I’d open my eyes and nothing would happen.”

Just a few minutes earlier, while on the way back from the chapel, I had been whistling a song I had learned back at the University of Florida. It was from a Bach motet and was called Ye Are not of the Flesh, but of the Spirit. I decided to open my eyes anyway, and looked down at the Bible. Right under my eyes were the words “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit”. I didn’t know at the time that that particular verse is only found one time in the entire Bible, even so, I still felt a sense of awe at what I thought was a rather miraculous coincidence.

Then I realized that perhaps God was trying to tell me something. For the first time I began to realize that I had really made a mess out of my life. I told God how depressed and lonely I was, and how I never wanted to feel that way again. I told God I would do anything he wanted me to do if he would come to my aid.

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Chapter Five: Thailand

I was still somewhat depressed as the airplane took off for Thailand. Although I was a new Christian who had just committed a part of his life to God, I was still trying to do things my own way. Despite promising God that I would do whatever it took to keep from feeling like I had felt just a couple of days before, I still refused to quit smoking, drinking, and using marijuana.

Our first stop was Nome, Alaska, and our second was Yokota Air Force Base in Japan. As we took off from Yokota, we saw Mt. Fuji rising into the clouds. For a young man who had rarely been out of Florida, I was getting to see a whole lot more of the world.

The next stop was Saigon. By the time we got there our flight had lasted almost 24 hours. We had not been told beforehand, but we were going to spend the night there at Camp Alpha. The pilots turned off all the plane’s lights a few minutes before landing to avoid enemy fire. As we got off the plane, I was struck with the reality of the war in Viet Nam. All around were armed soldiers wearing jungle fatigues. While the officers were quickly hustled off to hotels, the enlisted men were loaded onto an old bus and taken to the camp.

It was already late in the afternoon, and hotter and more humid than I could remember. The next thing that struck me about my surroundings was the smell. The entire place reeked of urine. The barracks were Spartan, made of wood and painted the inevitable olive drab. After dinner in the mess hall, I went back to the barracks and took a shower, sitting on the tile floor with the water lightly spraying on me in a feeble attempt to stay cool. I eventually drifted off to sleep in my bunk listening to the sounds of the night. The next morning after breakfast, we were loaded back on the plane for the final leg of the trip to Bangkok.

Instead of the army just turning us loose on Bangkok, they instead made us go to Samae San, a small army base around an hour’s drive from the city. For a week, we had to endure lectures about the dangers of life in the big city. We were warned about the consequences of drugs, illegal use of our ration cards, prostitution, and venereal disease. They also taught us some survival language skills such as how to count in Thai and how to bargain for a taxi.

After a week of being bored, I was excited to get to Bangkok and start to work. I also looked forward to getting stoned again. I had picked up a pretty decent guitar at the PX and was playing a lot to entertain myself and a few friends I had made. During my senior year in high school when the Beatles were at their peak, and everyone I thought was cool played the guitar, I decided I would learn to play one also. With a few pointers from friends and a book of Beatles songs, I soon learned to play the chords to most songs.

Driving into Bangkok on the Army bus was a strange and exciting experience. As we entered the city, the traffic was so heavy I thought we’d probably be stuck in it for a couple of hours. But amazingly, we got to our destination fairly quickly as the traffic moved deceptively fast. Having everyone drive on the left side of the road also took some getting used to.

Rather than having an army base in Bangkok, the Thai government required that all military installations be in separate buildings scattered throughout the city. All the enlisted men were put up in two different hotels off of Sukhumvit Road. The hospital where I would be working was several miles away. We got around using city buses and taxis. You could get around town in a taxi for ten baht (50 cents) or on a bus for one baht (5 cents). (The hotel wasn’t anything special, but it beat living in a barracks. They provided linen service and a nice dining room on the first floor where we could eat our meals.

Everything was so strange the first couple of days. I remember walking down the street with an army friend. After just a couple of blocks, we were so “weirded out” we made our way back to the hotel. We sat outside on the steps leading into the hotel lobby for a while. Another G.I. came by and sat with us. He asked how long we had been in country. We told him we had only been there a week. We looked at him with awe and admiration when he told us he had been there eight months.

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Chapter Six: The Captain and the Private

The next day I was to report to the U.S. Army Hospital Bangkok, also known as Fifth Field Army Hospital. After processing in, I was told to go up to the surgical ward on the third floor and report to the ward master sergeant. He was in charge of all the enlisted soldiers.

After introductions and a brief orientation, I was told they didn’t have any whites for the new corpsman to wear. I was sent to go to the supply room to request a set of green scrubs. I was shown a place to change and store my khaki’s and personal items. As I put on the scrubs, I was a bit perplexed. Not only did they not have any sleeves, but they also didn’t have any pockets. Nor did they have any place to attach insignia. This proved to be a good thing. No one knew my rank, so they had to be nice to me. After all, I might be an officer!

I was paired up with another more experienced corpsman who I followed around for the next few days as I became acquainted with my new job. I found out that most of what a corpsman does is assist the nurses in taking care of patients’ needs. My job included stripping linens from beds, taking them to the laundry area, laying out new linens, making up beds, helping patients change their pajamas, handing out bed pans, and the like. I also got to take and chart vital signs (pulse, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure). Every so often, I might also assist a doctor who needed help with a procedure.

After a few days, I had met most of the people who were working the day shift. One morning one of the more senior corpsmen asked me where I was from. Even though I had grown up in Miami, I told him and the other corpsmen and nurses hanging around the nursing station that I was from Gainesville, Florida, as I had lived there the past three years before being drafted. “Really?” he asked, “We’ve got a nurse here from Gainesville; maybe you know her.”

I heard someone say, “Hey, go get BJ.” A couple of minutes later someone ushered in an Army nurse wearing captain’s bars. It only took one look to realize that this was one beautiful woman standing in front of me. Someone said, “Captain Below, I’d like you meet Private Heyman.” “Hi,” she said, “so you’re from Gainesville, Florida.”

For a moment or two, I was a bit stunned. There I was in the nurse’s station wearing my sleeveless scrubs, a half dozen people looking on, while I was being addressed by a pretty female captain. About the best I could do at the time was mutter back, “Uhh, yes, ma’am.”

For those who have never been in the army a bit of explanation is in order. While in basic training and AIT (Advanced Individual Training) even non-commissioned officers were treated like gods. We rarely saw commissioned officers, and those we did were all men. Enlisted men like me had a strict code we had to follow. We had to properly greet and salute all officers. While officers could do just about anything they wanted, we enlisted men were not even allowed to put our hands in our pockets. We also had to run or march everywhere we went, while the officers could walk at their leisure.

BJ later told me that although she thought I was good looking, she also thought I was something of a dud.

I can’t remember what else we said to each other, but I do remember thinking about what a pretty captain she was. Unfortunately, we worked different shifts for a while, and I didn’t get to see all that much of her. Then a couple of months later she went back to the States for two weeks. When she returned, her younger sister Ruthie came back with her. For the next few weeks, I hardly saw BJ. Then one day she came by the hospital and told us Ruthie was getting ready to go back to the States. She asked us to be friendly to her sister when she came by the hospital. When the time came, I made a bit of a fuss over her, making sure she felt welcome. Some time later BJ told her sister that there weren’t any men in the hospital who she might marry. Ruthie said, “What about Art? He seems like a nice guy.”

Every now and then, someone who worked at the hospital would have a party. Those who didn’t have to work the evening shift, would come by for music, drinks, and socializing. Since playing the guitar had become a part of my life. I naturally brought mine along. At one particular party, I was singing for some of my fellow co-workers when BJ came in with another nurse.

I began to sing a love song and looked right at her while I was singing. For a few moments, it seemed like the room emptied except for the two of us. In those few minutes, I felt a strong connection to the pretty young nurse from Gainesville. However, after the song was over a couple of my buddies let me know they were lighting up in one of the bedrooms upstairs, and I went with them to get high. When I came back, much to my dismay, she was gone.

After that, it seemed like we began to work many of the same shifts. Over the next few weeks we began to get to know each other a little more. One day, someone began to tell everyone on the ward that BJ was getting married. Even though we had just started to become acquainted, I felt a sense of loss. It just didn’t seem right. For some reason I decided to stick my neck out a little.

“You shouldn’t be getting married.” I told BJ.

“Why?” she asked.

“I’ve seen people who were in love before, and you’re not in love with anyone.” I replied.

“Why do you care?” She asked.

“When you see a friend about to make a mistake you do something about it.” was my answer.

“Are you saying we’re friends?” She asked looking me right in the eyes.

“Yes.” I said, feeling very good about myself.

Around this time, God gave me another wake up call. Shortly before moving out of the enlisted men’s hotel, we had a visit from the Army’s Central Intelligence Division. Someone had reported us for smoking pot in our room. Several men conducted a detailed search of our room looking for drugs.

They made me and two friends lean against the wall out in the hallway while they frisked us. Then they took us back into the room while they searched each item of clothing we owned from our closets and footlockers. After looking at a piece of clothing, they would dump it into a pile in the middle of our room.

At the end of the search, one of the officers told us that he knew what was going on in our room, and that the next time they wouldn’t let us off. Well there went my “they won’t catch me twice” bit. At the same time this put a dent in my ego as I realized that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.

Some time later, BJ came up to where I was on the ward and asked me if I would consider doing her a big favor. She told me that she had bought a guitar but had never learned to play. She asked if I would give her lessons. We agreed to meet at my house one afternoon for the first lesson. By this time I had moved out of the hotel into a house with two army friends.

The lesson didn’t go quite as well as I thought. In my zeal for music I tried to teach her everything I knew in one hour. But after the lesson, we began to tell each other about ourselves. We learned that we even knew a few people in common back in America. A few people I used to sing with at the University of Florida had either gone to her high school, church, or Baptist Student Union group.

Before she left she asked if there was anything she could do for me, like something my girlfriend in the States might do. After seeing a little gleam in my eye, she hurriedly added, “You know, like make brownies.” And then she told me she was a Christian.

“Far out!” I said, “I’m a Christian too!” Apparently from the reaction I got, she had never met a Christian who acted like me. I explained my encounter with Christ before going into the army and my experience in the Overseas Replacement Center. When I was finished, she gave me the impression that she wasn’t totally convinced, but might just give me the benefit of the doubt. It was as if she were saying, “You might be a Christian, but if you are, you just barely made it by the skin of your teeth.”

From that time on our relationship entered a new phase. Instead of talking about the army or what was happening on the ward, we began to talk about God, Jesus, and the Bible. Back in Oakland, California, I had picked up a Good News for Modern Man New Testament and had begun to read it, starting on page one. By the time BJ and I started our discussions, I had read the entire New Testament, except for the Book of Revelation.

Actually, much of what we did was argue about the Bible. I felt that BJ was trying to base her life on the teachings of the Bible, which I thought was a bit ridiculous. I accused her of not wanting to think for herself. A lot of my arguing had to do with things like using drugs and sex. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how an intelligent person like her could base her life on a book that was over two thousand years old. I also didn’t particularly care for the rules for living I was hearing from it.

At times our conversations turned rather intense. Once, when BJ tried to share a small booklet with me about how to live under the control of God’s Spirit, I angrily threw it down on the table and said, “I don’t need this!” Amazingly enough, she did not give up on me, but patiently tried the best she could to answer my many questions.

Eventually, things seemed to come to an impasse. I wanted her to give in to my view of Christianity and the Bible, in which a person could basically do whatever they wanted, and she wanted me to believe that a person had to base their life on the teachings of Christ as recorded in the New Testament.

One day, BJ asked me if I would go with her to her church on a Wednesday evening

She and a couple of other adults led a youth prayer meeting each Wednesday evening. Unfortunately, it was during the rainy season in Bangkok. We flagged down a taxi and negotiated the fare to the church. About three quarters of the way there the taxi ran into a deep puddle that flooded the engine. It was still raining as we got out of the taxi. We would have to walk the rest of the way to the church. BJ told me later that she was afraid I would want to turn around and go back to my house, but I told her that I didn’t mind rolling up my pants and continuing to the church on foot.

The youth group met in a large room in the fellowship hall next to the church sanctuary. There was a group of junior and senior high boys and girls in the room with a couple of other adult leaders. Several of the boys played guitars and led the group in singing a variety of Christian choruses. After a brief Bible study from one of the adults the group began to pray. I noticed one of the teenage girls who was praying for some of the kids at her school and couldn’t help being impressed by the expression on her face. I could tell that she really believed she was talking to God and He was listening to her prayer. Kind of awesome!

One day after a long drawn out argument, BJ asked me if I believed in prayer. I said I did. She then challenged me to pray to God, asking Him to show us who was right and who was wrong. She would do the same. In a sense, I realized I didn’t have too much to lose. If I was right and God told her so, then I could keep on just the way I was, and she would be free to join me. If, on the other hand, I was wrong, then I might as well find out now and make the best of however much of my life still lay before me.

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Chapter Seven: A New Creation

One of the things I had begun to realize about BJ was that she truly believed what she was telling me about God. At first, I thought she was just parroting what she had been taught in church and Sunday School. But, one day I came to the realization that as much as we had begun to like each other, that she was willing to give me up if her relationship to Christ required her to do so. Once again I had come across someone who had something to live for, while I obviously did not.

A short time later, BJ again asked if she could share with me the booklet about how to let God take control of your life. This time I read it through. Perhaps almost getting busted by the Central Intelligence Division showed me I needed something more in my life.

God began to show me that my life was at a definite crossroads. If I kept on going in the direction I was headed, I would probably end up in jail, a drug addict, or maybe even dead. But, if I yielded my life to His control, God would produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit in my life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, things that were in really short supply in my life.

I then bowed my head and prayed to God. I told him I was sorry for the mess I was making of my life. I asked Him to forgive me and to take control of my life.

The next morning, as I got out of bed, I remembered saying to God, “Last night I asked you to take control of my life. Now what am I supposed to do?” Like a loudspeaker in my head, God revealed to me that I needed to quit smoking pot and cigarettes, stop drinking, cursing, and being rebellious. He basically told me to stop everything I was doing that was wrong and to follow Him.

Although I had tried to stop some of my bad habits in the past, I had never been able to stop for more than a few days. But this time I knew something was different. I went downstairs and walked over to one of my roommates who was rolling a joint. He asked me to take a hit. I told him I quit. “What do you mean, you quit?” he sputtered.

I told him that I had just prayed that God would take control of my life and that I had quit smoking pot. He told me he was Catholic and that I should stop preaching to him. Apparently he had no problem being Catholic and starting his day with marijuana.

Somehow I knew that this time God was going to give me the power to stop using drugs and to break the other bad habits I had fallen into. I know that some people struggle with addiction for months and even years, but God was gracious to me and allowed me to be freed from my addictions starting that same day. It actually happened so fast that some of my coworkers at the hospital thought I was faking it in order to get what I wanted with BJ.

Around that time, I started going to church with BJ on a regular basis. Calvary Baptist Church was located on Soi 2 in Bangkok. Its members came from the military, missionary, and international community. I soon found an outlet for my musical abilities. The church needed someone to direct the youth choir.

As God took away my bad habits and behavior, He began to replace them with good things to do. Over the next year I led the music at the church on Sunday nights, directed a couple of youth musicals, and met with the youth group each Wednesday. I also went on retreats, and taught a youth Bible study class.

I couldn’t have been happier. God had taken my old life and replaced it with a new one. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of purpose. I was experiencing the love, joy, and peace that I had so desperately sought in drugs and immoral living. And most importantly, I finally had something I could live for, and if need be, something to die for.

As the days went by, BJ and I were seeing each other whenever our shifts at the hospital allowed. One day we were walking down Sukhumvit Road when she said, “What are we going to do, we’re spending so much time together?”

I answered by saying, “We could get married.”

“What did you say?” she asked in a nervous voice.

“Oh, I was just joking.” I replied, even though I really wasn’t.

Before long we began a serious discussion which led to our planning our wedding. Because we were marrying in a foreign country we needed to get married at the American embassy in Bangkok so our union would be recognized in the United States. A Thai official wrote our names in a book, took some money from us and then left the room. We walked out into a hallway and were greeted by the Ambassador, who congratulated us as Mr. and Mrs. Heyman. BJ and I looked at each other and asked ourselves when it had happened. However, two days later we had a church wedding at Calvary Baptist with one of our missionary friends performing the ceremony.

God had completely changed my life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (New Living Bible).

God had brought the two of us halfway around the world so we could meet in a little army hospital and fall in love. Since BJ had already served one year in Thailand and I had one year left on my 18 month deployment we were able to fly back to the States on the same flight after our first year of marriage. God had thought of everything! On November 1, 2024 we celebrated our 52nd anniversary!

If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read BJ’s book An Unlikely Love Story to learn about what BJ was thinking and feeling during our time in the army in Bangkok, Thailand.

Continue reading to see a few photos of us during our time in the army and our first year of marriage in Thailand.