How I Became a Jesusite

This is for Maria, because she asked.

--------------------------------

Sunday School at the old North Akron Apostolic Christian Church probably saved my life. Way back, when I was real small, Dad and Mom used to take me to church at the East Akron Apostolic Christian Church. I don’t really remember much of that; they went there because Grandpa was the elder there. After he died, and Uncle Bill got married, he and Aunt Tiny would pick me up on Sunday morning and take me to the North Akron church for Sunday School. I don’t recall a whole lot of kids my age being there. The people closest in age were Claudia Zimarik, Wendy Cimarik, Marilyn Murphy, and Bob and Tom Haley (we always called him Tom; but that was his Dad’s name, and I only found out at his mother’s funeral, years later, that he was really named Steve). There were some older kids, too, like Bill Tiffan and Andy Sanyo, and lots of younger kids, but the first group born immediately after WW2 was sort of small.

I remember Dad smoked cigarettes (Lucky Strikes!) and he and Mom generally stayed home. After Mom’s mother died, they started to get serious about spiritual things, and soon they were taking us to Sunday School. In 1956, Mom, Dad, and Uncle Mike were baptized. Church got more of our attention; they stayed for the afternoon service, and came back for the Sunday night singing. The singings were something I looked forward to. I would sit up in the front row, sometimes with Bobby Tiffan, and we would call out our favorite numbers. Bobby was lots of fun. He had Down’s Syndrome, and at that time was in his 30’s or early 40’s. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, could color better than Bobby with crayons. He was a whiz -- stayed in the lines, and did a perfect job.

In order to cut down on travel, and hopefully increase attendance at the Sunday afternoon service, North Akron started serving lunch. Somebody would go to Crest Bakery up on Main Street and get the bread, and the lunchmeat was gotten from either Lawsons or Galats’ (Galat Packing Company supplied all of Lawsons’ lunchmeats under the Corndale brand). After lunch, the Haley boys and I would go upstairs and keep ourselves occupied. The baptistry at North Akron sat behind a heavy magenta curtain. We discovered that breaking a paper clip in two, and firing it with a rubber band at the curtain from the balcony, made a fascinating whirring sound followed by a very audible thump as the clip hit the curtain. Quite a few times old Brother Schmidt would come up and chase us out of the balcony. After we were eventually forbidden to go up to the balcony, we got the idea to sit in the baby room and read through Revelation. By the time we got done with that, we were pretty well afraid for our futures.

About that time, Brother Vic Schlatter came through giving talks on his plan to go off to the wilds of Papua New Guinea. He came to North Akron, and preached on the Last Days. When he got done, I went up to the front to talk to him. I certainly did not want to be left behind to face the terrors to come. Years later, Bro. Vic told me that he was totally surprised and didn’t quite know what to do; he had never had a reaction like that to his talk.

I guess nobody else quite knew what to do with me either. North Akron had a youth group -- they called themselves the Crusaders -- but they were mostly older kids and they had little in common with me. They didn’t have anything to do with the ICFG and the other Akron area AC churches, which was too bad, because that’s where some of the other kids my age, like Ray Pavkov, were going. I made a stab at being a Christian, and even took my Bible to school a time or two, but I wasn’t very dedicated to the whole idea.

I guess I was more influenced by the Altsheler books than I realized. The Christian Science approach to religion seemed appealing, especially when it was put in the context of American history and frontier living. I was addicted to the fantasy of living in the woods, away from the impositions of modern society. In that way, I pre-dated the Hippy movement by several years, and had pretty well grown up by the time the Flower Children were in full bloom. Good thing, too, because I had a tendency to go off in that direction.

When I graduated from high school, I had no plans, and didn’t want to go to college. I wasn’t always that way. At the time I started ninth grade in Copley, I was interested in my schoolwork. School had been fun, and balanced. In seventh grade, at Simon Perkins Jr. High, I took Wood Shop, and in eighth grade I took Metal Shop. When I got to Copley, however, my counselors told me that I was “College Prep”. I had to take Latin (which I actually learned to like), and I was not allowed to take courses like Shop, or Typing. I was told that after I graduated from college, somebody else could do my typing for me. So here I am, stuck with my “three fingers and a thumb” routine.

I decided I would make the best of it for a while. I would go to college, major in biology, and after I graduated, be a forest ranger. Mom was appalled. She and Dad thought that was nonsense, and tried hard to change my mind. Oh, and another thing. My last name is Hrubik. That is spelled with a capital Stubborn. When I couldn’t have my way, I promptly lost interest in schoolwork, and devoted all my spare time to wandering around in the Barberton Reservoir woods. Thus, in the summer of 1965, I was free of high school and ready to be a bum.

Mom was not going to give up that easily. She insisted that I start college at Akron University and work toward a teaching degree. She even bought me a typewriter. So much for the wisdom of high school counselors. To humor her, I went off to Akron U.

One of the courses required of all freshman men was ROTC. Mom told me to talk with Ernie Pavkov about having a letter written to state that I was a Conscientious Objector, even though I was not seeing it as being particularly objectionable at the moment. That would excuse me from ROTC. At the last minute, I decided to go ahead with Army ROTC. Not too long after, I stopped going to church altogether.

True to my expectations, I hated Hilltop High. I was bored by Dr. Popplestone’s psychology lectures, and saw no reason to apply myself in any other course, either. Then, one Saturday in November 1965, I was on campus and ran into a bunch of guys dressed in fatigues and talking about rappelling off the tops of the campus buildings. I had met the Counterguerilla Unit, and found a new place in life.

It was a natural fit. I bought my fatigues, combat boots, and black beret, and my Saturdays became filled with combat training. I eagerly took up such activities as field-stripping and reassembling the M-1 (blindfolded, of course), doing PT and the Manual of Arms, studying hand-to-hand combat and battlefield tactics, and over school breaks, hitting the outdoors on bivouac. My attention span in school lengthened, my grades improved, and in my sophomore year, I began planning for my military career. The Army ROTC cadre took note, and I was recommended for (and received) the Chicago Tribune Award for excellence in military studies in the Spring of 1967. I applied and was chosen for, pending my physical, a full Army scholarship for my junior and senior years.

And then I failed the physical. For the next year and a half I fought the Army bureaucracy, trying to get an exemption that would allow me to complete ROTC and get a commission. During that time I met a cute young woman who captured my heart. She, however, could not make up her mind. Something like too many fish in the sea.

By the early spring of 1970, I had made up my mind to ask her to marry me. She seemed to be returning my attention, but was hesitant any time we got near the subject. At Easter break, I decided to go to Florida and think things over. I had always wanted to see the Everglades.

I think I spent all of about two days in the Everglades region before I had seen enough swamp, and decided that Fort Lauderdale would be more fun. Driving north along the coast, I arrived in Hialeah just after dark and started looking for a motel room. I stopped at a gas station and struck up a conversation with the attendant, who had noted the big rear tires and “different” sound of my Maverick. We talked about cars, and he said that if I was familiar with Chevy engines (several summers in the pits at Barberton Speedway, and hanging around Bert Joyce, had given me another kind of education), his boss needed to have a Chevy 6-cylinder marine engine fixed.

His boss eventually arrived at the gas station to pick up the day’s receipts. The first thing he did getting out of his car was to draw a big revolver, and let me know that I had to stay well away from the building until he was finished. He and the attendant talked, and then he left. The attendant called a motel and got me a room, and then we went to a bar for a drink. It was my first time in Little Havana, and the inspection I was given was obvious. We made arrangements to meet at 6AM, and I went off to the motel.

Up to this point I had been quite the tough guy. I had long ago stopped praying, but, true to the influence of the Christian Science type of spirituality, I thought of myself as righteous. I deluded myself into believing that I was as good and loving as God. As I settled into the motel that night, though, an uneasiness came over me. The neighborhood was not at all genteel. That night, for the first time in years, I prayed to God for protection. I was spooked, and it was not a familiar or comforting feeling. At 5:30 in the morning I was ready to go. The clock edged closer to 6, and I became more worried. Something did not seem right. At five minutes after 6, I left the motel and headed north without waiting any longer for the Cubans to arrive. To this day, I believe that had I stayed, I would have ended up floating in Miami Bay after the boat motor was fixed.

Fort Lauderdale was something of a letdown. I didn’t seem to fit. I met some guys at the motel pool, and when evening came, we wandered the beach for a while. Heading back to the motel, we drank up some foolish ideas, went out and climbed palm trees in a ritzy neighborhood to steal the coconuts, and then went back to the motel and drank some more. The next day I headed north again, on my way to Fort Knox to bring my brother John home from Basic Training.

As night fell, somewhere near Atlanta, I picked up two hitchhikers. We drove on into the night. By now I was in a sorry state -- too much booze the night before, and over twelve hours on the road. And I was driving fast -- 75 to 80 most of the way. At one point, one of my passengers must have said something, because I woke up driving down the median with long grass whipping past my door. They got off at the next exit; I kept going.

The dawn found me in western Tennessee, and as evening fell, I picked up John and three of his fellow Guardsmen (one of whom we dropped off in Cincinnati). By the time we got home, I had been on the road for over 30 hours without sleep (if you don’t count the times I woke up suddenly while I was driving).

While I was gone, things had taken a turn for the worse. My girl was now enjoying the attention of two other guys. One of them threatened to kill me, and for about two weeks I slept with a loaded rifle in my bedrail. Finally, I told her she had to make up her mind, and she did. Now, the interesting thing about all this was that I, in my belief that I was as good as anybody else in this world and maybe better (at least better than the “hypocrites” that went to church), had nevertheless started to pray about the situation. The more I had prayed, the worse things got. When I was finally told not to come around any more, I was frustrated and angry with God.

One night, I complained, telling Him how I had been loving, just like Him. I complained bitterly that my love had been sincere, patterned after His love, and that it had been thrown back in my face. Suddenly, I was not alone in my room. I sensed the nearness of a presence, and I heard a voice say, “Now, do you see what you have done to Me?”.

As though a light switch had been thrown, I realized the true state of my being. I had claimed to love as God loves, but it had been a selfish and self-centered love. I saw, for the first time, that the love of God had been extended to me through the death of Jesus, and I had rejected loving Him back, over and over. For years I had been exposed to the Gospel, but until that moment, its true meaning had eluded me.

My heart was hard as rock with pride and anger, but God began chipping away at it, bit by bit. That Sunday I went to church for the first time in years. Eastern Camp, at Webster Springs, West Virginia, was only a few weeks away. I made plans to attend. That first Sunday at Camp, I knew what I needed to do. I told the Lord that I would serve Him, and He began the long process of converting me into the person I am today.

It was not a choice I would have made on my own. I believed in my own ability to be good. I believed that I could choose my own time to serve Him. It was His grace that drew me to Himself through the misery that I created in my own self-righteousness. It was His grace that showed me that I was helpless to escape my own sin.

It has not been an easy road. Too many times, I have slid back into pride that I know all about what a Christian life is. Too many times, I have had to learn anew what the mind of God is with regard to my life and desires. As the Apostle Paul wrote, I don’t think I have it all together yet either, but I am God’s work in progress, and I thank Him for extending the grace to believe to a proud and stubborn person like me.