In 1938, John LaRue and I left New Jersey in John’s Model A Ford Sedan for the trip to Chicago. This was before the Pennsylvania Turnpike was built. The trip took us three days to get to Chicago driving on Route 30 for a good part of the way. We enrolled in the Moody Bible Institute. After a couple of months, John decided that school was not for him so he returned to New Jersey to work as a radio repairman in the Camden area. I had enrolled in the Missionary Course which extended my stay at Moody to four years rather than the usual three years. I wanted to study Greek so this is why I had to stay the extra year.
In 1940, I was assigned to “practical work” at the Pacific Garden Mission on South State Street in Chicago. After the service as I was walking South I became conscious that someone was following me. I look back and saw a young black youth following me. I turned on another street and he did too. I realized that he had me in mind. I decided to cross the street to get the oncoming street car, but I had to wait a minute for the cars to pass. In this short time he ran to catch up to me. I was in mid-street when he caught up. He was after that camera I was carrying. He grabbed the camera strap and when he saw that I would not let go and give up the camera, he drew a switchblade knife from his sleeve. I saw the knife coming when he cut the strap. Then he went for me; I saw the knife coming for my throat. I dodged to the side, but he cut my throat with the point of the knife and he jerked the camera out of my hand. Fortunately the cut was superficial.
I then proceeded to chase him for almost four blocks when he accidentally dropped the knife. He stopped for a second and saw that I was gaining on him so he took off again. I should have stopped but didn’t, my mind was set to get him. That knife most likely had his finger prints on it and the youth may have had a record with the police, in which case the knife could have solved the case. I continued after him when he dodged into an alley and there I lost him. I called the police and was taken to the Cook County Hospital where I received six or eight stitches to close the wound. During this whole time there was not a single person who would come to my aid, even though there were seventy-five or one-hundred people on both sides of the street that Sunday afternoon. The policeman who took me to the hospital said that I was the lucky one. There were three muggings in the area that week and one victim was killed with a knife.
For weeks I could not walk the streets without looking back. About this time I was reading Romans 8 when I read the 28th verse, ‘And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.’ I questioned how this experience could work to my good. After thinking about this verse for some time, I came to the conclusion and determination that if ever I saw a person in need I would do all I could to help and I decided that Romans 8:28 is true.
Although tuition was free at Moody, I had to earn my room and board. I worked on the school’s paint gang. We painted the interiors of dormitories and classrooms as well as the exteriors of buildings. There were fifteen or twenty buildings, some five or six stories which housed about two thousand students plus the fifteen or sixteen story administration building. We were paid thirty-three cents an hour and after working a thousand hours our pay was raised to forty-four cents an hour. Besides painting I did all the plastering and tile-setting with Nick Conrad, a German, full-time employee. At this time World War II broke out and the draft was instituted. All the male students were exempt from military service and given the classification of 4D.[1]
[1]. With Stephen’s terrible eyesight, he would also have been classified as 4F if not for the 4D already assigned.
Leave a Reply