And a journey from darkness to light
by Jim Dodson
I celebrate April’s return every year because it’s the month in which a divine awakening changed my life.
The year was 1980. I was the senior writer of Atlanta Weekly, the Sunday magazine of the Journal-Constitution, the oldest newspaper magazine in the nation. It was probably the best writing gig in the South. Over the previous three years, I’d covered everything from presidential politics to murders in the “city too busy to hate,” as Atlanta liked to promote itself in those days.
Looking back, though I didn’t realize it then, I was in search of an answer to a question that had no answer.
Three years before I snagged that job, Kristin, my girlfriend back home in North Carolina, had been murdered in a botched holdup by three teenage boys at the steakhouse where she worked as the weekend hostess. It had been a beautiful October day the last time Kristin and I spoke. We’d been making plans to get married and move to England, where she had a job as an understudy awaiting her in London’s West End.
The low point of my Atlanta odyssey came on a hot July night in 1979. I was working on a cover story about Bob Stivers, the city’s famous medical examiner, whose forensic sleuthing reportedly inspired the popular TV show Quincy. The week before that Saturday night, I’d watched half a dozen autopsies at his elbow, equally mesmerized and horrified. When Stivers invited me to ride along with the squad that picked up murder victims, I jumped at the chance. Saturday nights were particularly busy in the city that had recently been declared America’s “Murder Capital.” I was told to sit tight until Stivers was dispatched to his first crime scene.
My new fiancée, Hank Phillippi, was a nighttime weekend anchor at a local TV station. We shared an old, brick house near the east-side entrance to Piedmont Park. Our weekend routine was to have a glass of wine and watch Saturday Night Live when she got home from the studio, usually just before midnight.
On that fateful night, as I was waiting for the call from Stivers’ crew, I stood in the darkness of our backyard, waiting for my dog, Magee, to do her business. I saw a car pull up beside our neighbor’s house. We were friendly with the Emory University medical school students who lived there.
As I watched, a man emerged from the backseat of the car and calmly walked to our neighbor’s back door and knocked. A med student still in scrubs opened the door. There was a brief exchange of words, followed by two gunshots. Our neighbor collapsed on the ground. The assailant bolted for the running car, which sped away.
By the time I reached his side, a young woman from the house was screaming hysterically. I asked her to fetch me a couple towels and call 911.
At that moment, Hank arrived home. She took charge and phoned the police as I cradled the wounded man in my lap, attempting to keep him conscious. He died 15 minutes before police arrived.
I chose not to follow the victim’s body down to the city morgue.
The next morning, as I was walking Magee, I heard a chapel bell in the distance softly chiming “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds,” one of my favorite hymns since childhood. Tears filled my eyes.
As Hank slept in, I fetched a cup of coffee, sat on our front steps, taking stock of my life. I suddenly realized what was missing. I hadn’t been to church in five years.
I got dressed and went to services at the historic All Saints’ Episcopal Church downtown, a parish famous for feeding the homeless and never locking its front doors. The rector, a wonderful man named Harry Pritchett, gave a powerful sermon about how God finds us in the darkness when we least expect it. It felt like he — or maybe God himself — was speaking directly to me.
I began attending All Saints’ regularly. I also made a decision to write stories that enriched life — about gardens, golf and incredible humans — rather than revealing its dark side. I never wrote another crime story again. I even set my mind on attending seminary, until a wise old bishop from Alabama named Bill Stough convinced me to follow a “ministry closer to your heart,” as he put it. “You are a born writer,” he said. “You can serve the Lord better by writing about life than becoming a parish priest.”
Not long after that harrowing summer night, Hank and I called off our engagement, but we have remained dear friends for more than 45 years. As for me, that following April, while working on a sample story about youth baseball tryouts, I ventured over to a run-down ball field in my midtown neighborhood, where a desperate league director convinced me to take on the coachless Orioles team. They were a wild bunch, many of whom lived in federal housing. This was during the peak days of the “missing and murdered” crisis affecting Atlanta’s Black teens. I made a deal with my team’s families to drive them home after all games and practices.
I also made a deal with the players: If they played hard and behaved well, I would buy them all milkshakes after winning games. They took the offer to heart. We won the Midtown League Championship in a romp that season. We went undefeated for a second time. It only cost me 200–300 milkshakes.
Crazy as it sounds, almost a year to the day after joining the Orioles, I woke on an April night to find Kristin standing beside my bed. She looked radiant. I thought I must be dreaming, but she was so lifelike, especially when she smiled and spoke. “Pook,” she said, using her pet name for me, “it’s time for you to leave here and go north. That’s where you’ll find what you are looking for. I’ll always love you.”
Days later, I resigned from the magazine, turned down what might have been a dream job in Washington, and headed for a trout stream in Vermont.
God, Kristin and my baseball team found me in the darkness when I least expected it.
It’s been a wonderful life ever since. SP
Jim Dodson is a writer in Greensboro. His 17th book, The Road that Made America: A Modern Pilgrim Travels the Great Wagon Road, will be published on July 1 and is available for pre-order on Amazon.
