REGIE'S BLOG
CHAPTER 1 - Old Man & Iwo Jima
Posted: 6/15/2010 5:06:21 AM
've heard the story since as long as I can remember. I can still see it being told in hushed and reverent tones around the leftover-laden tables of Christmas or Thanksgiving— the choking smoke of burning diesel and exploding artillery shells conjuring itself through the waft of pumpkin pie and cornbread dressing, the echoes of screams and ancient, urgent orders barked through the faint sound of a football game in the next room, the story of a young marine in the volcanic ash of Iwo Jima during World War II, having dug an uncommonly deep foxhole. According to the family legend, he just happened (through random events) to arrive at his forward position before the rest of his platoon. The others were possibly on some detail that held them back. He possibly got an earlier start. He might have been sent ahead of the platoon for some reason. We never really knew. Thefog of war and haze of history have shrouded the intricacies of the moments in question. Those details have long since been buried in the graves of the fallen, but the heart of the story still beats inside of me. I believe my life was forever altered in 1945.
My grandfather, a man of average height, had dug a very deep foxhole in preparation for an upcoming battle. When the rest of the platoon arrived, one of his tall compatriots only had time to dig a shallow foxhole before all hell broke loose and the platoon began getting barraged with enemy mortar fire. The tall soldier yelled over to my grandfather, Tice, switch holes with me! I'm too tall for this one, but you'll be fine in here. Please, Tice! I need a deeper hole; you don't need one that deep! Watching the lanky marine trying to curl his oversized limbs and torso into undersized shelter, my grandfather agreed, and they rolled through intolerable waves of explosions and gunfire, past each other into the other's foxhole. As the man was crouching into his new position and throwing my benevolent, young grandfather a casual thank-you salute, the deep, well-dug foxhole was instantly incinerated with a direct hit by a mortar round. There was nothing left but scorched earth and fragmented body parts. Pawpaw Tice (as we called him) told my father in later years that he stared at the carnage for minutes, realizing that if he'd shown up ten minutes later and not dug so deep, the man would've never asked to switch. If that hadn't happened, it would've been my grandfather's remains smoldering on the sands of Iwo Jima and not the taller marine's. He said it always bothered him how random it all was. Random. He just happened to get there first. There just happened to be an uncommonly tall man in the next hole. That man just happened to ask him to switch holes. They just happened to switch in the nick of time. Random.
Thomas Tice, my grandfather, somehow survived two years on Japanese island battlefields—with untold random events that kept him alive, no doubt—came home to the United States, and produced the last of his four children: my mother. I can trace my entire existence back to one bloody, terror-filled night on an obscure island ten thousand miles away from my warm bed. I can see a hand of providence directing the path of a scared, tired, haggard marine through the muck and minutiae of war. Every day I've enjoyed on planet earth was born in a single, sweaty, adrenaline-fueled roll from one foxhole to another in some place I've never seen by someone I never knew in a time which I didn't live. God only knows the moments that changed everything to lead to that moment on Iwo Jima: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American response, the global conflict that emerged with billions of moving parts that triggered billions of decisions, one ofthose decisions being a young Mississippi barber enlisting in the Marine Corps, his training and deployments, the convergence of events that led to the taking of Iwo Jima as a strategic military target and the bloody battle for that tiny piece of earth, the decisions that led to sending that young marine to that particular place in that battle and his decision to switch places at the last minute with another young marine, the ironic event that became an off-handed war story to a son-in-law, which became a holiday staple in my life, the legend that became the story you've just read and that will now alter something about you forever. God only knows the moments that change everything.
Random events. Life, to some, is a series of disconnected, random events—one giant pinball game where we are all tiny and pointless, careening into bumpers and dodging one another, hoping to score enough points to continue the kinetic roll. We tell ourselves that this moment doesn't have that much importance. It's just a Thursday. It's just lunch. It's just a date with the girl from English Lit. It's just a different foxhole. Will we remember it? Probably not. Will it have any lasting impact on our life? Who knows? We're always hoping to arrive at some magical moment of truth, a life changer, one of those moments that gives us clarity and epiphany. We think we'll know it when we see it or feel it. We are oriented through movies, TV, and dramatic novels to watch for the heavens to open and to listen for the angels to sing. Then we'll suddenly know something we didn't know before. We'll have new wisdom and new light and new purpose. Surely that moment isn't happening right now. This is just a regular day full of regular moments. Yes, our random lives can seem mundane and purposeless. The moments that course through the veins of our existence can feel uneventful and redundant. Random events seem to be happening to us all the time.
One such event showed up in my date book somewhere in the fall of 1992. A random series of events and a lifetime of coincidence had led me into the role of staff songwriter for a company called McSpadden Smith Music. Primarily a Christian-music based publishing company, they were incredibly young and wildly successful. I was a newly married, twenty-something songwriter who was finding favor in the world of Christian music. I'd had a couple of minor hits on the radio and was starting to turn some heads. The future was bright and wide open. In those days, I was a bit of a workaholic. I would write songs all day, have dinner, and then write through the night into the wee hours. I would then go to the Vanderbilt University track, run a few miles, and then head home for a shower and bed only to start the whole routine over again the next day around eleven. Because I wasn't making much money as a writer, I would also take occasional odd jobs to bolster my income. I was going full speed. All out. I was certain that success was completely within my grasp and, more importantly, within my control. Shawn McSpadden, the owner of the publishing company, and I were constantly scheming and planning and working toward the goal. The goal? Success. Achievement. More songs written. More songs recorded. More songs on the charts. More songs topping those charts. Gold records. Platinum records. More money. More success. More, more, more. Get it done. Take care of business. Focus. Do what the other guy won't. Start earlier. Stay later. Never be satisfied. Dig deeper. Do it better. Work as hard as you think you can and then work harder. That was the mind-set. I truly believed that with that work ethic, I had control over the destiny of my music and life. I was certain that with enough sweat and opportunity, I could make it happen. I kept my datebook full at all times.
My wife and I lived in a Spartan, 350-square-foot apartment above a small house in downtown Nashville. We paid three hundred bucks a month for it and lived in four rooms: front room,kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. You could fit all our worldly possessions in the back of a pickup truck. We were built for speed. Three minutes to West End Avenue, five more to Music Row. Life was quick and spontaneous. We didn't do much of anything except sleep, work out, and work. We were determined to make it somewhere. We weren't sure where, but it was going to be great when we got there; we just knew it. So we worked. Days were a blur of meetings, writing appointments, business lunches, and being holed up in recording studios for hours on end. Nights were filled with industry parties and hanging out with the right people and being holed up in recording studios for hours on end. I won't lie; it was a good time. The feeling of being young and taking the world by the horns is a powerful one. You feel invincible. You believe you're immortal. Though I was married to my dream girl and best friend, we didn't hang out with other married couples. All our friends were single. There wasn't much talk of children or school systems or health insurance or life insurance or home values or anything of that sort. Make the rent. Work hard. Play hard. That was the life we were living. Amidst the swirling energy of that life, I befriended a young song plugger at McSpadden Smith Music. His job was to comb through the songs I was turning in, make copies of the ones he felt would work for certain artists, and pitch them to those artists. He was a thoughtful, soft-spoken soul named David Moffitt. David was quiet and deliberate. His perfectly groomed and parted red hair, button-down shirt, khaki pants, and glasses made him seem academic and astute. I would never have guessed he was a songwriter too. He didn't seem crazy enough. He was always on time. He appeared to be together and in control. He chose his words carefully and wasn't angry for no reason. In short, he was almost the exact opposite of me. I could never have known that he was protecting three ominous words that would change my life forever and haunt me in strange and frightening ways. Of all the publishing companies on Music Row, I had walked in to that one. I'd signed a contract with that one. I had been attracted to the pace and the action. I had hitched my wagon to what I believed was a shooting star. I'd signed with one of the youngest, hippest companies in Nashville in an attempt to become something, anything other than what I was. The thing I wanted the most was staring me in the face, yet an unlikely, mild-mannered employee of that young, hip company would hold the touchstone to my true purpose.
Let's write a song sometime, he said casually one afternoon. I have an idea I think you could really help bring to life. I wasn't sure what to make of writing a song with an employee of the company for which I was contracted to be golden. It seemed a little weird and unorthodox. Still, I was booking anyone and everyone, and I felt something interesting might come of it. So somewhere in the fall of 1992, a random encounter with the song plugger of a small publishing company in Nashville became a penciled-in appointment in my date book. Another writing session. Another song in a catalog full of them. Another melody. Another lyric. Another possibility of success. Another random attempt at making something special happen.
Certainly David couldn't have known that my favorite book was Dickens's Great Expectations. He wouldn't have known the reasons for my being drawn to that story at age nine (the same year I started writing songs) and my deep connection to Pip, the main character. He couldn't have realized that I saw myself in Pip and his desire to reach beyond his embarrassing beginnings to something grandiose and important. He couldn't have known I had that same desire. He couldn't have seen the same undulating fear in my heart that pounded in Pip's—the fear that I would never truly rise above what I was, no matter how hard I tried. He couldn't have looked into my past and seen a five-year-old, self-taught prodigy playing gospel music in country churches and all-night singings. He wouldn't have seen my formative years and my family band singing in high school gyms and in mall parking lots, being laughed at by kids my own age, mocking the message of Christ and the down-home way in which my family delivered it. He couldn't have known I had spent my entire life running from church picnics and Sunday morning services into some place cooler and hipper. He couldn't have seen the raw ambition to get out of a world I considered to be a wasteland and reach the heights of some blinding success somewhere else. David Moffitt could never have known any of that, but the keys he held in the idea vaults of his mind would unlock the doors of my childhood and release the demons. The three words he was harboring for me would foreshadow the rise and fall of a would-be pop star, the destiny of a child not yet conceived in rural China, the meaning of an enigmatic genetic disorder that would devastate a family, and the redemption that would come from the rarest of places.
My chance encounter with David Moffitt was as random as two marines switching foxholes in the heat of a battle. But it was about to set the stage for the time of my life.
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