October 5, 2011
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Day 21 Mom and Dad
My father’s uncle and my mother’s sister. That is the connection. What started the whole thing off. What led to me. My father’s uncle is James Winzeler. He and his wife, Marie, were missionaries in Port Au Prince, Haiti. While they were serving there, one fall my father came to visit them and help them move to Jeremie, Haiti.
My mother’s sister is named Becky Feldman. She and her husband, Verdon, had four children, and served at the same compound as the Winzelers. My mother took a semester off of college in 1977 to go to Haiti and homeschool her four nieces and nephews. That semester overlapped with the summer that my dad came. And they met.
My mother, Cyndi, knew pretty soon after meeting my father, Jim, that he was supposed to be, indeed, my father. But Jim didn’t get the memo. As the story goes, Cyndi “set her cap” at Jim, and tried everything she could to make him notice her that summer in Haiti. Stories include one involving a red dress and batting eyelashes (my mother watched many old movies, and they always involved a red dress, even if they were in black and white).
My favorite story (that mom tells) is that the missionary housing was on a hill. One evening, Jim walked past Cyndi’s building, so she decided she would take a stroll and just “happen” to pass him by. She began walking quickly to catch up, but with the incline, by the time she caught up, she was running too fast to stop and ran right by him to the bottom of the hill. Dad always listens to mom tell this story with a funny smile on his face. He didn’t have a clue.
Jim went back to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where he farmed with his dad, and Cyndi returned to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she finished college at the University of Indianapolis. They basically ended all contact, Cyndi, out of frustration, and Jim out of cluelessness and just being a guy. Two later, in 1981, Cyndi was contemplating joining the Navy. Knowing that Jim had served in the Navy, she called him up and asked for advice. He told her that she shouldn’t join the military, but that she should meet up with him. In six months he proposed, three months later they were married, and 11 months after that: me.
