ANGELFIRE 9-18-92 Heavenly switchboard? Just imagine the recordings you could get... Most of us have now learned to live with "Voice Mail" as a necessary part of our daily lives. But have you ever wondered what it would be like if God decided to install voice mail? imagine praying and hearing the following: (blank places=paragraphs) Thank you for calling Heaven. For English, press 1. For Spanish 2. For all other languages, press 0. Please select one of the following options: Press 1 for requests. Press 2 for thanksgiving. Press 3 for complaints. Press 4 for other inquiries. If you would like to speak to God, press 1. Jesus, press 2, Holy Spirit, press 3. Hear king David sing a Psalm while you are holding, press 4. For reservations at Heaven press J-O-H-N followed by the numbers 3-1-6. Our computers show that you have already prayed today. Please hang up and try again tomorrow. The office is now closed for the weekend to observe a religious holiday. Please pray again on Monday after 9:30am. Thank you and have a Heavenly day. Surely the LORD has much better than all that! Today I'm remembering that my late father, John M. Hazlitt, was born century ago in Colorado Springs CO. He died here in P.V. on Dec.10 in '69 following a heart attack on Thanksgiving Day. JM, as he was known to many, had been very active in civic affairs during the fifties and sixties. But his experience as a SeeBee in the South Pacific during WW II on a tiny place in the Gilbert Isles named Rendova, was the pivot point of his life: it left him with a limp in his walk (like Jacob after wrestling with GOD) and extreme difficulty in talking about that fatal blast from which he alone escaped. The Japanese air base on nearby Munda was a menace as they unloaded construction explosives on Rendova. So the platoon had gathered to consider where they should put some five tons of it they had piled ashore, when he saw a Jap plane swooping down. He yelled and turned running just as a bomb hit the pile that exploded and blew away all the rest of his platoon. Amazingly, he was knocked into a mud-pit so that the explosive impact went above him, though it left him unconscious. As navy corpsmen later dug him out of the slime, he awoke and didn't know that his eardrums had been ruptured. He said that seeing everything on fire while totally silent seemed surreal. He even wondered for a moment if he was in hell. Then he was taken to a hospital in New Zealand where he finally regained his hearing. Still, he felt grief the rest of his life over those other nineteen, and he always had a limp in his walk that reminded him how he had been spared. The first poem in his book called "Tangled Twine" [published 1949; several copies in the Warren Memorial library] is a tribute to them entitled "Dear Comrades." Knowing it's reference causes me to feel it's the best of anything he ever wrote; though he later had a column in this paper during the fifties called "Sounding Off" by JMH. And he also taught the International Bible lesson on KVLH each Sunday along with the United Class at First Methodist. He loved books from as far back as I can recall, and was an avid reader. We'd lived the seven years before his SeaBee enlistment in Illinois, but he settled in PV when discharged with a purple heart award. Soon he became PV's Chamber of Commerce secretary and constantly promoted local business, along with patriotic observances. He loved business and he took a job with A.E. Clark, as vice-president of Home Security Life. That lasted until he retired in '67. After which he began to repair clocks at 1100 S. Walnut where he and Blanche Hightower Hazlitt made their home. He had every kind clock ticking in that large basement and I can well recall visits when I spent the night there. Hearing the tick tock of great pendulum clocks count out hours up to the stroke of midnight and the dings of smaller ones got deep into my soul. It was like tuning in on eternity from that basement bedroom where I'd sleep. Years earlier while I was a student at OU I had asked him about death. saying that even the thought was full of anguish for me: "What is the point of life if we just finally have to die? It seems so absurd." He was about as gentle as I can ever remember him with his reply: "Well son, can't you accept the lot of all humanity? 'It's appointed unto every man once to die.' So you're not by yourself. We all face it." Yet the only time I ever saw him cry was at his sister's funeral in OKC. She was my aunt and a dear person, but it hit me harder to see my father in tears. He was born on a ranch and grew up tough in Fairfax OK, and I'd never thought of him ever weeping. But that's the only time I saw it. To me he had lots of grit, plenty of gumption, and still more guts than anyone I'd known. He seemed to thrive on controversy (like Bill O'Reilly) and was often alone back then with his Republican views. Along with his command of words went an interest in current events. The family would hear the morning news by radio and then he'd read the Scripture from the Upper Room to us. He was also a fantastic cook and loved good food. He gave up beer and gambling when he joined the Methodist church, but only quit smoking for a year. I think it contributed to his untimely death at only 67. It seemed that all of Pauls Valley came to his funeral, including the whole Ministerial Alliance. Rev.E.E.Gregory's text was Judges 7:21 "And they stood every man in his place." He said that you might not have agreed with John Hazlitt, but you always knew where he stood on the issues. joseph hazlitt "ANGELFIRE" column.