Tomorrow my Dad turns 80.  He was born December 3, 1939 during World War 2 in Danville, IL, and grew up on a farm in Foster, Indiana along the Wabash River without running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing.  My Dad has been the most important person in my life.  He and my mom moved in with us and have lived with us now about a year and half.  He is type 2 diabetic and more notably, he has alzheimers.  He’s not going to get better and he will only get worse.  We’re glad to be taking care of him.  I’m glad he’s made it this far.

His name is Terence Carlton Brandenburg.  He got up every morning of his childhood to milk cows before he went to school.  He bailed hay and also ran from a bull and jumped a six foot fence to get away.  He has a brother, who lives in Texas, and a sister, who now lives in Misourri.  His mom, Nila, was sociable and talkative, a story teller.  His father, Charles, was quiet, taciturn, and hard working.  They were a church going family, Plymouth Brethren, a country church where he made a profession of faith in Christ under the preaching of an itinerant revivalist.

My dad was never a good student in school.  His parents put him in special education class in junior high.  He was a good athlete, but because of work on the farm, he could play only two sports, so he chose track and field and football at Covington High School in Covington, Indiana.  In the former, he went to the Indiana state final in the 100 yard dash, second place.  For decades he held his high school record in the 100 and the long jump, running on cinders in 9.9 seconds.  His football team won the Indiana state championship his senior year.

My mom grew up in Clinton, Iowa.  Her mom died when she was 8 from a malignant brain tumor.  Her dad’s work sent her family from Iowa to North Carolina for a year and then to Covington, Indiana for employment at a factory for the Olin Corporation just out of town, which made cellophane.  My dad met her and they married just out of high school.

My father worked a short period as a fireman on the railroad and then when he was only eighteen he started work himself at Olin’s, and stayed there for 17 years.  A bigger event was that my dad and mom started also attending First Baptist Church of Covington, and the pastor came to visit and she received Jesus Christ.  My dad and mom were both baptized by immersion into the church.  My sister was born their first year, I came along three years later, and my brother three years after that.  We grew up in the church.

Dad became very involved in the church, as a deacon and door-to-door evangelism.  Some were saved through his work.  We attended every service and it influenced me greatly.  I heard Bible teaching in Sunday School and jr. church and preaching in church services.  We invited others to church.  I evangelized my classmates, this greatly influenced by my dad’s example.

When dad was in his early thirties, he started attending a Bible institute at a Baptist church in Danville, Illinois.  He desired to go into full time service for the Lord, so our family went on a Bible college trip to several places.  We met B. Myron Cedarholm at Maranatha Baptist Bible College, and when he was thirty-five, our family moved to Watertown, Wisconsin.  We sold our house and most of our belongings.  My dad worked two jobs, went to college full time, and sent us three children to Christian school.  That sacrifice had the biggest influence on my life.

Our family was never rich, but we became even more poor in Watertown.  Our whole family of five large adult sized people rode first in a 1967 volkswagon station wagon with no heat.  We scraped the inside of the windshield in the winter, while my dad drove.  Our 1972 Vega rusted out in the bottom and we could see the road through the large jagged rust hole in the floor.  The shower in the basement of the house, no bathtub, was a pipe out of a crumbling brick wall with a deteriorating concrete floor.  However, we were always rich, because we had the Lord Jesus Christ and He had us.

My dad was a strict disciplinarian, what some might call old school, and he required obedience of his children.  My fear of my father kept me from wrong activities.  Today people would say he went over the line.  I don’t think so.  I have a lot of stories to tell, but I have not one ounce of resentment.  He was loving me.  It was exactly what I needed.  We also played sports together, sat in church together, and talked about the Word of God.  School was difficult for him, but he studied very hard and made the honor roll.  He majored in secondary education and Greek, and minored in physical education.  When he graduated, he won the award as the top Greek student in the college.  He stayed on to teach in the Academy and I had him as a second year Greek teacher my senior year in high school.

Seven years later, my wife and I married and moved to California.  My dad and mom had gone to teach at a Christian school in Arizona.  A year and half after we started our church, my dad came to become principal of our Christian school.  With my mom, he served faithfully first as principal and teacher, then just teacher.  He weekly evangelized and taught a men’s Sunday School class.  My parents lived in the same small, old two bedroom apartment their entire time in California.  They were on time and helpful to every meeting and event, an encouragement to the church.

I could say a lot more, but on his 80th birthday, I want to thank the Lord for my dad and what he has meant to my life.  It has been great serving with him and my mom for thirty years in the Lord’s church.