What My Father’s Fall Taught Me Part 2 | Duke's Perspective

In this bonus episode, Brody has his younger brother Duke on to share his perspective on the night everything changed. As a follow-up to What My Father’s Fall Taught Me, Duke shares what it was like watching their dad leave that night, the shock of everything that followed, and how those next few days played out.

They talk about the pain of how things were handled, the impact it had on their faith and trust in the church, and the slow process of rebuilding. From wrestling with resentment to finding strength in brotherhood and mentorship, this is an honest look at healing after church hurt.

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Transcript

Why We Share Duke’s Perspective

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey, this is a bonus episode of NSR, and we're we're actually recording uh another episode, but before we get going, JB and I get going with this episode. I just wanted to introduce this bonus episode. I I recently sat down with my brother and we got his perspective on uh I don't remember what episode it was now. Several weeks back, I did an episode where I walked through my dad's story. A lot of new insight I had into his story. I've I've obviously known his story, and a lot of you know it. I even wrote about it in the book, but I had gotten some new insight based on uh discovering or finding a box of his Bibles. And my brother and I sat down recently, JB was here, and we had a conversation, just kind of his perspective on all of that, and we wanted to share those thoughts with you. Um we've got another episode where me and my brother and a cousin um who grew up with us, we all talk about the early snowbird days, and I'm excited for y'all to hear that. It's just a fun, it's a very fun episode with some cool ministry stories and impact statements. Um but before we share that with you, I wanted to just share this portion of that conversation where we talked about our dad, get my brother's perspective. Love my brother so much. He's such a faithful dude. He's a public educator, public school educator, teacher, coach, career long, has used that platform very faithfully with the goal of impacting people with the gospel. And um, he's also a uh a business owner. He and his wife, they use that business platform. Both of them, they love the Lord, and I'm I'm just thankful for him. She also works in the medical industry, medical field. She's a she's a registered nurse and um works in a really cool category. I'm gonna I'd like to have her on sometime, a real category, cool category of uh in the medical field where she works with um moms, uh infants and moms in rural southern Appalachian communities. She's a one-on-one nurse slash coach to help them bring a child into the world, get on their feet, and make it. Uh, most of them are underprivileged, impoverished, undereducated. Um, cool, cool job, but also uh very ministry perspective. Um, very much a ministry perspective in the way she approaches that. So my brother, sister-in-law loved them so much. Um was grateful that he would sit down and have this conversation. A lot of y'all know him. We call him Duke, uh Big Duke. And uh so I'm excited to bring this uh bonus episode to you. Hope you enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Welcome to No Sanity Required, from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

Let's just start with um when that stuff happened, you were were you a senior in high school?

SPEAKER_02 2:55

I was getting ready to be, yeah, I was gonna be a senior, so that was going into my senior football season.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Let's talk about your just your perspective in that period of time. We can we can talk about our dad up to that point. You I will say you were closer to him than I was.

Fallout With Church Leadership

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah, and I would even say like in in high school I was and I don't know about beating my chest, but I would say I was probably the closest walking with the Lord through high school as all the siblings. Like I was I want to say I learned from y'all's mistakes. Yeah, as far as like what I did. And and and dad was a big role model for me um because of football. That was a big thing. Like that was my passion. Lifting weights was my passion. He got me all into that. And so even in the ministry segment of it, I saw how people, he was very charismatic as far as his personality and how people just um were drawn to it. Yeah, I was drawn to him and and the success he had in there in our church, I felt like that was you know, that was that was huge on me and my walk with Christ through high school. Um I held him to high regards in that aspect of things. And so going into my senior year, when and going back to the story you you were talking about, I'll tell you kind of my perspective on it. So you were off to college, Heidi and mom were out, and I'm pretty sure they were in Charlotte doing a women's retreat singing an Heidi and mom Heidi song, and mom was teaching at a women's biblical conference, and then we our two younger sisters were staying at friends' house because they were too young and they didn't trust me with them. Um, so I'm a teenage boy. I'd been playing ball at the gym all night and came home at it's around 11, 11:30 on that Saturday night, and I remember I wanted to hurry and get home because Saturday Night Live was on. And that was like the prime That was the heyday. In the early 90s, that was the best Saturday Night Live. So I got home, fixed me a bowl of cereal, sat down at the table, turned on Saturday Night Live, and dad came, he just got back and came walking through and said, he called me bam. So my niggas, I'm Duke here, but dad called me bam. He said, Bam, I'm going over to church. Um, I got some work to do. And he goes, I'll see you in the I'll see you in the morning. I love you. Walked out. I was all right, bye. Didn't think anything of it because I mean I was he always said he loves us. Well, he came back in. After he left, I was sitting there eating, and he came back and opened the door and just looked back in it and said, Bam. I said, Yeah. He goes, I mean it, I love you. I said, Okay, I love you too. And he shut the door and walked out, and I was like, dude, it's being weird tonight. Didn't think anything of it. So I laid down on the couch, watched Saturday Live, fell asleep, and get a knock at 5 30 in the morning on the door, and it's our head deacon. Um said, Bam, you need to get out here. Your dad's in a truck behind the church um which need you to come quick. So when I get there, he's behind the truck, uh, behind the church in his truck, sealed up. Um, they can't get him. I get in the truck and uh he had a pistol laying beside his seat, but he was too um non-coherent to be able to reach and grab it. He was trying to find it, and uh I grabbed the gun and took it away from him. So, what like, dude, what are you doing? Like, I had no idea. To me, this man's I mean, my hero. Um, and now he's sitting here, he looked dead already because he had been in carbon dioxide poisoning for who knows how long he'd been sitting there when they found him. And so he's already turning blue and kind of in and out of consciousness. So I grabbed the gun and started screaming, but he couldn't talk to me, so we called the 911. And I mean the ambulance got there right after I got there. They'd already called 911. Um, and it wasn't until we got to the hospital that I found out why he had done what he'd done. And he just kept trying to reach for the gun and says, I need uh I I need my gun, I need my gun, and when he would come to conscience. So I'd follow the ambulance in my truck behind him, like as a 16, 70-year-old, just confused, like, what in that in my perspective at that point, knowing how we were raised, the only thing that we ever had problems with was the financial. Like we were small, a big family in a small church with not a lot of money. And so all I could think of is I've got two siblings in college. We got a bunch of little sisters, and this man can't financially support us anymore. So he's had a breakdown, and that's the only thing in my mind. I never fathomed too naive to realize he was in an adulterous affairs after affair, after affair, and had gotten caught and uh didn't find that out till we got to the hospital. And mom and Heidi showed up, and uh the deacons would not tell me anything. Um still to this day they wouldn't, they've never spoken to me. And uh they called mom and into a room by herself, wouldn't let me go in there. So there's a lot of a lot of resentment for for how things were handled throughout the whole for the next six months. Um, because they told her she basically had to try to tell me, and then from that point on it was just like a whirlwind of hey, get it you we're sending him off. Once he got healthy enough, they sent him off to mental hospital or psych hospital and basically kicked us and told us to go find somewhere to live, my mom and all of us kids. So, you know, if for my senior year, it was just like house to house. We had some awesome friends and family that took us in and let us live in basements and um but my whole perspective on the world changed and just on how I viewed I went for the next 10 years and never would go to a church and and get invested in it. Um I feel like everything that I had learned was a lie. Um everything that I had associated with Christ, I'd learned from my dad. And so for me, I had to take a big step back and say, what's real? What's real? And it took a long time, and you were very instrumental in being that mentor, that father figure that was displaced. Um and so that was uh, you know, for four or five years, I know I did not, I went to church through college. I still had a walk with Christ, but it was a different walk. It was more I had a guy and um like an FCA kind of type of deal. That was my that was my mentor kind of in college. It helped me a lot. Um and then I remember that night at whenever we found out, it's kind of go back. We left the hospital, we went back to uh Ain Ann's house, and me and you sat back in the backyard for probably five hours, just kind of going through everything and just trying to, you know fix a piece of the puzzle, just like confused, like what you know, what just happened, and and like I said, you were probably the by far, and everybody in our family knows this, how how big and instrumental you were as being the head of that family all of a sudden, like you got put in that place, whether you're ready for it or not, and God had moved you at a time in your walk with Christ where you were in a position to be able to start being that. And uh, you know, it was huge. I think looking back on that I'm not sure where I would have gone if I wouldn't have had at least the anchor of somebody physically that I could call on and help me through that. And and you know, we're talking about the snowbird and that's why we're here, is that for me was a saving grace because I didn't have a good view of church. There was nothing about church that really every church that I went to and I looked at the pastor, I couldn't believe him. Um so anything that was preached or taught in back of my mind, I was like, this dude's probably got a secret life that nobody knows about. Um and I had that for the longest time. And uh getting involved here when when y'all opened up Snowbird and began that ministry, it was huge for me to be able to get plugged in and get on mission and get a purpose in my life um to kind of kind of go from there.

Rebuilding Faith After Betrayal

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Um I don't know if that kind of Yeah, man, that's it's heavy. It's good to hear your perspective. We've talked about it before, but uh it's been a long time. I think two nights that I remember in my life where it was just me and you as brothers, brothers in Christ, but then brothers in blood. One was that night you're talking about because I drove home. I told the story in that last episode, but it took them a while to find me because we didn't have cell phones back then. And I was living in a very remote place with no phone, uh, not really an address. I was living in an old trailer on this at this old camp. Um so it took them about 24 hours to find me, or maybe uh they found me Sunday afternoon. Right. This all happened Saturday night, they found me Sunday afternoon, or and I guess this happened Sunday morning. So Sunday afternoon they found me, and I dro so and when I drove home, and I again I I recounted all that in that other episode, but I drove home and got to our dad's sister's house, and we went out, me and me and you went out back like you described, and and then the other the other night like that was the night our dad died. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

And we so two things about that. Um one, go back to when you came back to Aunt Ann Ann's or their aunt's house. You had to register for school the next week, and so we had a turnaround while all this was going on. I jumped in the car with you, we left the next morning, drove to Lynchburg, got you registered, and then drove back. And I remember like five hours each way. Five hours each way, and I remember us getting stopped because we had guns all in the car, and we were young, and I was panicking because I was in high school. I was like, I don't have any type of concealer. So I remember just unloading guns, putting them out on the dashboard, they could see it, and there's bullets everywhere in the floorboard. You're like, dude, just don't be trying to make it conspicuous. Yeah, so the cops came up, shining the lights on us, pulled us over, made us get out and get us on the ground body surge for the next hour. We were out there getting searched.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

One in the morning after the 48 hours we just had, we were almost blasted and swerving. And you were driving, you were like, hey, you want me to drive a while? I was like, Yeah, man, I'm done. And then you drove about probably the last three hours, and then we're almost home, and you're you look, I I think I think I looked over and said, Hey man, you're running like almost 90, and you had swerved. We were just we were just out of our minds.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Happy, goofy, tired.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

And about that time, the blue lights went off. And when they pulled us, we're dumping, I remember dumping mags and bullets and like we can't have a load of guns when they get up here. And those dudes came up with their pistols on either side.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

Get out of the car, on the stairwell, sticking them out the windows.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

They got us laying on the side, and we're and we're like, How is this going on today?

SPEAKER_02 14:39

I just remember panicking because the guy's like, Y'all been drinking, like we need to get out. I was like, No, sir, we're we're Christians, we don't drink. Oh as he's searching my full body. Yep. Well, they let us go. Um, and then yeah, the next night or the next time that I remember is is the night I got the call. And you get we all got the call. We met at the hospital and uh and when dad had passed, and um and we drove around that night. I remember us driving, you know, we drove where we grew up when we were little, then we drove over to the church where we grew up in where all this stuff went down at, and uh just kind of going by memory lane and probably three or four hours just driving around and not sleeping one minute that night. And uh but man, it was it was like again, I go back to for me, it was huge just having that brotherhood. Um that so many people don't get to have during those tough times. And for me, that was huge. Um only the Lord knows where where I would have gone and what path I would have chosen if I didn't have some type of of stronghold in my life or str strong person in my life at that time. And I think we kind of helped help each other in that.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

Yeah, absolutely. I remember you coming up. I was working at the Master's Inn and you came, you were playing college ball, you were playing football at Western Carolina University, and you came that summer. You remember that? You came up and stayed with me and Little and we trained every day. Yep. I don't remember if you were there that summer. The summer you spent with us 96. You were 15?

SPEAKER_01 16:15

15, yeah, 90 96 for I don't know, like from mid-June to mid-July.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

Were you there when Duke came?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

I came a lot. I don't know if like I would just take off because I would show up.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah, I'll just I was you know single young late.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

I know it when there was a bunch of people in and out, you know, college age, and I was young, so I was it was all cool to me. He might have come through.

SPEAKER_03 16:36

And and we should also probably add so at this point, uh year before we moved to Snowbird, and you spent that summer with us, you but you basically were like a brother to us. You were oh yeah. Our family's super close.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

And I think a lot of people identify with cousins that are close, and so it's almost like cousins, brothers, you're just kind of the dudes or yeah, there's five of us, but I don't have a a brother, brother, but the five the five male cousins, first cousins, you know, it's I don't know that a brother would be any closer. You know, I've I've got one best friend and five cousins that we're all just like brothers.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Yeah, and you lived with me in Little off and on.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Yeah, I mean didn't just work at the Master's In that summer '96, but lived up in the top of the barn with you guys. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

Yeah, and then and then often through college. Yeah, and you're two of the first people I shared the Snowbird vision with. And you're both like, yeah, it sounds awesome. I needed people that were like, most people were like, huh?

SPEAKER_02 17:41

I don't know if you should do that.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

A lot of people I think would be positive, but in the back of their mind, I don't think they would think it was gonna happen. Because everybody, everybody's got ideas and dreams and visions, and I don't know if people realized how serious we were about it. And uh, but y'all bought in early, so that was cool. And I remember, so let's go to 96. That was in the middle of, so we're two years post all that stuff with our dad. You're spending a lot of time when you've got off time, you're coming staying with us. We've gotten we had always been close, but we'd gotten closer than we'd ever been. That was the if I remember that was the summer the Lord really you got serious about your walk with the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah, it was it was um, and that one started working, and then the following year is when I kind of you you talking about a battle. Um it'd be like one week, I I feel like this is who God is, and then the world would pull me back. And it was just uh for me during that whole stretch, trying to find my walk and my identity in Christ um was was a struggle. It was it had its peaks and valleys for sure. And then it was it probably is a year-long process. It wasn't like just one morning you wake up like, uh-uh, I'm alive, I'm a new creation. No, it was uh it was a process, it was a war. And I would say that following year, and and um it's when I fully surrendered and and just all right, this is real, he is real, people or sin's sin is real, people are gonna fail you, but God never will. And uh and that's where my journey, I guess, you know, took a different turn and became more consistent.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

It was, I think it was the stuff with our dad, and and we'll we'll get into the snowbird story now, but stuff with our dad, it it definitely affected us each differently, but also in a lot of the same ways. Right. And then I don't think I've ever shared this, but we went, so I struggled the same. I couldn't I didn't want to go to church, I didn't want to be around any dudes that were pastors. I like um I was I was not as close to our dad as you were. Um it wasn't like I'm not implying at all that he had like a favorite or it just y'all were closer. I was a hooper first, you were a football player first, that was his passion. He had played football at Appalachian State, and um and so I just was never as close with him. And I think my natural maybe part of this is being the oldest, I don't know. Part of it's just the way I'm wired. I was always sort of a free spirit, a go do your own thing, um kind of move out from the herd. And and and so when when I but when that stuff went down, I mean it shook me to my core, but it made me so mad. But you know, a lot of times you don't have a place to put that anger, but you're just mad. I mean, I'm just mad. And I would find myself, I went to three or four different churches over the first year I was married. Little and I settled on a church, but over the next year after that happened, I remember because I got married less than a year after this all went down. I was engaged when this happened. And that I was trying to figure out where I was gonna go to church, and I would sit there and listen, same thing, listen to the pastor and be like, I don't know. Well, the church we landed at, that pastor ended up in moral failure. Yeah. And I was like, I'm done, man. And this is gonna sound this is not, this is part of the snowbird story. Right. We started Red Oak Church because I was like, man, we're gonna start something from the ground up and we're gonna build accountability, and you can't completely insulate it from happening, right? But we're gonna build, this is where my theology of the church formed, where I'm like, it is critical that you have a what's called a plurality of elders. Right. Because at that church and most churches in our life, you had a pastor, a group of deacons, there was no real structure to like a team of leaders. And so, you know, like the realizing that, oh, it's biblical that you have not just one senior pastor and then he's the leader, it's he's one of of a team. Right. Maybe he's the leader within that team in some degree, but there's equality of responsibility and ownership. And so anyway, when a lot of the foundations of Red Oak Church were, yeah, I don't trust you know, we got to Andrews, started snowburning. It was just a few years into that that a pastor of the largest church in the community had moral failure. I'm like, I'm done. I'm so I had two major church situations where after that had happened with our dad, then there was moral failure. And I was like, I'm out. And then we ended up starting Red Oak Church and thank God it's been a blessing. It's it's faithful. It's not perfect. But you put things in place that there's a way that you can provide biblical oversight for your leadership. And a lot of that's I like I owe that I feel like I owe that to our dad you know his failure and just the way the Lord used it.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

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