#21--69 Things I've Learned--Just a few minutes can determine how you're known to the world
August 31, 2015
I wonder how my life would have been different if I had been born about 15 minutes earlier on August 30, 1946 instead of just after midnight on August 31. My dad wanted me to be named after his dad, Durward Dale Thorp. That would have given me the initials DDT.
However, my mother waited to deliver me until a few minutes after midnight on my Uncle Wes Moll's birthday. That changed the course of my personal history.
I'm thinking of this today, my 69th birthday and about what I've learned in a whole bunch of life.
My Uncle Wes was a man with a story. He and my mother, along with 10 brothers and sisters grew up on a sugar beet farm in Michigan's Thumb in the early 1900s. He grew up loving anything with an engine. Part of the family legend was that Uncle Wes drove booze across the Detroit River for the infamous Purple Gang because of their hot vehicles. They had big engines and they could go fast.
He loved the roar of a finely-tuned engine. Even after a heart attack, his eyes would light up when he heard some kid hot-rodding it down the street in his subdivision.
I'm really happy that my mom waited 10 minutes to have me. I'm happy being named after Uncle Wes. However, I wish I knew more about Grandpa Durward.