Danny's Song

This past week my older son celebrated his 23rd birthday. The last contact I had with him was three weeks after my arrest. He was entering his junior year of college and within days of flying overseas to spend a semester abroad. A dear friend came to the jail with my son. Through the Plexiglas, I looked out at my boy. Tears poured down my cheeks as I longed to hug him. As our visit ended he looked at me and said “we’re gonna be alright dad; I love you.”



Days earlier I had received my only letter (to date) from him. My son, so much like me in his interests in history, politics, music, cooking; began his terse correspondence with these famous words from Thomas Paine: “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Ironically, the same day that he wrote his letter to me, I penned a letter to him. My last sentence in that letter: “These are the times that try men’s souls.”


There has not been a day in that young man’s life that I haven’t recalled the precise moment, when my wife, beaming, told me she was pregnant. I doted over her for nine months, refusing to even allow her to pick up a bag of groceries. I watched how her body transformed, each day as the miracle she carried within her developed. I remember the first time I heard my son’s heartbeat, the first time I felt him stretch and kick.


The day after my wife told me she was pregnant, I was out running. On my headset I heard the beginning notes to Loggins and Messina’s ballad “Danny’s Song”. I started mouthing the words. I soon began singing the song as I ran. At the reprise, tears welled up in my eyes.


“Even though we ain’t got money
I’m so in love with you honey
and every day will bring the chain of love.
In the morning when I rise
sweet tears of joy in my eyes
and tell me everything is gonna be alright.”


It’s a song about a man expressing to his wife the love he feels as he realizes he is a father of a beautiful son.


So much has changed in the past twenty-three years. Until my arrest, both my sons thought I was the best father around. They loved me and looked up to me as only a son can toward his father. I loved my sons deeply. The three of us were inseparable.


I watched as my older son graduated high school and was admitted to a prestigious college. I was full of pride at his intellect and his character. There was never a day when we were together that we didn’t hug and say “I love you”.


Six weeks ago, my ex-wife wrote me the first in a series of letters we’ve exchanged. The reason for her first letter in over seventeen months was to let me know she had met someone through an internet dating service (a twice married man). Included with that brief piece of news (which tore apart what remained of my damaged heart) was a snippet of news on our sons. My older son, my baby boy who I cradled moments after his birth and gently sang Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” to, now refers to me as his “ex-father”.


A well meaning friend arrived for a visit shortly thereafter. “Worried” about me, he proceeded to tell me that my ex has been dating for a “long time”. She had had a long distance relationship with a Canadian band leader from a cruise she took before our divorce was final. That relationship, my friend confided, only ceased when my ex discovered the man was still in a “committed” relationship.


“Even though we ain’t got money
I’m so in love with you honey…”


So, the woman with whom I stood at the front of the church, whom exchanged vows with me, the woman I still love deeply, has been able to “move on” and close that almost thirty year chapter of her life. And my two precious sons, they go forward without a passing thought about the man just three short years ago they thought could never be replaced.


If you told me on that November afternoon in 1981 when we exchanged our vows, or that early March morning in 1988 when our older son was born, or that afternoon in July 1997 when our younger son joined our family; that those emotions we shared, those words we spoke to each other were nothing but fleeting thoughts that could be disregarded in times of crisis and distress, tribulation and disappointment, I would have told you you didn’t understand the bond we shared. There was, I thought, an unbreakable chain of love that would see our marriage, our family, through.


This past week the news reported that Leroy Hassell, Jr., son of the late Chief Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court (Chief Judge Hassell, Virginia’s first African-American Supreme Court jurist, died of cancer just two short months ago) was sentenced following his recent conviction for armed robbery. He was convicted of holding a young man at gun point in his apartment as he demanded money and drugs.


This was a violent crime. This was not his first conviction (he had prior convictions for marijuana possession and shoplifting). His sentence? 15 years will 11 years, 12 months suspended. In other words, Hassell has a two year sentence to fulfill for an armed robbery conviction. Two years is less than one-sixth the sentence I am required to serve.


In the past few weeks two anonymous readers have touched me with their words. Both readers urged me to find comfort in the Lord. I can assure you, if I wasn’t sustained by my faith, I wouldn’t be here right now. I have watched everything I worked for taken from me. I have seen the three most important people in my life utterly reject and abandon me. I have cried out to God more times than I can remember and have actually had more problems, more distress thrust on me.


I remarked to a friend the other day that I have absolutely no idea what God wants from me. I am doing everything in my power to live righteously in here. I turn no one down who seeks my help. I work tirelessly for these students in here. On more than one occasion, I have asked God “what more do you want from me?” I swear to Him I can’t go on, yet the next morning, I somehow jump off my top bunk at 4:00 am and start to pray.


One of the readers told me to “remember how blessed” I am during this trial. If I didn’t realize I was blessed, I wouldn’t be able to endure what’s become of my life.


I’m not a victim. I broke the law. I violated the trust my wife and children placed in me. But the consequences of my actions are significantly in excess of the actions themselves.


Still, I have faith. Still, I love those three. I pray each morning and evening for my ex to find a happy, loving committed relationship. It breaks my heart that she rejected me, but my love for her requires me to pray that someone can give her what I obviously can’t. I pray for my sons continually.


The simple fact is God has given me a “do over”. He has given me an opportunity to care for a great deal of men I would have never given a moment’s thought about. He has given me a chance to make a difference in the lives of many who need someone to just believe in them.


I am blessed. I’ve discovered a level of love, of forgiveness, of compassion and mercy I didn’t know I possessed. And, I have endured through some very dark, terribly lonely days.


Still, my son’s birthday was bittersweet. Like Valentine’s Day – the 30th anniversary of when I proposed to my ex-wife – I am filled with many wonderful memories and a deep sadness over our present circumstances.


I was running yesterday. As on most of my four mile runs around the track, I recited over and over the 23rd Psalm and Isaiah 40. Without realizing it, I began singing “Danny’s Song”. I thought back to that morning when she walked into my law office and said “I’m pregnant”. I thought back to holding my son in my arms, kissing his forehead and whispering “May God bless and keep you always, may your wishes all come true…”


I recently heard music by a new musical group, “Mumford & Sons”. They appeared on the Grammys and sang with Bob Dylan. In a Dylanesque song called “The Cave” the following lyrics appear:


It’s empty in the valley of our heart
The sun, it rises slowly as you walk
Away from all the fears
And all the faults you’ve left behind.


So make your siren’s call
And sing all you want
I will not hear what you have to say


Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it’s meant to be


And I will hold on hope
And I won’t let you choke
On the noose around your neck


And I’ll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I’ll know my name as it’s called again.


Each day another memory is brought into view: birthdays, celebrations, dinners, just a quiet night with my sons, or dancing on the deck with my wife. Memories can be a curse or sustain you. The blessing is in knowing the difference.


Two thoughts struck me as I thought about love and forgiveness.


Dostoyevsky stated “Compassion is the chief law of human existence”.


An anonymous person said: “Young love is when you love someone because of what they do right. Mature love is when you love someone in spite of what they do wrong.”


God has blessed me. At least when it comes to compassion and love He has allowed me to reach my golden years.