Tadpole: An Enigmatic Life

By R. Franklin Cook and Jacquelyn Cork

Tadpole chronicles the enigmatic life of R. Franklin Cook-author, innovator, missiologist, strategist, and thinker. Franklin spent his first 16 years in India, the son of Christian missionaries, and that experience shaped his worldview, his career, and his life. This is his story. It is also a generational story. Contributing author Jacquelyn Cork, Franklin's daughter, writes poignantly about her own experiences in India and about traveling there with her father. She shares her own perspective, as well as those of her mother and brother who also traveled to India with Franklin. She describes how seeing her dad in the place he was raised helped her understand more about him and more about the complex , diverse, and beautiful place India is. Included are memoirs of Franklin's formative years in colonial India, his experiences during the tumultuous period of its independence from Britain, his adjustment of returning to the United States, a place he had never considered home; and his witness of the revolutionary 1960s and the 1989 breach of the Berlin Wall that opened the Iron Curtain. Franklin's life and career have often intersected with global events. But India always beckoned him. India, the place he spent his first 16 years, is the compass that always pointed him home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667881904

Book preview

BOOK ZERO: SETTING THE STAGE

FUNCTIONING ANARCHY

IN HIS WORDS

John Kenneth Galbraith, former US Ambassador to India, called it functioning anarchy. It is as good a two-word description of India as can be found.

A first-time visitor will be overwhelmed by the sheer chaos of the place. There seems to be no order, no system, no pattern. Every truck, car, and three-wheeler finds its own way through traffic. Roads accommodate vehicles and stray dogs and cows and goats and pigs. Packed along every stretch of road are merchants—India has entrepreneurs by the millions. Signboards in a variety of languages, including the uniquely Indian English language, are everywhere. Calls to prayer – from Muslim muezzins to the clanging bells at Hindu temples—are part of the soundscape. As are the horns, always the horns, which every driver feels compelled to use nonstop. It is anarchy.

But it is functional. I often told first-time visitors to India, usually sitting terrified in the back of a taxi, to relax. There really is a system, and it works. And it does. One of the miracles of India is that a nation of amazing variety, almost beyond calculation, actually functions. It is functional anarchy.

A friend of mine, well-traveled, on his first visit to India was overwhelmed just outside the airport by a desire to run—anywhere. Arriving in the heavy humid air of night, what seemed to be millions of eyes—all looking at him—accompanied by hawkers, crows, and three-wheeled one-cylinder motors puffing black smoke—made him want to bolt. For some it will be overwhelming. For others, every pore of their being will be energized. For a few, it will feel like coming home.

IN HER WORDS

This is a love letter of sorts. Written to and for my dad, our family, our history, for the purpose of recording our shared legacy. This is also a love letter to India. She formed my dad. She formed our family, my mother and brother. And she reformed me.

In 2015 when I landed in Bangalore, I was the first-time visitor. Although India had been part of my consciousness my entire life by osmosis, that night was the first time I stepped on Indian soil. I became one of the few for whom coming to India felt like coming home.

It was only then that I began to understand what makes my dad, the enigmatic man he is, tick.

IN HIS WORDS

Rudyard Kipling was perhaps the best-known writer of his generation, late 19th and early 20th century. His father had worked in India as a civil servant for almost 30 years, and Rudyard spent the first six years of his life there during the height of colonial rule by Britain. Later in life, Rudyard spent another six years living and working in India. The impact of the culture was so profound in his life that it affected all of his later writings. He wrote such world-class bestsellers as Kim and The Jungle Book. For these and many other works, Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907.

One memorable observation Rudyard Kipling made is this: The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it. As amusing as this may seem, it is true. And India presents any visitor with a suffocating array of smells. The dust, curries and spices, the fragrance of Ganges Primrose, Lotus, Jasmine, Hibiscus, and the exotic Frangipani. Even body odor in India has a unique pungency. No place on earth presents the variety of smells that India does.

Frequently I reminded visitors that whatever preconception of India they had was almost sure to be wrong. Many expect universal poverty. But India has incredible wealth. Many expect dust and desert. But India has the most magnificent and highest mountains in the world.

And lush tropical fields of rice and coconuts. Many expect oxcarts and buffaloes, but India has some of the most incredible high-tech industries on the planet. Some think of spicy curry, but India has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of varieties of food with regional specialties.

India is a land of big, big numbers. Packed into a land mass a third the size of the United States at a ratio of 1,180 people per square mile live nearly 1.4 billion people, 18% of the world’s population. And if you take pre-Partition India (which includes Pakistan and Bangladesh) the population is approximately 1.8 billion people. The population growth projection is that India will exceed China’s population in the year 2023, well ahead of earlier projections.

Nearly every statistic in the Indian context is large, whether it is the volumes of trash or the Indian diaspora around the world. Consider that the median age in India today is 27, and what is considered the middle class of new, urban, educated consumers, numbers about 400,000,000. India is a force to be reckoned with.

IN HER WORDS

I expected to see poverty, dirt, beggars, and cows in the streets. I expected my senses to be assaulted by sights and scents. I knew India held secrets, paradoxes, diversity, chaos. I experienced all those things on that first trip, and on every trip since. But as Dad said at breakfast in Las Vegas the day before I left when I was feeling a bit anxious, Just expect your preconceptions to be shattered. He wasn’t wrong. He usually isn’t.

I did not expect beauty so exquisite it almost hurts. I did not expect to be so acutely aware of the tenuous balance between want and having just enough. I did not expect to be moved by the way weather-worn, work-worn women carry themselves with such dignity and grace. I certainly did not expect to be asked, Selfie, madam? on the street. I’m sure I’ve appeared on many strangers’ WhatsApp messages and Facebook posts with a caption something like, Look! There was a white blonde lady in the marketplace today!

That first trip was the trip of a lifetime, so I thought. Twelve trips later, India still mesmerizes. Still surprises. Still beckons me, like it beckoned my ancestors.

This is their story. Dad’s story. Our family’s story. My story.

BOOK ONE: PROLOGUE

BEFORE

IN HIS WORDS

I have been badgered for years to write this story. But my question has always been, Why? Who would want to read it? Because writers always want to be read.

Further, the notion of writing an autobiography has always seemed a bit pretentious to me. Maybe there are things to share which have some value, but for the most part there is the danger of just writing a diary of self-justification.

However, against all of my objections, there have been suggestions, efforts, even demands to get this story down. So, over a 10-year period, in fits and starts, I have been capturing memories and events. My daughter, Jacque, has taken these random writings and given them an order, some observations, and some themes. This book—Tadpole—is the result.

I believe that everything about my life was skewed by my first 16 years, which were unusual at best, weirdly strange at worst. Others have gone through similar experiences as I, with mixed outcomes. Some rebelled and withdrew from society. Others rebelled but turned the experience into a foundation on which to build a career. Some were compliant—passive, simply accepting the experience and moving on with life.

In my case, I viewed the experience as a never-ending adventure. It was not until much later that I realized how truly bizarre those first 16 years were when compared with the normal life of a growing child.

But my experience became more than just the way I grew up. I have been able to exploit it, build upon it, use it as a foundation for all my subsequent assignments and activities.

What is this experience am I referring to? The experience of being raised in a completely different culture, one far away geographically and philosophically from the United States, or even the West. This was not a slight brush with a different culture. This was a dramatic, all-encompassing immersion in a culture vastly different than the one on my passport. And it had a profound effect on everything that followed.

In this narrative there will be anecdotes. Observations. And a few lessons and principles. There will be events that may be confusing because the times were confusing. They involved world war and civil and communal wars. They involved the convulsions represented by the End of Empire. They involved the emergence of a new generation of leaders. They even involved some physical dangers. All of this makes up the fabric of the story; which is of course, the fabric of my life.

TREE: THE FAMILY BLACKMAN

IN HIS WORDS

Ever wonder what tree you fell out of? I have, often, and my accumulation of years makes these wonderings an ever more interesting topic.

What actually does form a person? Certainly DNA and genetics play a role. When I was a child people told me that I was a mixture of my mother and father. I don’t know what this means and strongly suspect they did not either. Perhaps it is just easier, and potentially safer, to tell a person they are a mix.

Environmental factors also must have a lot to do with one’s makeup. And here is where mine diverges from the typical because my formative years were so vastly different from the norm. Both the dusty climate of central India and the gloomy skies of western Oregon made me what I am. But first, the genetics.

My maternal grandmother was Ruby Elmore Blackman. I have no idea where this name came from—perhaps a reference to the far above rubies scripture in the Old Testament.

I met Ruby’s mother, my great grandmother, on a cold, wet Oregon morning when I was 16 years of age. She was a very short, very stooped, very quiet, very old lady. I felt no connection with her whatsoever. My only concern that icy and slippery morning was getting her in a car without having a major accident. A fall at her age could be fatal. I was not used to having anyone, especially an old woman, lean on me, so I was awkward. It never occurred to me to ask where she came from, or any other questions.

I know very little about the Elmore family. I don’t even know if Ruby had any siblings. She never spoke of any, and I was too dumb to ask any questions. I don’t know where Ruby was born, where she went to school, or how she met Frank Blackman, her short-lived husband.

I do know Ruby was an interesting woman. As a teenager I would get very annoyed at her for reasons which now escape me. I have the sense that she may not have finished high school, but I am not sure. Unlike now, formal education in her era was optional.

Ruby had an artistic bent. I remember her playing the piano (not particularly well, but adequate for a sing-along of mostly religious music). She also painted and drew on hanging cloth with crayons, and she did these quite well. I still have a drawing she did of a Bengal tiger in India.

She always noticed flowers, plants, flora of all kinds. In the Himalayan mountains of north India she used to collect ferns, no doubt some of them rare, and dry them between heavy books and paper. Then they would go in her scrapbook, which was a collection of drawings, pictures, ferns, and miscellaneous other interesting stuff.

She also had a massive stamp collection, concentrating on stamps from the British Empire. She was very sentimental about all things British, including the Royal Family. She was a true Anglophile. There were pictures and mugs and assorted knickknacks with visages of the royals. The hymn God Save the King (or Queen) would move her to tears. I think this fascination was tied with her memory of arriving in British India in 1920 with her husband, Frank and daughter Orpha, 10 years old at that time, to be missionaries. In her mind, the streams of sentiment, mission, and memory all flowed together.

Ruby lived with us in India after World War II, and when it came time for her to retire and leave the country for the last time, it took her almost two years to sort and pack. I was astonished. She meticulously went through every letter, notebook, article of clothing (which she had mostly sewed herself—she gave sewing classes for Indian girls). Her room was an exhibition of orderly sorting.

After we returned to the United States, she would visit us from time to time. I was a teenager, and this was the time period when she most irritated me, for the previously stated unknown reasons. The last time I remember seeing her was in California in the early 1960s when Maylou and I were pastoring in the thriving city of Ord Bend. She died in California sometime later, and I did not attend the funeral.

At some point, Ruby married Frank Blackman. Never did I hear how they met, when they got married, or much about their early married life. I do know that in 1910 they had a girl, Orpha, my mother.

Frank died in 1925, nine years before I was born. I only know him through stories told and pictures taken. He had a barrel chest and receding hairline, an imposing looking figure in his formal attire of the early 20th century, a black suit.

Frank’s barrel chest seemed appropriate for a gifted tenor who became quite well-known for singing at tent meetings and in large arenas for a variety of religious and operatic events. Some compared him to the legendary tenor of his day, Enrico Caruso. I cannot verify this since no known recording of his voice exists. I do know that when Frank lived in Calcutta, India, which at the time was the capitol of British India, the London Opera Company asked Frank to sing a key tenor part in a touring company. His musical talents carried forward to his daughter, Orpha.

I never heard any talk in our household about the Blackman heritage, but years later I discovered a photograph of Grandpa Blackman sitting with his wife and children (none of whom I knew nor heard about) which identified him as a minister in the Methodist church.

When Frank announced he was giving up a promising career as a preacher and singer to take his diminutive wife Ruby and their only child Orpha to Far Away India, there was a great deal of dismay and surprise. This announcement must have made an indelible impression on many people who knew the talented family.

The Blackman family set sail in 1920 for the land known as the Crown Jewel of the British Empire. Their destination was Calcutta where they docked on the Hooghly river. The Hooghly is an enormous river which flows out of the snows of the Himalaya through the plains of northern India and is a tributary of the Ganga (Ganges), the holiest river in India. Oddly enough, it was on this same river and at these same docks that Frank was to contract his fatal illness just five years later.

The young couple plunged immediately into the work (of being missionaries), into the study of the Bengali language, and into leadership. One indicator to me of Frank’s apparent charisma and leadership skill was that in just two years he was made leader of the eastern part of mission work of the Church of the Nazarene in India. He was only 33 at the time.

The Blackmans lived in a city called Kishorgonj in Bengal, then part of India, but now part of Bangladesh following the 1947 partitioning of the sub-continent as part of the agreement that gave India its independence from the British Empire. In Kishorgonj they lived life as most missionaries did during the colonial era, in a low-slung bungalow with tile roof, roaming cows, and ever-present groups of people and the usual hordes of monkeys on the grounds. They ran a girls’ school and engaged in a wide variety of mission activities.

Lacking any other education options, Orpha was sent to boarding school in Darjeeling. Known as the Queen of the Hill Stations, Darjeeling was one of a string of towns which the British established as a refuge from the heat for westerners. These hill stations, as they were called, became the hub of social and political life for the colonial system. In fact, one of them, Simla (now called Shimla) became the summer capital of India. Each spring a large caravan of trains, trucks, buses, and oxcarts would haul mountains of paper files and other paraphernalia from Delhi (or earlier, Calcutta) up the long climb to the mountains. There, the British Governor (or Viceroy) of India had both his mansion and his entire government close at hand.

Darjeeling, at the eastern side of the Himalaya mountains, was known as the most beautiful of these Hill Stations. Located at 6,000 feet, clinging to the side of mountains with acres of tea estates (Darjeeling Tea), gorgeous waterfalls and ferns, it was a spectacular place. Darjeeling was in sight of Mount Kanchenjunga, the spectacular third highest mountain in the world at an elevation of 28,169 feet. At a distance Mount Everest, the highest point on earth, could be seen. For many years in the early part of the 20th century, Darjeeling was the jumping off point for expeditions to climb Mount Everest, the highest point on earth. All these expeditions were doomed to death or failure until Sir Edmund Hillary and his legendary Sherpa, Tenzing, succeeded in 1953. Kanchenjunga was first ascended in 1955, two years after Everest.

Also close by were the kingdom states of Sikkim and Bhutan, and just to the north Tibet (China) was in full view. The dominant population of Darjeeling and surrounding areas were the Gurkhas, well-known as warriors, and Tibetans who had an Asian appearance and were primarily of Buddhist faith.

Darjeeling housed a boarding school called Mount Hermon which operated for the benefit of children of westerners. It was common, and even expected, that children beginning at about age six, would be taken to the school to live, away from parents, for about ten months of the year. Since the academic year began in February and ended in December, it was possible for children to be at home for Christmas down on the plains. And so it was for Orpha, who at age ten was taken to Mount Herman.

At some point in the mid-1920s, a major dispute broke out among the missionary staff. There were some policy and ethical issues, and as a leader Frank found himself embroiled in the conflict. In those days, letters to the Church of the Nazarene’s international headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, took about three months to be delivered. As yet, there was no airmail, so ship was the fastest option. Telephones were not accessible. In dire and extreme emergencies, a telegraph could be used, but that was exceedingly rare.

In the Church of the Nazarene Archives, there is a series of strongly worded letters between Frank Blackman and H.F. Reynolds, who was the head of mission programs and a General Superintendent of the denomination, about these issues. Apparently, things become so heated that Frank, who must have been a person of strong opinion and high standard, felt compelled to resign his position in protest and took a position with the Thoburn Episcopal Methodist Church. It was founded in 1873 in Calcutta and ran ministries for self-help and development among the poor.

This history remains a bit murky to me. In 1981 I had a conversation with George Franklin, who at the time was well over 90 years of age and who had been a colleague of Frank’s in India. He told me he had letters in his possession that told the real story. He said, I can’t give these to you now, but you may have them upon my death. Later in the 1980s he did die, but I never received the letters. The real story is probably lost forever.

HALLOWED GROUND

IN HIS WORDS

Unlike the subject of the letters, the events surrounding the death of Frank Blackman are quite clear. In the later part of 1925, while living in Calcutta, he received an urgent call from a ship on the Hooghly River to come and serve communion to a desperately ill sailor. He was dying and no doubt wanted his last rites.

Frank took his portable communion set and went to the ship. There he was told that the man had an internal form of smallpox, a deadly and highly contagious disease that was often fatal for its victims. The sailor was being kept in isolation.

Knowing full well the risks, Frank entered the quarantined cabin and served communion to the dying man. The inevitable happened. In just a matter of hours Frank contracted the disease. His form of smallpox was described in those days as internal black smallpox, meaning that the pustules and bleeding was internal and violently painful.

He was taken to an Indian hospital where he died in less than two days. He was buried almost immediately in Christian Cemetery Number One since no embalming existed. My mother and her mother were left alone. The Church of the Nazarene at that point had no provision for bringing missionaries home in emergency situations. But the good people of Portland First Church raised $500 to purchase passage to the United States.

On the other side of the world, in Nampa, Idaho, my father was sitting in a required chapel service at Northwest Nazarene College where he was a student. The service was interrupted by the arrival of a cablegram from India, a highly unusual event.

The president, H. Orton Wiley, stood and read the cablegram to the student body:

Frank Blackman dead. Smallpox. Calcutta, India

(Sent by George Franklin)

The audience sat in stunned silence at the news, but my father’s reaction was electric. You see, Frank had been his Sunday school teacher at Portland First Church of the Nazarene in about 1915. It is said my father was in awe of Frank well before he, Ruby, and Orpha sailed for India in 1920.

My dad’s immediate and completely improbable thought sitting in that chapel service was, You are to take Frank Blackman’s place in India. It was almost an unthinkable possibility. But later, he interpreted this as the moment of his call.

The first time I visited Frank’s gravesite, I was with my grandmother Ruby just after World War II when I was 10 years old. I remember only silence, broken by the incessant crowing of ugly black crows, a breed which inflicts the city of Calcutta. It was eerie for a 10-year-old boy.

I did not visit the cemetery again until 38 years had passed, and the next visit in 1988 was memorable by any measure. I was with son Carey, at the time a senior at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. I had decided that for his graduation gift we would travel around the world; literally, with three weeks in India.

From Carey’s journal:

I am a little nervous about going to India. There will be so much to see that I have no way to anticipate. I haven’t really thought about it until today, but Dad is going back to where he lived his first 16 years, after a 38 year gap. It must be somewhat emotional for him.

Shortly after arrival in Delhi, Carey wrote:

It was scary getting here, but Dad was so excited. He was running around, looking at the high ceilings and thick walls. He was like a little boy. In the shower, I heard him chuckling. I don’t know why, but that made me more comfortable. I was a little scared; no, a lot scared. I didn’t know what to do, how to act, and I was wondering how I was going to handle two weeks and five days of this. Then that evening we were sitting around talking. When the door blew open, we heard singing coming in from outside. Dad said, ‘Now that is India.’ I definitely was not in the United Sates any more.

Upon our arrival in Calcutta, Carey was in full blown and perpetual culture shock as most first-time visitors are.

Again, from Carey’s journal:

I have seen so much that I am completely overwhelmed. It is very hard to put into words all that I have seen. Calcutta is incredible. There are people living on the streets and sidewalks, pollution everywhere, cars everywhere, filth, human rickshaws, bulls and cows in the streets. People cutting hair on sidewalks, people giving others rides on their bikes, sidesaddle-style, open markets that would mean certain sickness if you eat from them, people hanging out of buses, so many things I can’t write them all down.

One objective of that Calcutta visit was to find Frank’s grave. We found the cemetery with little problem; it is just around the corner from the Mother House of Sisters of Charity, better known as Mother Teresa’s place. And, the cemetery is well known in the city for both its size and historical stature.

But finding the grave? That was more complicated. Carey tells it this way:

Dad and I stood at the gate of Christian Cemetery Number One. I had no idea what to expect. I did know that I was excited to help Dad find his grandfather’s grave. At the gate to the cemetery we found two older Indian gentlemen, guards and caretakers, who had access to the enormous, crumbling, dusty old books containing the records of graves.

The gentlemen showed us to the records room piled high with mountains of books that did not appear to be in any particular order. I shot Dad a look that said, This is going to be challenging.

We quickly realized there was a significant communication gap. One of the gentlemen was trying to be helpful, but between his broken English, heavy accent, the betel nut crammed in his mouth and running down his chin, then dripping onto his stained white tank top, it was difficult to understand what he was trying to say. Apparently, this gentleman felt that if he got louder and very close to my face, I would understand him better. To top things off, he was reading the record book upside down! By the end of our conversation it felt like a shouting match with him trying to understand us and us trying to understand him—it was not helping with the task at hand. In frustration, I finally grabbed the upside down book, turned it right side up, and located what I thought might be the plot site based on Frank’s name and date of death.

Then the real search began. Dad wanted to give up several times, but I kept pressing on through the heat, the weeds, broken headstones, and cawing crows. At one point Dad was just done and said, We are leaving. I retorted, We did not fly halfway across the world to give up now. (It’s one of the few arguments I’ve ever won with my dad.) Finally, after several hours of searching, we stumbled upon the gravesite. It was barely visible, completely unkempt, covered with grass and dust, headstone broken into pieces. Still, it was incredibly humbling and rewarding to be standing with my father at the foot of my great-grandfather’s resting place, knowing he had literally given his life because of his calling.

Carey understood that even in its disrepair, Frank’s gravesite was a hallowed place in a chaotic city. Standing beside my son, I was struck by the fact that my ancestors stood at this same place. I was struck that this is the place my grandfather’s body still lies after he paid the ultimate sacrifice for his calling.

In this dirty and dusty graveyard in India, the bond of family, of calling, of sacrifice was crystal clear. I recognized that I am formed by those who have gone before. All of us are.

My next visit to Frank’s grave was with Maylou, in 1989. The search didn’t take as long, but the grave was still unkempt. As only Maylou can do, she befriended a boy. He appeared seemingly out of nowhere! He knew a few words of English and asked if he could keep the grave clean for us. Maylou asked him what this would mean. I clean weeds, keep it dusted, watch over it! Of course this meant some rupees in his pocket! He asked to have his picture taken and then asked if she would send him a copy. He wrote his name and address on a small piece of paper Maylou had in her purse. Because she had promised, after getting the film developed, she mailed him a print.

Fast forward four years—by this time the grave had been refurbished and it wasn’t hard to find. Of course, it was still hot and dusty and filled with the ever present cawing crows. Maylou and I were with our Field Directors from the Eurasia Region who insisted on seeing Frank Blackman’s grave.

Shortly after arriving at the site a young man appeared. We were shocked to see that it was the same boy we had met years earlier. He was still tending graves. Maylou said, I remember you! I gave you some rupees about four years ago, and I sent a picture of you when I returned to the United States. He grinned broadly and said, Many people offer to send me a picture, but you are the only lady that kept her promise. I still have the picture in my room. He pointed to a building not far away. It pays to keep your word.

In 2015, I visited Frank’s grave for the last time with Maylou, our daughter Jacque, and her son Ryan. Our guide was Ravi, a Nazarene pastor. Ravi told us that he often came to Frank’s grave when he was discouraged. At that sacred site, he prayed, meditated, and gave thanks for those who paved the way. Frank’s was a life cut short, but his influence continued for many decades.

It was a full circle moment for those of us in Christian Cemetery Number One that day—me, Maylou, Jacque, and Ryan. But others were present in spirit: Carey, my mother, my grandmother, and every person who ever visited the grave to remember Frank. Although the place we were standing was overgrown, hot, humid, and dirty with the ever-present crows standing guard, it was hallowed ground. It remains so to this day.

Footnote: Years later I discovered that shortly before her father died, my mother, who had become quite an accomplished pianist was offered a full scholarship at a music academy in London. Her intent was to accept and go to London, but those plans were interrupted by her father’s death. Her piano teacher was a lady by the name of Winnie Ford, and in 1950 we tracked her down and visited her in her small home on the outskirts of London. I remember on that occasion she and my mother played a piano duet.

EPIPHANY

IN HER WORDS

It was a brutal travel day. Mom and I departed from London, having arrived from the U.S. a couple of days earlier for rest and preparation for the long trip to India. Our plane left Heathrow mid-afternoon, and we arrived in Bangalore at 5:20 a.m. after the 9.5 hour flight. In Bangalore we had an 8-hour layover before our flight to Mumbai and on to Nagpur. To pass the time, we rented a day hotel in the airport, a place where you can rest (sort of), shower (of sorts), and eat (choosing safe items carefully).

After a two-hour domestic flight to Mumbai and a second 1.5 hour flight to Nagpur, we were greeted by a driver and the Nazarene district superintendent for the completion of our journey, a bumpy five-hour car ride in the dark of night through the Indian outback, through village after village with campfires and people sleeping on cots on the side of the road, until we finally arrived in Washim, Maharashtra, where Dad awaited us. From the time we left our hotel in London to our arrival at the bungalow in Washim, it was 30 hours. Travel to (and in) India, even today, is always challenging and not for the faint of heart.

That trip was in 2015. It was my third trip to India in the space of 12 months. Dad had been in Washim for several weeks consulting with the Church of the Nazarene about how to save the financially strapped H.F. Reynolds Memorial Hospital. I needed to go back to India for my work, so it was the perfect opportunity to take Mom back to India and for me to see where Dad grew up.

After a fitful, jet-lagged night of rest with the sounds of a nearby political rally and passing trains and the scents of rural India wafting through the open window, we woke to the news that Mom and I must surrender our passports to the local police. We reluctantly complied, knowing the authorities were tracking foreigners’ movements in the area. After all, this was a remote area not known for tourism, and the political climate is one of suspicion toward outsiders. The passports were returned later that day, to our great relief.

The next few days are a flurry of memory. The beleaguered hospital, with its mostly-empty wards and buildings in various states of decay contrasted with its brand new operating table, complete with lights donated by the Dalton Knauss Foundation. The Nurses Training College with its eager young students, preparing to care for the area’s poor; going to church, where we were all expected to give a greeting and where we were honored guests; Stone Hall, now a private hospital; the church grounds in Buldana, once on the outskirts of town but now surrounded by bustling businesses; Chikhli, with its dilapidated bungalow now occupied by an intergenerational Nazarene pastor’s family and located adjacent to the coeducational school my grandmother founded; the well my grandfather dug; Indian snacks and chai; women on the side of the road with heavy burdens on their heads; the Nazarene district center where I was excited to see my first monkey in the wild (which threw our Indian host into a bout of hysterical laughter); miles of bumpy rural roads lined with dusty trees planted by the British, standing at attention like soldiers; heat; dust. This was India.

And then Calcutta (now Kolkata). This was India, too. City of Joy, with its slums, crows, blue iron fences, Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa’s order), Kalighat (a Hindu temple to the goddess of death, Kali, and a disturbing place), rickshaws, and street wallahs. Calcutta carries the cultural soul of India, with its contrasts and complexity, with its litter and its layers, and with the Hooghly River, that holiest of places bisecting the city, lined with ghats (steps down to the water’s edge) and crematoriums, where people come to bathe, worship, brush their teeth, and scatter the ashes of their dead. Fifteen million people call this city home. They are rich and poor. They are educated and illiterate. Those who have high moral character and those who commit the worst of atrocities live here. Side by side in a microcosm of the human condition.

It’s a bewildering place. Unsettling to western sensibilities. My son Ryan, who joined us in Calcutta to film stories and try to capture the essence of India on video for the work I do, describes the experience as exhilarating. When he went home, he couldn’t wait to return. Maybe it’s something in his DNA.

Brother Carey had similar experiences on his own trip. In his words:

Today I saw my dad’s old stomping grounds, Chikhli and Buldana. It amazes me how many people remember Dad and his red bike. I saw where the 10-foot cobra slithered over Dad’s stomach. Memories came flooding back to Dad: the field where he played, the places he jumped his bike, the room where his bed used to be.

In the years since, I’ve reflected on how that time in India with my parents and son helped me understand my family’s heritage, particularly my dad. Over and over, I witnessed my father removing his shoes and bowing his head with hands pressed together at his heart in greeting. It was an automatic response, but one I had never seen before. I saw the ease with which he spoke to all Indians, whether they were a leader, a student, a driver, a cook, a gardener, or a hotel clerk. He interpreted the famous Indian head bobble, which can mean yes, no, I don’t know, or I know but I don’t want you to know. He set caste and culture and religion aside and saw the person underneath the label. It was obvious he was at home. He didn’t just feel at home; he was at home in India. It is a home that is not his by birth, by rights, or by citizenship but by experience, immersion, intuition and a lifetime of investment.

In the family we often call Dad the observer. He usually doesn’t say many words. He sometimes seems distant, but he rarely misses anything. He notices: an eye roll, a turn of the head, a stance, a twitch—all have meaning and all are observed, then analyzed. Why is this so? Is it genetics or is it lived experience? I’m no expert in biology, in nurture vs. nature, but I suspect these powers of observation were forged in the crucible of a childhood lived in a foreign country, during a world war, through India’s struggle for independence from Britain and the violent unrest it caused.

My epiphany on that 2015 trip? For my dad, to observe meant to survive.

TREE: THE FAMILY COOK

IN HIS WORDS

Charles Alvin Cook, my grandfather on the Cook branch of the tree, must have been a fascinating man. I was always told that he and my father were very close, and that when he died in 1938 my father was grief-stricken. Charles’ death came while we were in far away India, communication was slow and infrequent, and there was no thought of returning home for an illness or funeral. It just was not done.

Charles looked like an austere and imposing man to me. Since I was so young when he died, I only really knew him through pictures and stories. He went to medical school, and just months before receiving his M.D., he abruptly quit. When I asked why, the only answer I received was that he did not like the look or feel of blood. End of question. End of story.

He must have been a tinkerer, and he was willing to experiment. He built a house with his own hands on five acres of Douglas fir-covered land at the edge of Portland, Oregon. It was a rambling, two-story affair with imposing staircases leading to bedrooms and bathrooms. When I lived there for six months after returning from India, I did not notice his workmanship. What I did notice was that there was electricity in the house. I could punch a two-button switch to turn on or turn off a light! This was a novelty to me, having grown up with no electricity.

In the dining and living rooms, there were built-in storage areas that doubled as seats. They were stuffed with papers, magazines, and all sorts of paraphernalia in which I regrettably took no interest. Without doubt there were treasures to be explored in those cupboards, but I was too engrossed in the cultural shocks of America to notice.

Over the fireplace mantel was a large portrait of one of the meanest looking women I have ever seen. Just looking at her severe black gown and her long curled hair gave me nightmares. Many times, my grandmother Cora reminded me that this woman, some ancestral relative of ours hated Lincoln with a passion. The lady on the mantel’s name was Sarah Coombs, and it is not clear to me how she was connected to the family. My great grandfather Charles Cook had Coombs as his middle name which leads me to believe that the connection was through the Cook family. I discovered the reason for her animosity toward Lincoln was that she owned a plantation, probably in North Carolina, and had many slaves. She lost the slaves, the plantation, and all her possessions in the Civil War, and she laid personal blame on President Abraham Lincoln for the loss. What eventually happened to the lady on the mantel remains a mystery. What history we lose when we don’t ask questions.

One day I ventured to the basement, a dank cobweb-ridden space, and discovered a treasure trove. There was a workbench, covered with dust, and some crafted wood. I asked about it and was told that Charles built violins for a hobby, and indeed I found several lying around. He was a music lover. Our daughter, Jacque, has a violin he built in her home even today.

At one point in his career, Charles ran for mayor of St. John’s, Oregon, and there are extant pictures and news clippings of his election and administration. Apparently, he was well liked and re-elected several times. Later St. John’s was annexed into the city of Portland.

But for most of his life Charles worked for Western Union. I am not sure what he did besides being a telegraph operator, but his tenure endured for a number of decades.

One of the legendary stories told about Charles was that he refused to go to church on Sunday mornings, even though he was married to a godly woman. Cora would never consider missing church. The excuse Charles always gave was that he needed to cook the Sunday noon meal. In those days, this was a big deal ritual with the family gathered. It was unacceptable to miss this event.

My grandfather was an entrepreneur, father, politician, tinkerer, musician, chef, builder, handyman, intellectual. A Renaissance man with an uncanny knack for predictions. He was in the prime of his life during the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia that led to the formation of the Soviet Union. Charles spoke often of a Russian Bear that would sweep down from the North and consume much of the rest of the world. Until 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, that was true.

At some point, Charles met Cora Hamilton, a pretty, petite girl who had moved with her family from Nebraska to Oregon. I never heard the story of their meeting, but I do know that she was a child bride who later had five boys, one of whom was my father.

Cora was born and raised in Albion, Nebraska. It was a town right out of a Willa Cather novel, and her stories reinforced every bit of Cather lore. Sod houses with detached barns, open prairies, bitter blizzards. Once Cora told me of a blizzard so severe that both house and barn were completely covered in snow. The only way the family could blaze a trail to the barn to feed the animals was with an iron heated on the wood stove. They would rush the hot iron outside and burrow a tunnel through the snow to the barn. Cora didn’t have much formal education, and my hunch is that schooling was limited in 1880s Nebraska.

Eventually the Hamilton family decided to migrate West. It is entirely possible they did this in covered wagons on the Oregon Trail, but there is no record of this. They settled in western Oregon, an area completely compatible with their English, Irish, Scot, and Dutch roots.

Cora had six siblings, two girls and four boys. The Hamilton boys were considered very successful. One was a lawyer, one a doctor, one a preacher, and one an undertaker. My mother used to say they were all professionals, and added, Just look at their soft hands. My mother had a fixation on hands and would often try to tell a person’s life story by looking at their hands.

Cora’s only sister was Edith, who eventually married Mr. Whitesides, so I always heard of her as Edith Whitesides. Mr. Whitesides was a successful businessman with several enterprises in the Portland, Oregon area, including a trucking company. He eventually sold the trucking business to his son-in-law, a man with the last name of Robinson. Until the 1950s one could hear Robinson trucks clanging around the Portland area in vehicles so old that the driveshaft was an external chain, much like that of a bicycle. Edith was quite a legend. Highly educated, she became noted as a church planter in both the western and eastern United States.

One side note: the Hamilton boys discovered that one of their Dutch ancestors had helped settle New Amsterdam and had owned a farm on the Island of Manhattan (now at the location of Wall Street). They sued (I don’t know who the litigants were) in an effort to recover a fair market value for that farm. It was an ongoing joke in our poor Cook family that despite the remote connection to Wall Street, we would stand to gain one million dollars if the lawsuit went our way. In one idle conversation I remember my parents discussing what they would do with such a huge windfall. Obviously, we did not receive that windfall.

After Cora and Charles married, Cora’s primary role was housewife and mother. She seemed not only content but completely fulfilled by that role. Never did I hear any regrets over her early marriage or a lost career. To her, having and raising five boys was the best career one could have.

She had a wicked sense of humor. She would crack jokes and provide witty quips in any conversation. She was also feisty and energetic. Her domain was the kitchen. In this era before our obsession with healthy foods, organic products, or cholesterol, she merrily produced the most delicious fried chicken and gravy that one could ever imagine eating. Several times when she prepared enormous steaks, I recall her cutting off a gargantuan slab of pure fat at the table, stabbing it with her fork, jiggling it in my face, then popping it in her mouth. I was grossed out, which is precisely why she engaged in this exercise. Perhaps this is why I prefer my steak well done to this day.

Cora was known as a prayer warrior. She was devout and was always the one people turned to when trouble was brewing. The common opinion was that if you could get Cora on your side, God would answer, because she had a direct telephone line to heaven. Her telephone was a vintage Alexander Graham Bell black device hanging on the wall, and I remember it often ringing with someone calling Cora to request prayer.

In spite of her propensity for fried food and fat, Cora lived into her late 80s and had a happy life. Charles died in 1938, so she lived alone in the rambling house her husband built for a very long time.

Cora and Charles had five sons and zero daughters. She would often tell me how grateful she was to have all boys. They are much easier to raise than girls, she would claim. She prayed for the five boys all the time. Two of them became preachers, but the other three had somewhat questionable spiritual credentials.

One of Cora’s sons was named Charles, nicknamed Charlie. He was an active, attractive man who chainsmoked. I never recall seeing him without a cigarette in his mouth. He had a limp as the result of a World War I injury. But as my father would say, Charlie always wanted to be injured in a war and have a limp. He got his wish. Eventually Charlie lived in Hollywood where he was the CFO for Paramount Studios and negotiated movie contracts for the major stars of the day.

William, or Bill, was the second son. He