I was born but not raised in Kansas City, Missouri. I was raised but not born in South Florida. Somewhere in between, I became far more a farmhand than a beachcomber, loving barns far more than boats, the smell of new-mown hay more than salt in the air, and simple pleasures more than significant city endeavors.
Dad and my grandfather were my early influencers. The good Lord didn’t become number One until I woke up from a sixty-year sleep. Gramps was a workshop guy. Every new tool was his next best friend. He used his workbench as my training ground – which is what I love to do with my grandchildren when they visit their “Pop’s Shop.” I credit Dad, a musician and artist, and Grandpa, a business visionary and maker-of-anything for bestowing on me whatever creative tendencies I have – although God is undoubtedly the Influencer Above All.
Summers on my grandparent’s farm ended with a visit to a hardware store to replace the screwdrivers I reduced to a nub on his old Sears grinder as the sparks flew. He made me pay for them by grilling burgers under a grocery bag hat. After he passed, I returned to that old workbench, only to find an old Folgers’ coffee can full of useless drivers but all precious to him. And yes, an old Folgers can is now in my shop, too, waiting for my grandchildren to grind away.
When Pa and I were apart, I tagged alongside Dave Wagner, his farmhand, and the man who tagged me Little Britches. When I couldn’t find him, I knew where to find him. Through his farmhouse window, I’d watch him spoon soup for Francis, Aunt Francis to me, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. From his witness, I learned that caring for those you love is far more important than caring for anything else, which God later called me to do when breast cancer called on Janda Karen, the wonderful wife of my youth.
I married Janda before graduating from Mercer University in 1973. Over 38 years, we raised Stephen Jr and Chad and had too many dogs to count. As I write this (August 6, 2021), I am two days past what would have been our 50th anniversary, but God had other plans. By 2004, I had concluded a 22-year stint as the third-generation dealer/owner (with my dear brother Bill) of Kelley Chevrolet. Thereafter, I co-founded the South Florida Christian Businessman’s Chamber of Commerce and became a State of Florida civil mediator specializing in Christian conflict resolution. I also opened MasterWorks, a publisher of a 500-piece archive of Wm. Henry Chandler pastels that Janda and I acquired and which, according to the Smithsonian Institution, was likely the nation’s largest Chandler archive. Chandler was one of America’s most prolific pastelists whose work was widely distributed in the late 1800s Sears-Roebuck catalog. Intrigued by treasure-hunting long-lost Christian artifacts, the bride of my youth and I discovered 2,700 long-lost, handwritten, and signed lyrics by Fanny Jane Crosby, America’s “Queen of Gospel Music,” around which I launched Nashville, Tennessee’s Power/Full Productions in 2005, intending to develop an extensive catalog of new recordings.
At the tender age of fifty-six, God called Janda home in 2007 shortly after we moved to Nashville, where I became (for the fun of it) a designer of odd-ball products for Jeff Foxworthy and Dan Whitney, aka Larry the Cable Guy. During this same period and with Loren Balman, past president of Warner Music Group, we launched Far Further, a global music community developer that eventually morphed into (dot)Music. Following a successful 15-year pursuit during which we faced off against Facebook, Amazon, and others, “.music,” a new Top Level Domain akin to .com, will launch in 2023.
Discovering the Crosby archive inspired the search for first-edition daily devotionals, for which Forever Relevant was created. As of February 2023, the archive is approaching 40,000 individual “devotional days” dating to 1417, increasing by 1,000 +/- days each month, plus the Crosby and Chandler collections.