I met “Mr. Young” in the autumn of 1998, half a year after my first date with his daughter. The next time I heard his voice was on a cassette tape he mailed from Bolivia after I asked if I could marry her. The last time I heard his voice was on his way out of my house after dropping off a donation toward her recent missions trip.
Across the 28 years between my first and last conversations with my father-in-law, I learned that we held different theology, politics, and bucket lists. Curt was filled with a rooted certainty that contrasted my growing skepticism and insatiable curiosity. But I also learned that I wanted a similar reputation—or at least a similar life trajectory.
Curt escaped to the Marine Corps after an unstable childhood that stretched from Oklahoma to California. His chemically addicted mom married five times, and some of those scattered homes weren’t physically or emotionally safe. The dude traversed the Great Plains as an itinerant combine driver and then worked as a welder on oil rigs—a man’s man who wore trucker hats before Burt Reynolds movies made them cool and X-Games athletes made them cool again.
He carried that gumption to the Bolivian side of the Amazon basin, using machetes and chainsaws to cut a runway for supply planes. He built a primitive cabin on stilts as a mission base where his preschoolers explored in their undies and rubber boots. He fabricated an impressive swamp tractor with floater tires. He sliced through snakes while clearing land and got rescued while swimming—shotgun still in hand—through the inky waters of a pitch-black jungle night after his fishing boat overturned. Half of the pictures of that era of my wife’s life have Sharpie edits over their neighbor’s default nakedness, and her family left the remote lifestyle only after Curt’s ministry partner took a six-foot bamboo arrow in the back from angry locals.
The dude was hardcore. Full out. All in. He was on an assignment from God, and everyone needed to be on board. For a man who wore a lot of gray pants, his world held a lot of black and white—his way or the wrong way. Some of my wife’s memories include notes of the red-faced parenting of my childhood. But that’s not the dad she now remembers or the one that brought tears to our eyes as we previewed the slideshow for his memorial. His tender, wounded soul shed more and more armor as more and more candles were added to his birthday cakes.
In retirement, Curt’s heart and voice both grew softer with each trip around the sun. He proved more grateful for the redemption in his story and more tickled by the grandkids that kept arriving around his table. Each year brought more wonder to his eyes and more joy from simple pleasures. His prayers grew shorter and more often punctuated with tears.
Isn’t that how it should be?
The shirtless kid who raced modified boats and stole motorcycles became the sweater-vested octogenarian who sang carols in Christmas pageants and hymns to residents of assisted living centers. The strong-handed missionary who assembled trailers to keep his family fed was the same hunched grandpa who later looked around holiday tables with moist eyes and shook his head at how lucky he was. He felt so blessed, and he regularly let us know it.
His whole life, my wife’s dad escaped into westerns—televised stories of a daring, sharp-jawed wrangler who dropped no-nonsense one-liners before leaving towns better than he found them. Fittingly, Curt slipped peacefully into the afterlife while his TV flickered with such a story. The fiction that had inspired his daring feats had reached peak reality in the nonfiction of his life. During a summer sunset, he disappeared into the horizon having convinced us not just that he’d left the world a better place but also that he’d left the world from a better place.
Curtis Howell Young proved that the gospel he preached in mountain villages and rainforest clearings can eventually be good news for those who know us best. He demonstrated that the strongest evidence we can give the world of an Eternal Healer is our own healed heart. His example gives me hope that my last decades on this planet can be my best years yet. Whether or not I get as much time here as he did, I’ll spend the rest of my timeline grateful for my intersection with his.
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