Father of the Man by Dr. Peter L. Colman

The following unrevised ‘preface’ is what Mr. Colman sent to me. I thought it might be helpful to include it as an appropriate introduction to his story. In some inexplicable way, his story has become my own, but with one minor qualification: as the historical data will confirm, it is his unique story. If one were willing, as Coleridge proposes, to allow a ‘willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith,’ it could very well have been my story, or anyone else’s, had he or she lived in another place, in another time.

Use your imagination. Allow yourself a willing suspension of disbelief, just for the moment.

Here is the Preface to Mr. Colman’s novel. Even as I perused its curious pages, I couldn’t help but think that it was a story whose conclusion was still being written, a history, a living chronicle…in progress still. Reading the story was like meeting the man himself, a man still learning and growing, whose story, to some extent, was everyone’s story.

It certainly was mine.

That one incidental encounter, that one casual conversation changed the course of my life forever, just as a slight change of course by a touch of the ship’s wheel could radically alter a passenger’s final destination.

As I continued to read, I began to wonder about my own past and those who have contributed to my life, those who, without knowing it, have helped make me the person I have become.



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