Writer of Father of the Man Author Dr. Peter L Colman

Though I have never been compelled, with respect to my parents’ divorce and irreconcilable rupture, to probe the question of infidelity in any great detail (water, and debris, are better left under the bridge), I did learn in recent years of several disconcerting details, only one of which I feel free to relate.

One of my father’s brothers (presently residing in Goffstown, NH), Uncle Bill (who, to my knowledge, has never made any profession or pretension with respect to the Christian faith), revealed to me in the days just prior to my father’s death that just after Dad’s combat experience at Guadalcanal, and his return to Camp Pendleton for his remaining two years of duty with the Marine Corps, Dad did have a one-night fling. According to Uncle Bill, Dad had regretted this act of passion and moral failure deeply; he had found a quiet place alone on a hill one night overlooking the beaches of San Diego and wept bitter tears of repentance. Dad had never chosen to share this moment of weakness and shame with me during his lifetime, not even in the intimate, dramatic moments before his death. To this day, however, in spite this and other weaknesses and failures, I have no reason to doubt the genuineness of his spiritual conversion. While I may be able to understand the tendency of other family members to condemn his failures as a father to an only son, I have also become keenly aware that no one, including myself, is entirely without sin. After all, both Dad and I, growing up as we did in a traditionally pietistic, conservatively ‘evangelical’ religious tradition, have always believed that a prerequisite to genuine faith is a real recognition of personal sinfulness. Did not Dad frequently preach and remind others, in an attempt to urge them to a place of repentance and faith, that ‘all have sinned,’ and that ‘if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation’? Yes, frequently, and with a sense of sincerity, though tainted, I suspect, with what I can only describe as unconscious vestiges of self-righteousness. Perhaps there is a simple explanation, which Dad may have never understood, and which I have only come to understand in recent years. The popular text in Romans 3:23, which so-called ‘believers’ are accustomed to quoting to convince the ‘unbeliever’ of his/her spiritual need, was, in fact, written as a sober reminder to the Christian community in the church of Rome. The sober reminder was addressed to Christians who had been forgiven, but who still (and for the remainder of their earthly lives) would have to contend with their own sinfulness. ‘One beggar, telling another beggar where he found bread,’ as the saying goes. Infidelity has not been the only discernible stain or unfortunate imperfection in the Colman family tapestry. The Colman and Moy clans of Auburn and Manchester have also had, in the course of their relatively non-descript, modest New England sojourn, the unfortunate tendency to lose their children to tragedy. Of course, this is not uncommon. The annals of our forefathers are replete with accounts of the unfortunate, untimely deaths of children. But recent Colman family records document the very sad, and what appears to be repetitious loss of daughters.










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