SAMUEL G. TOOMA, AUTHOR
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November 03rd, 202011/3/2020 MEMOIRS OF AN ORDINARY MAN LIVING AN EXTRAORDINARY LIFE
FOREWORD I have always thought of myself as just an ordinary guy who has lived an average, ordinary life. I was born into a poor family in the city of Central Falls, RI on 28 April 1941. My mother (Annette St. Pierre Tooma), a French Canadian, was raised in New Bedford, MA, and my dad (Samuel George Tooma), a Syrian was born in Central Falls. Both my dad’s parents were living in Syria, and he and his brother, Effie, were raised by their uncle, Sam Tooma. Central Falls had the distinction of being identified in the 1940’s census as being the most densely populated square mile in the United States. It had 24,610 souls packed into that one square mile. Central Falls was made up of numerous, small ethnic communities. We had Polish, Italian, Syrian, French, Lithuanians, and German neighborhoods, just to name a few. Each one had its own church, grocery stores, bars, and meeting places in order to desperately maintain its own traditions, language, and ways of life. Central Falls, along with its sister city, Pawtucket, was one of the last of a dying breed of towns in the north that was losing its main means of employment, factories, to the warmer climate of the south. My Father worked for Fram Corporation, and my Mother, worked for a textile manufacturer. Each earned slightly more than minimum wage. As I said, we were poor. We lived on the top floor of a 3-family tenement house, and our rent was $3.50 a week. Yes, the decimal place is correct. I’m not sure, but I estimate that our living area was about 1,200 square feet, which was not bad, I guess, for a family of 3. As I said, I was just an ordinary boy leading an ordinary life, and my childhood and school years were uneventful. In high school, when they were passing out the superlatives for the graduating seniors, I did not get “most popular”, “best looking”, “most likely to succeed”, or “best dancer”. No, I was voted as “most versatile”. How boring. But, yet, it described me perfectly. I always described myself as a jack of all trades and master of none. I was on the basketball and baseball teams but not the star; I was on most of the high school committees but never the chairman; I was in the school plays but never the lead. You get what I mean, just an ordinary guy. Upon completion of high school, I was accepted to the University of Rhode Island (URI), and I had high hopes of attaining a degree in chemical engineering. However, like most college kids, I soon realized that engineering was not for me. I now wanted to be a research chemist. Yes, that is right, I was (and still am) a nerd. And as a nerd, when selecting my curriculum electives, I shunned the easy A’s of basket weaving and art appreciation for the much more challenging scientific courses of biology, geology, and oceanography. No one took these kinds of courses as electives. But I did. This is probably the first time in my life that I was not ordinary. Little did I know that this path of events would become extremely important and would change my life forever. I will discuss this in more detail later in my memoirs. Suffice it to say, I did graduate with a BSc in chemistry with a plan to pursue a PhD in research chemistry. After graduating from URI, I moved to Washington, D.C. It is there where my life changed. I was still unexceptionable in every way, but, somehow I met, courted, and married an unbelievably beautiful, intelligent woman, Sylvia Stone. Sylvia provided me with 2 wonderful daughters who, in turn, provided me with 6 amazing grandchildren. We are still clicking along after 54 years of marriage. Over the years as my daughters and grandchildren were growing up, they would ask me what I did for a living. I would discuss my career and many instances or events in my career. I was amazed at how they would crawl up onto my lap and beg me to tell them my “stories”. They would ask me to tell one I had already told them numerous times. I would say, “But I’ve already told you that one.” And they would ask me to tell them the story again. So, I would. My daughters and grandkids have asked me for years to write down my experiences and put them into a book. I always would tell them that nobody would be interested to read about what went on in my life. But just recently, Sylvia convinced me that a written record of my stories would be very important to them in remembering me after I had passed on. In fact, my granddaughter, Natalie, told me that she would read them to her children. That pushed me over the edge. In thinking about how I should undertake such a mission, the nerd in me took hold, and I decided to write an outline before I began. In preparing this outline, it became clear to me that I truly have not led a boring, ordinary life. In fact, as I look at my life, it has been truly exciting and far from ordinary. My life has been filled with near death experiences, miracles, near miracles, and many interesting instances that would not happen to an ordinary and boring guy. The stories and events which follow are all true. To make this point absolutely clear, I want to repeat it; the stories I present in this chronicle are absolutely true. I have tried to recollect the details such as names, dates, etc. as best I can. In Chapter 1, I will provide a basic overview of the various categories of my life stories. Also, I felt that it was necessary to give as much detail as I could because, if neglected, many of the stories lose their impact. So, sit back, relax, and, hopefully, enjoy the ride. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION MY CHRISTIAN WALK. First and foremost, it is important to know that I am a believing Christian. And, as such, I believe that God is in control of all things, and there are no such things as coincidences or luck. In fact, I like to think of these sort of things as “God-incidences.” Therefore, in my mind, all the stories which follow have God actively working in my life. This is an extremely important point to remember as you read my stories. So, I would like to provide a brief history of my Christian walk. The major faith denomination in Central Falls was Catholic. The major large churches were Catholic, and most of the ethnic churches were orthodox Christian denominations. I was born into the Catholic denomination. My Father was an altar boy at the Syrian Orthodox church, but it was my Mother, a French Canadian Catholic who controlled my religious upbringing. For example, even though I attended the public school system, she enrolled me in St. Edwards Catholic school in the 2nd grade so I could fulfill the Catholic sacrament of First Communion. The amazing thing here is that about this time, my Mother had lost her faith, but I, as a young boy, continued to follow the requirements of my faith. I walked alone to church every Sunday, went to confession, attended worship services on holy days of obligation, etc. What was really strange was that I attended a church where the liturgy was in Latin and the sermon was in French. I did not understand a word that was said. Yet, I firmly believed that Jesus was the son of God, that He died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins, and that He was resurrected from the dead. At the age of 11, I had a strong desire to move on with my Catholic walk. I wanted to be confirmed in my faith and become a “soldier of Christ.” I had no idea of how to do this, since I was enrolled in the public school system. I asked my Mother to help me. She supported me in this and called the Catholic school and asked what she could do. It just so happened that the school was going to start an after-school course to prepare the students for confirmation by the Bishop in a month or so. My Mother was told that I could enroll in the class and be confirmed by the bishop. I was very excited. However, things got very tough for me. I was in the 5th grade at the time, and I would run the quarter mile from my school to the Catholic school where the class was being held. Once there, I was constantly tormented by the other boy students because I was an outsider and not one of them. But because being confirmed was so important to me, I toughed it out, completed the class, and was confirmed. I was now a soldier of Christ and proud of it. This event is important to me because I now firmly believe that my decision to be confirmed was mine and mine alone. And it was not easy because of the way I was treated by the Catholic boys. I am convinced that this act on my part was when I was accepted by my Lord as a child of God and given the wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit. If you believe as I do, you will clearly see the Holy Spirit taking care of me in most of the stories presented below. The amazing thing to me is that I continued to follow the obligations of my faith through junior high school, high school, and even through my 4 years of college. However, when I moved to Washington, D.C. because of my job, my interests changed. I was traveling all over the world and desperately trying to develop a professional career as an oceanographer for the navy. And just as important was the fact that at this time I discovered girls. I put my faith on the back burner, and it stayed there for 37 years. MOVING TO HILTON HEAD (2000). In the late 1990’s, I began planning my retirement, and Sylvia and I began our plans to build our retirement home on Hilton Head Island. During this time, she began taking Bible studies through the widespread Bible Study Fellowship program (BSF). She would come home after class, and we would discuss the week’s lesson. She was studying the book of John at the time. I knew little of the Bible, and I was fascinated by it all, and I thirsted to learn more. One evening, Sylvia plied me with a bottle of wine and asked me that if she found a nice church on Hilton Head would I go to church with her. I promised her that I would. Soon after we moved to Hilton Head and after we got settled into our new home, she came up with a list of churches nearby. I kept my promise, and one Sunday we attended St. Luke’s Church about a half mile from our house. We instantly fell in love with St. Luke’s, the head pastor, Greg Kronz, and the people of the congregation. We never went to the other churches on Sylvia’s list, and we are still active members of this church 19 years later. My strong boyhood Christian faith that I had put on the back burner 37 years ago was rekindled at this time thanks to 3 important things: (1) St. Luke’s was a strong Christ-based church that strictly followed Scripture (the Bible); (2) We joined several church Bible study small groups; and (3), I began studying the Bible in a structured way through the international Community Bible Study program (CBS). As I write these words, I am about to start my 18th year of Bible study through the CBS program. In the chapters that follow, I will describe numerous events that have taken place during my life. Many of these events occurred during my professional career and many others within my personal life. They are not presented in chronological order, but rather within a particular category. The categories that I have selected are major events in the development of my professional career (Chapter 2), near death experiences (Chapter 3), miracles (Chapter 4), testimonial stories (Chapter 5), and interesting (read that humorous) stories that could only have happened to me (Chapter 6). I have also included several appendixes at the end of the book which I feel are interesting because they help you to better understand who I am. Appendix A has photos of me and my family; Appendix B provides a chronology of my life’s events; Appendix C compares civilian and military ranks; Appendix D has some of my early short stories that I wrote when I was 12 to 13 years old; and Appendix E has a bonus life story that I think you may enjoy.
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