Gary Halbert:  

Life I have been married since April 16, 1977. I have 3 children (2 deceased) and 1 remaining son 43 years old. He is married now but we have no grand children yet. My wife and I live in Kaufman, TX on the family farm and have the past 30+- years. I work in Seagoville, Texas. Workplace I have been working with the same construction company for 42 years. I started out a labor and am now General Manager for the last 20 years now. MY EXTENDED LIFE STORY I was raised in great family. My mother carried us to church as young people and on a particular night around the age of 10 to 12 years old a friend asked did I want to be a Christian, and of course I said yes. I really was not sure what that meant though, but I went forward and took the preacher by the hand he prayed and I filled out a card and there I was a Christian (??). I went through high school not getting into any trouble, basically a good person I guess, but I did some things I am not proud of and then I dropped out of church. I graduated from High School and went off to Jr. College on a athletic scholarship, and just before the end of the 1st semester I met this girl. We dated and I was getting serious and she was a bit more stand offish, she was scared due to a earlier failed marriage that resulted in her having a daughter. We continued to date for a couple of years and then finally married April 16, 1977. Things were moving fast, we bought a house; my wife became pregnant with my first biological child Joshua Blaine Halbert, who was born on June 3, 1978. We had the perfect family, my wife, me, our daughter, and our new son. Life was good. I was working in construction and had to travel a lot during the week, but home on weekends and right back out on Sunday. I had fallen completely out of church. Then came April 27, 1981, I was working on hospital in Waco, Texas. We were placing some frame work for our forms when all of the sudden the frame work broke out from underneath me. I fell 13 feet and broke the talus bone in my ankle, cut my chin up some. My company came and got me from the hospital and carried me back to Dallas to meet with a orthopedic surgeon. This visit lead to me be hospitalized and surgery to repair on the ankle, and not all went well. There were many complications which resulted in me being crippled for 2 years. I had a bad limp and eventually for some reason the blood vessels in my foot collapsed and I had no circulation in my foot. My foot began swelling and rolling over to one side so that I was actually walking on the side of my foot. So later on I as helping my dad roof a house and walking on the slope was really causing me some pain so I pulled my shoe off to let my foot rest for a minute or so and my dad saw the condition of my foot and demanded I see a doctor right away. This is when I found that the blood vessels in my foot had collapsed, and from there I was sent to a circulation doctor, that performed Lumbar sympathetic block in my back and injected medication to increase blood flow to my foot. I was having this done once a week. After the circulation returned I was on to a second surgery, which was very successful and now I walk normal but the ankle is fused. I can live with that. On Monday September 29, 1981 I had an appointment for one of the blocks in my back and then I would head off to the airport and fly to Amarillo, Texas for work. That morning my daughter was eating breakfast and watching cartoons before we carried her to school and she was kind of picking at me for sleeping a little late (I am usually a early riser). We took her to school and then me on to the doctor, and then my wife dropped me at the airport. I boarded my flight to Amarillo and was there and on the job before lunch time. I had been on the job for just a few minutes when one of fellow workers came and told me they needed to see me on the ground. My boss began to tell me my daughter has just passed away, I said no way I just saw her a few hours ago. He said no Glen, this is for real. He carried me back to the airport and I caught flight back home ASAP. Upon arriving home, my wife tells me the E.R. doctor just told her that we had a very health daughter but she was gone. Unreal. My life was crumbling before my eyes. About 2 weeks later we were visiting my in laws and the coroner’s office called me and said through microscopic autopsy they had found that our daughter passed away from Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. I had no idea what that was, but was about to learn a lot about it. All of these things happening made me a very angry individual, but I was able to take my aggressions out on the job since I worked construction. I just could not see why God would take a beautiful child and leave someone like me. After about a year or so my wife began wanting another child, and I immediately said no way what if something was wrong or if they were sick. I just did not think I could deal with that kind of thing again. My wife won out eventually and on July 14, 1983 we had another son (Wesley Blake). My worst fears were about to happen. He was premature, he had respiratory problems, and there was a spot on his back that was thought to be open spine at first. Good news though it was not open spine, but there was a problem. Blake had what was called a dermal sinus in his back, basically it is cyst attached to his spin and a tube attached to the cyst. They thought first trying to cauterizing it but that cause infection. It would require surgery as soon as his respiratory problems were stable, and so it happened. Of course the doctors painted a grim picture, because they have to tell you the worst possibilities, but all went well. Finally he came home after about 2 months. Life was good again; Blake had filled a lot of the holes in hearts left by Stephanie’s death. Blake was much like his m...Expand for more