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But there is precious little celebration associated with July 17 — unless one happens to be a member of my family. This was the date my father selected to be his birthday and, since his passing, the day we hold the annual Phillips family reunion.

I do not know of anyone else who had the opportunity to choose their own birthday, but, due to odd circumstances and governmental bureaucracy, such fell to his lot. The poverty-stricken, anti-academic culture of the rural South of the early 1900s was not a conducive environment for a child to enter this world.

My father’s family had lost everything in a house fire and the only remaining structure on the farm to offer shelter to a woman giving birth was a smokehouse. No hospital, no country doctor. If his birth was ever recorded, it too was destroyed when the county courthouse burned to the ground.

From those abominable circumstances surrounding his birth, matters only became worse. His father died shortly afterward of cancer and his mother followed when Daddy was about 8 years old. He never knew even the year he was born much less the date.

No family wanted another mouth to feed, so he was placed in an orphanage — for two nights. Times were hard, especially arduous for nonprofits of any ilk. Little boys were often doled out to anyone who would take them and many of them wound up working in sweatshops and cotton mills as cheap labor.

Daddy was placed on a dairy farm and did not see the inside of a school until he attended the PTA meetings for his own children. Whenever it was judged that his performance was too slow or under par, the dairy owner would beat him with a horsewhip. One day when he thought he was about 11 years old, treading his way to attend the cows in the barn, he simply walked on down the dusty road and never looked back. He reasoned that if he could work to make money for the owner, he could work just as well for himself. And he did. Any kind of work.

He shoveled coal for the boilers of a steamship and delivered dry goods with a horse and wagon, herded cattle and even ran bootleg whiskey. Of all the episodes of his “Oliver Twist� youth, three stand out in my mind as unforgettable and all three occurred when he deemed himself to have been about 17.

First, he witnessed a young Black man seriously abused for failing to comply with a sundown law. (For anyone unfamiliar with this brand of particularly harsh racially discriminating legalese, in many communities across the nation there were regulations that required African-Americans not to be in public places after sundown or suffer the retribution of vigilantes.) Daddy saw this man racing from his work in an effort to reach his home before sunset only to be accosted and humiliated by eight men who hitched him to a farm dray and whipped him until he pulled it all loaded with them. Unable to defend the young man from enduring the pain and indignity, my father vowed that he would never treat another person with such degradation.

Second, though he had never attended a church in his life, he felt that there must be something there worth trying. Dressing as best as he could one Sunday he did just that. He remembered not understanding what all the formality was all about, nor was he familiar with the songs they sung, but he still recalled that not one person spoke to him. He was embarrassed and ashamed of being so poor and ignorant. He did not try again for almost 20 years when a young lady invited him to church and eventually became my mother.

The third occurrence he shared with me was that of enlisting in the Army (Actually, it was the cavalry, and, yes, the Army still had a cavalry in his lifetime.). As he was standing in the recruiting line awaiting his turn, he heard the ill-natured sergeant repeatedly screeching at others to give their names and birthdates. Simply because it was July and he thought he was 17, he selected July 17.

Time passed. It always does. Eventually he fathered nine children, of whom I am number seven. He worked long hours, sometimes two jobs, but we always made certain we had a home, food on the table and none of us were excused from receiving an education. He was respected by his fellow church members for his sympathetic reasoning and sound advice. Three of his sons became ministers and all of his children and most of his grandchildren have been leaders in their respective congregations as well as their communities.

I was privileged that upon his learning of inoperable cancer he related to me and me alone the atrocious treatment of his childhood and youth. The world had truly dealt him a bad hand of cards, through no fault of his own. When I asked him why he had not even shared this with my mother, he simply said, “My life really did not begin until I met your mother and she invited me to go to church with her. That made all the difference and is the only part that matters.�

If we will allow, God is still making a difference in people’s lives.