MK Gantt Ministries

A few days ago, I wrote an article that revealed a bit of my life as a child, abandoned by my mother who fled her abusive father. After some reflection, I feel as if I ought to share a bit more of her side of the story. It took me many years before I was able to share details of my childhood, to reveal the pain of my own memories as well as to protect my Mother’s memory. Recently, I realized that the things my Mom overcame to become the beloved “Nana” to my children and grandchildren; the deep wounds that she bore with such grace. The wounds were deep, they were profound, and for the most part she bore them in silence. She would not speak in detail of her suffering even to me until she lay in her bed in a nursing home. It was only then did she speak of the unspeakable.

This is for my mom, Martha Joyce.

The Back Story

Early one spring morning, I sat in my pickup outside a small wood-frame house on Modena Extension in Gastonia, NC. I lived on Modena from the time I was not quite two until halfway through the first grade – an unofficial foster child of Clarence and Ruby Long. Clarence was a painter, and Ruby raised chickens and foster kids. There were three of us: a skinny kid named Edward, his older brother Martin, and me, the youngest of the three.

I was not yet two years old when my grandfather left me with the Longs. Clarence and Ruby Long were acquaintances of my grandfather, who often took in foster children – children unwanted by their families.  I lived with the Longs until I was seven. The early years of my life held no memories of a real family. I had no brothers or sisters, knew nothing of cousins, aunts, uncles, and had no idea who my father or mother might be. While on a business trip to Gastonia, I drove down to Modena Extension to see whether the old place was still there. 

I have absolutely no recollection of life before the Longs, but I have vivid memories of my life there. Even though most of the place is gone now, I can remember precisely what the house looked like; the placement of the chicken coops, the outhouse, the old coal stove, the black and white TV that sat in the far corner of the living room, and especially the giant green apple tree on the edge of the property. I remember climbing up into that tree with a saltshaker and eating sour apples until my belly hurt so badly I could hardly climb down from the tree. The kitchen was on a cement slab lower than the rest of the house, and you had to climb two steps up from the kitchen to the living room and bedrooms. My “room” was a small cot behind the door that led from the living room to other rooms in the house.


As I sat there, down on Modena Extension that morning, I was astounded at how much I remembered and how clearly I could recall certain things, considering my young age. I recalled that Clarence drove a dark green panel truck filled with partially filled buckets of paint, drop cloths, brushes, and the like. I was amazed, sitting there on the street corner, that I could actually recall the smell of the turpentine that permeated the old truck.  I remembered it so clearly that Clarence drove a mint-green Chevy sedan. I didn’t know then that it was a 1952 Chevy Biscayne – but I remember it so vividly that I now know the make and model.

I remember when Clarence would allow us boys to tag along when he went rabbit hunting, even the sound of his two beagles barking and the bellow of his old shotgun, the warmth of that old pot-bellied coal stove that filled the house with a sense of well-being on cold days and the fact that every Saturday night we watched “Gunsmoke” on that old black and white TV in the corner.  I also remember the night Ruby woke me up and brought me to the kitchen.  My grandfather was there with a young woman I did not know.  “Michael,” Ruby said, “This is your mother, and she has come to take you with her.” 


My mother was crying as she pulled me into her arms. I had no idea what she was saying or what all the bother was about. I certainly didn’t understand what was about to happen. 

While the grown-ups talked, Ruby took me by the hand and quietly walked me back to my bed. We sat down together on the edge, where she put her arms around me and gave me the first hug I ever remember. She then took my face between her open palms and drew me in very close. With liquid eyes she looked at me for the longest time and then with a sad exhale she said, “Michael, no matter what happens – that man in there and me – we will always love you and you will always be welcome in this house” The next day I was on a Greyhound Bus headed to Belleville, Illinois with a woman I did not know. I had felt the pain of abandonment. Now, I felt as if I had been kidnapped.

I never saw Ruby or Clarence again.  

That is, until that morning, as I sat there in my pickup. Almost 60 years had passed, and with excellent clarity of detail, I relived six of the happiest, most carefree years of my life with an old man and an woman who had very little to give beyond the warmth of an old pot-bellied stove and a safe place to lay my head.  Clarence and Ruby, I came by that morning to deliver a long-overdue message from a seven-year-old boy who, at that time, had neither the words nor the understanding to convey. “Thank You.”

There is of course, the backstory.  

She was seventeen years old and at the local movie house with some friends. She never saw it coming.  She did not see her father stride into the darkened theater, a cigarette hanging from one side of his mouth as he walked up behind her. She was not aware of his presence until his open hand struck her in the face. In one swift motion, he wound his fingers into her hair and pulled her up out of and over the seat back into the aisle. She never quite got her feet underneath her as he dragged her up the aisle and out into the lobby. 

She was terrified of the beating she knew was coming. She was mortified that it was going to take place in front of her friends and half of the little town of Belmont. In the lobby, my grandfather pulled her to a standing position by her hair and began to slap her repeatedly across the face. 

“You goddamn filthy whore!” he shouted as he slapped her again and again.  “You’re supposed to be at the mill working, but instead here you are, you little slut, sneaking off from work so you can whore it up with a bunch of worthless boys.”

He dragged her from the theater and out to his old panel truck as she tried to ward off the blows with her hands. He pinned her arms behind her so she couldn’t protect herself as he continued to beat her. “Are you screwing the whole town like a bitch in heat?”  He jerked open the door of his old panel truck and forced her into the seat, all the while berating her, doing his best to humiliate and shame her for the whole town to see. In some perverted way of looking at things, he seemed to actually think he was showing everybody what a bastion of morality he was.

And the truth? The truth is that she was sleeping around; with any boy or any man who would hold her in his arms and tell her that he loved her. She was in fact, prostituting herself, exchanging sex for a few moments of intimacy. She was purchasing tender caresses and affectionate words, however insincerely spoken, that gave her at least the illusion of value. She was driven to her whoredom by the one man whose love she craved most but could never have. 

So, in April of 1948 my mother got pregnant by a boy one year ahead of her in high school, and on December 22, 1948 I was born; the bastard son of a teenage mill worker; born into deep poverty and under a curse of rejection and abandonment; the only legacy my grandfather left me.  After another year of constant abuse and humiliation, my mother left. She left work one day and decided she couldn’t live another moment in the hell her father was dragging her through and she ran. She ran from her father’s rage her entire life, never free –– even after he died. 

She abandoned me in an act of self-preservation. 

But God had a place already prepared for me, a little house on Modena with Clarence and Ruby Long. They provided a place of safety for a little lost boy left alone by a frightened young mother and dumped by his calloused grandfather.  They, unwittingly, played a significant role in what would become my future. 

Several years ago, my oldest son and his wife took into their home and arms a beautiful little boy who was, for all intents and purposes, abandoned by his mother. She chose the thrill of cocaine and heroin over the giggles and smiles of her 4-month-old child. Who knows what pain she was running from, what demons were pursuing her? Who can tell what brokenness drove her to flee reality into the cloud of addictions?  All I know is this: 

I watch my son take this little boy into his arms, and I look at the love in my daughter-in-law’s eyes as she looks at him. I see how they have embraced this little guy and folded him into their lives, and I remember. I remember an old man and woman who made room in their lives for a lost and abandoned little boy.  I remember the tears in Ruby’s eyes as she looked into my face and whispered, “Michael, no matter what happens – that man in there and me – will always love you.”

I was abandoned by my mother and rejected by my grandfather. I did not know my father, but my name was engraved in the palm of God’s hand, and even though I was conceived in the back seat of an old Chevy, God knew me by name and already had a plan for my life. 

I was never really abandoned at all.