by Cathy Byrd
I asked Ken if he remembered Mom Gehrig knitting, doing crossword puzzles, and reading The New York Times, and all answers were affirmative. He elaborated on her hobby of crocheting by sharing a funny story about finding a box with Mom Gehrig’s stuff in the attic with his friends and laughing hysterically when they came upon an oversize crochet bra she had made that looked like it could hold two cannonballs. Realizing that we had been on the phone for over an hour, Ken and I mutually agreed to end our call and made a plan to speak the following week.
I knew I couldn’t engage in another conversation with Reverend Ken without confessing the source of my curiosity about his surrogate grandmother, Christina Gehrig. As much as I had enjoyed hearing his colorful tales about Mom Gehrig, the time had come for me to reveal my true intentions and risk losing our budding friendship for good. Reverend Ken had already confirmed many of the details of my past-life regression without even knowing it, but I needed him to know the truth so that he could make a conscious decision to engage in further conversations or run for the hills from this crazy lady from California, the land of fruits and nuts.
For the next five days leading up to our appointed phone call, I labored over how to break the news of Christian’s past-life memories and my own past-life regressions to Reverend Ken. When the time came, all my careful planning went right out the window. As soon as I heard Reverend Ken’s warm greeting on the other end of the line, I blurted out, “Last week when we spoke, I told you I was writing a book about Lou and Christina Gehrig, but I was afraid to share why I am so interested in telling their story. What I’m about to tell you may knock your socks off . . .”
Reverend Ken patiently listened as I rattled off the sequence of events that had led me to him—Christian’s past-life statements, his disdain for Babe Ruth, and meeting Dr. Tucker, who inadvertently led me to the past-life regressions with Jeroen, and right into his childhood home. The words rolled off my tongue like an elixir that would save my soul. This was the confession of a lifetime, and this Holy man on the other end of the line had somehow become critical to my salvation.
I expressed my fear of “cheating on Jesus” by even entertaining the concept of reincarnation in the first place, and I made sure he knew that Jeroen had burned sage and created a “cone of light” before our past-life regression hypnosis sessions. I shared with Pastor Ken the torment I had experienced when an e-mail from my own pastor had made me wonder if my son’s body was inhabited by the spirit of a dead person.
The desperation in my voice must have sounded like an obvious cry for help. In the course of my monologue, I offered to send him the recordings and transcripts of my hypnotic regressions, and I hinted that I was hoping he could shed some light on our very peculiar situation. After finally stopping to take a breath, I asked, “So, what do you think?” I held my breath while awaiting his response.
Pastor Ken broke the silence by saying, “This is fascinating!”
“I do not believe in reincarnation due to my faith,” he added, “but I do believe this is an example of wisdom and knowledge that cannot come from rational experience. It is information that comes from being in the flow of the channel of God.” He continued, “This wisdom and knowledge is allowed by the Lord. It is through the will of God that this information came through from another dimension, a dimension we don’t always see through our earthly eyes.”
I could feel all the tension I had been carrying escape my body as I was filled with a sense of peace. Reverend Ken’s words allowed me to finally let go of the battle of beliefs I had been waging in my mind for the past three and a half years. His loving words were the antidote to the fear and guilt that had burrowed their way into my heart.
When I originally called Reverend Ken, I thought my sole purpose was to find out if the details that had come up during my regression matched his recollections. I never imagined that this man would be the answer I had been searching for all along. His grace-filled words made me recognize that this journey we had been on for the past three and a half years was sacred and holy, not something to be ashamed of. I was finally able to forgive myself for “cheating on Jesus.” Of course, Reverend Ken wasn’t a believer in the reincarnation theory, but validation of that was not what I was seeking. I was seeking peace of mind, and I had found it in an ordinary phone call in the middle of the day while my kids were at school. I felt as if Reverend Ken was truly Heaven-sent.
Ken then explained in further detail his theory as to what Christian and I had experienced. He said he wasn’t surprised by the fact that the children who experienced what Dr. Tucker refers to as past-life memories are between the ages of two and seven years old.
“This is the time when children are most in touch with the spiritual dimension that adults and school-age children are not able to see as clearly,” he said. In his opinion Christian was channeling information from Lou Gehrig and I was channeling information from Mom Gehrig because these two souls were seeking completion in their relationship with each other. Choosing to believe whether it was “channeling,” as Pastor Ken described or actual “past-life memories,” as Dr. Tucker theorized, really did not seem necessary. All I knew for sure was that Lou Gehrig and his mother, Christina, had touched our lives in a beautiful and profound way, and I had found a new friend and mentor in Reverend Ken.
Once we concluded our deep, philosophical discussion, Ken and I went right back to laughing and reminiscing about Mom Gehrig. He said she made the best, bright-green pea soup he had ever tasted in his entire life. He was amused when I told him about my peculiar craving for pea soup when I was pregnant with Christian. Ken was able to confirm that the floor plan of the home he had lived in as a child was consistent with how I described his home while under hypnosis. It was indeed a two-story home with white siding, a gravel driveway, and a living room with windows overlooking the front yard. He said his bedroom was upstairs, just as I had reported. He didn’t remember where Mom Gehrig slept, but had vivid memories of her sitting on the living room couch with her newspapers and crossword puzzles.
I saved my biggest question for last and introduced the topic by saying, “When I was speaking in the first person as Christina Gehrig during the hypnotic regression, I described jewelry my son, Lou, had given me that I wanted to give to your family.” I told Ken I had specifically expressed wanting to give a necklace and charm bracelet from Japan to the little seven-year-old girl, but that I’d probably need to give it to her mother to hold on to until she was old enough. I said, “I also mentioned a watch.”
Ken excitedly told me that he had indeed inherited a men’s watch from Mom Gehrig that originally belonged to Lou Gehrig. He said the watch was a gift to Lou Gehrig from the Third Reich. Ken explained how he had sold some of the other items he inherited from Mom Gehrig at an auction—Lou’s passport, his wedding ring, and memorabilia. He used the money to purchase his cabin on a pristine lake in New Hampshire, where he and his wife, Marilyn, spend their summers every year. Ken expressed his deep gratitude to Mom Gehrig for the watch, the cabin, and for the college scholarship she had given him when he was born in 1941, the same year that Lou Gehrig had died.
I managed to contain my utter disbelief when Pastor Ken told me that women’s jewelry from Japan was among the heirlooms his family had inherited from Mom Gehrig.
“We were told that Lou bought the jewelry for his mom on a trip to Japan. My sister Jill has it now.”
I was elated to hear that these items were now in the possession of Ken’s sister, exactly as I had hoped for while under hypnosis. According to Pastor Ken, the jewelry had been locked up for the past 60 years in a walk-in safe that his father had built under their home because the cost of insuring the jewelry was more than his family could afford. Ken said the jewelry had remained in the safe for the most part, with the exception of a few special occasions when his mother would bring out a piece to wear while hosting dinner parties at their home. He told me nobody outside of their immediate family and a few close friends ever knew about t
he jewelry they had inherited from Mom Gehrig because his parents were quite discreet about it. Hearing that the jewelry I’d described while under hypnosis was actually in the possession of the Steigler family proved to me once and for all that the information coming through during my past-life regressions was anchored in reality.
As we wrapped up our conversation, Ken politely accepted my offer to e-mail him the audio recordings and transcripts of the past-life regressions. I wished him luck at the event he was planning to speak at the following day to promote interracial harmony in the Wake Forest community, and asked if he would be willing to end our phone call with a prayer. I don’t recall the exact words of his blessing, but when we hung up, I felt as if I was walking on air. We carried on our conversations in the months to come and developed a sincere friendship based upon our mutual adoration and respect for Christina “Mom” Gehrig. And we always, each and every time, ended our phone calls with a prayer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FINDING MOM GEHRIG
“There is no room in baseball for discrimination.
It is our national pastime and a game for all.”
LOU GEHRIG
In February 2015, nearly one full year after connecting with Reverend Ken, Christian and I took a trip to Milford, Connecticut, to visit Mom Gehrig’s old stomping grounds where she had once lived with the Steigler family. As Christian and I were preparing for our trip to the East Coast, Reverend Ken and his wife, Marilyn, were preparing to attend the 50-year reunion of his historic march alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. I surmised from our conversations that the trip to Selma would be a significant pilgrimage for Ken because the graphic images of Bloody Sunday were forever etched in his mind. On the day that Christian and I departed for our own pilgrimage of sorts, Pastor Ken sent me an article from a North Carolina newspaper documenting his recollections of the march from Selma to Montgomery.
The article explained how 23-year-old Ken Steigler, a seminary student at the Boston University School of Theology, gathered 80 of his peers and boarded a bus headed to the Deep South to fight for the voting rights of African Americans in the midst of life-threatening social unrest. He told the reporter that the experience of personally hearing Dr. King’s compassion for the adversaries of the Civil Rights Movement, even the Ku Klux Klan, had made a lasting impression on how he practices religion in his everyday life. I knew from my own interactions with Pastor Ken that a large part of his current ministry at Wake Forest United Methodist Church and All Nations Church in Raleigh was dedicated to fostering interracial harmony, a cause that has always been near and dear to my own heart as well.
When Christian and I arrived at the Hartford, Connecticut airport just before midnight, we were met with record-breaking low temperatures and no suitcase. I was a bit concerned that we had no warm clothes or jackets with us, but more distraught about being separated from the shark tooth I had packed inside of our missing suitcase for the tooth fairy to put under Christian’s pillow. His wiggly tooth was hanging by a thread, and he would certainly notice if the tooth fairy forgot to give him a shark tooth in exchange for his own—a long-standing family tradition. I was touched by the generosity of a woman in the baggage claim area who gifted me with a down jacket off of her back when she noticed our luggage was nowhere to be found. Her gesture inspired another man standing nearby to wrap a warm blanket around Christian, who had convinced me to let him wear shorts for the trip to chilly Connecticut. It was the first time I found myself longing for the days of the recent past when our son used to insist upon wearing baseball pants every day. He still refused to wear long pants unless they were baseball pants, but he had added shorts to his wardrobe choices shortly after his fifth birthday. The jacketless woman then whispered into my ear, “I don’t know what your religious beliefs are, but Jesus loves you.” And with that, this earth angel disappeared into a flurry of snow.
After a good night’s sleep and a shopping spree sponsored by American Airlines, Christian and I made the one-hour drive to Milford, Connecticut to visit Reverend Ken’s childhood home, the home where Mom Gehrig had lived with his family during the final years of her life. Just as we were approaching our destination, Christian yelled, “Hey, look, a snowman family!” Sensing his excitement, I pulled over to give him an up-close-and-personal view of the festive creatures made out of snow. I asked Christian if he remembered building a snowman on our family ski trip to Mammoth Mountain when he was three. I was surprised when he said he had no recollection of ever having been in the snow before. As he smiled for a photo with the four snow creatures, he said, “They have four people in their family just like us, but Lou Gehrig had only three people in his family.” I had always made a point of never telling Christian the details of Lou Gehrig’s life, so I was surprised when he correctly stated that Lou Gehrig was an only child. I chuckled to myself at the irony of Christian remembering things from another person’s lifetime, but not being able to recall moments from his own life.
Even though the Steiglers’ former home was only a couple of doors down from our snowman adventure, I opted to drive the short distance, due to the blankets of snow falling from the sky. Everything about the two-story home looked remarkably familiar: the white siding I had seen so clearly under hypnosis, the gravel driveway where I said I had parked my car, and the large picture window I had described looking out of while sitting on the couch in the living room. In my mind’s eye, I saw Mom Gehrig sitting on the couch inside doing crossword puzzles, knitting, and reading The New York Times—activities Reverend Ken had confirmed she loved to do. Standing in the front yard of my personal historic landmark felt like a homecoming of sorts. We didn’t bother knocking on the door because the next-door neighbor who saw us standing in front of the home informed us that the owners were out of town for the weekend.
Our next stop was the snow-covered Little League fields where, during my past-life regression, I had described Mom Gehrig bringing cookies to the boys, the same fields where she had watched Pastor Ken play baseball more than 60 years before. Behind the backstop of the snow-covered field was a plaque honoring Christina “Mom” Gehrig that was dated 1954, the year of her death. Prior to our trip to Connecticut, I had contacted the president of Lou Gehrig Little League in Milford to see if he might be able to help me track down anybody in town who had played baseball in the league during the early 1950s when Mom Gehrig lived in Milford.
I told him I was hoping to interview Little League players who had actually met Mom Gehrig for a book I was writing. “They’re probably in their seventies by now,” I explained. The Little League president didn’t know of any offhand, but he referred me to Coach Kipp Taylor, who was the resident expert on Mom Gehrig’s history in the small, seaside town.
“Coach Kipp was single-handedly responsible for preserving the memory of Lou and Mom Gehrig in the local community,” he added, “when he convinced the league not to drop the Lou Gehrig from its name a few years back.”
My call to Coach Kipp revealed that, in addition to being a youth baseball coach for many years, Kipp had also served as the president of Lou Gehrig Little League for several years, a generous act of kindness made even grander by the fact that Kipp didn’t have any kids of his own. Fifty-year-old Kipp was far too young to have met Mom Gehrig himself, but his love and respect for this woman came shining through in every word he spoke of her. I had miraculously found someone who was as enamored with Mom Gehrig as I was. Kipp told me how he had recently taken it upon himself to repaint the plaque honoring Mom Gehrig that Christian and I had seen at the Lou Gehrig Little League field because the inscription was becoming difficult to read. A few days before our trip to Connecticut, Kipp had surprised me with the good news that he’d found a 75-year-old former Little League player named Ken Hawkins, who was willing to meet with us.
I met Kipp at the Milford Public Library on a Tuesday evening at 5 so we could get acquainted before Mr. Hawkins was scheduled to join us. When Christian
and I walked into the library, an upbeat man with deep dimples and a contagious smile approached us.
“Hi, are you Cathy and Christian?” He introduced himself as Coach Kipp, a nickname that has stuck to him like glue from his many years of coaching and teaching.
We went upstairs to find a secluded meeting area where we’d be able to talk without bothering others who had come to this landmark in the center of town for quieter escapades. Christian played baseball games on his iPad while Coach Kipp shared the numerous news clippings on Mom Gehrig he had printed from microfiche a few years back when he was trying to convince the Little League board of directors not to drop Lou Gehrig from the league’s name. In what felt like only a few minutes but was probably closer to an hour, Kipp’s phone rang, and he excused himself to fetch Ken Hawkins from the library lobby.
When Ken Hawkins entered the room with Kipp, I stood to shake his hand and was immediately struck by his charismatic yet soft-spoken demeanor. We exchanged business cards and found it amusing that we were both residential real estate brokers. Coach Kipp and I were shocked when Ken started the conversation by saying, “My family was quite close with Mom Gehrig . . .”
Mr. Hawkins elaborated by telling us that Mom Gehrig and his father, Ellsworth, were very good friends and founders of the local Little League together. Coach Kipp and I looked at each other and our jaws dropped in unison—this was a brand-new revelation.
This former Little League All-Star told us that Mom Gehrig was a fixture in the stands at the Little League fields. Ken reminisced about Mom Gehrig.
“She didn’t miss a single Little League game until the day she passed. Nothing made her happier than a day at the baseball field.”
Ken opened a file he had brought along with him and handed us an article that listed his father, Ellsworth Hawkins, among the pallbearers at Christina Gehrig’s funeral. The article read: