Darwin

As many of you know, my brother's name is Darwin. Having a brother with that name oftentimes causes confusion among my Christian friends. "Did your parents believe in evolution when they named him?" And they sound appalled and slightly intrigued when they ask me. No, they did not, and as my brother would say, "Wouldn't they have named me Charles, then?"

My dad's best friend and barrack-mate in Vietnam was a certain Private Darwin. One afternoon, they were driving their truck back to the base when Darwin shot down two Vietcong snipers in the trees. Their guns had been pointed at my dad. It was just a few weeks before they'd be going home.

Dad has a pretty sizable collection of pictures from his time overseas, and recently, Josh and I started transferring the slides to the computer. In one little box, we found a slide labeled "Darwin." Below is the only picture (that I'm aware of) of this wonderful man. At first I was disappointed that his face was blurred, but the more I looked at it, the more I loved it. I fear that if there was a definite face to this man, it would be hard to imagine him, to see him as a hero and not just a twenty-year-old boy far from home.