The Author

DISCIPLE PUBLISHING COMPANY

The “Memoirs of the Prodigal Son: The Road to Redemption” is an inspirational saga of one man’s spiritual odyssey. It’s an epic tale of his Christian upbringing, his fall from grace, his quest for redemption and, ultimately, his spiritual resurrection. He is a man whose humble beginnings are deeply rooted in a childhood and young adult life that were punctuated with promises of extraordinary lifetime achievements.

He was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, on July 19, 1945, his mother’s birthday, the youngest of four children, the son of a Baptist minister, who only had the benefit on an eighth-grade education. Despite his being a scholar athlete, a Howard University graduate, a former U.S. Army Officer, a decorated Vietnam veteran, a top agent for New York Life Insurance Company and an entrepreneur, his life went spiraling out of control. He had succumbed to a spirit of rebellion and had lost his way.

His mother, Julia, shares an incredible experience that she had during her pregnancy with him. She recalls that, one night as she lay awake, resting quietly in the dark, in the front bedroom of the family’s residence, a sphere of light, like a miniature moon, came orbiting through the window, spinning on its axis. Too frightened to move, she watched in awe as the light touched her stomach and then withdrew just as it had entered, revolving on its axis, exiting through the window.

Being a devout Christian, his mother was convinced that her vision was a divine omen that John would be graced with a very special mission in life, that he had been chosen to witness and minister to others. Twenty-nine years later, he would have the identical vision as he laid in his bunk in a dark jail cell, awaiting transfer to a maximum security federal penitentiary to serve a life sentence for murder.

After serving fifteen years in prison, he was paroled, and he returned to Washington, DC where he went to work for Covenant Baptist Church as its business manager. A year and a half later, at the age of forty-six, he enrolled in the District of Columbia School of Law. After graduating law school, he passed bar examinations in the District of Columbia, Maryland and West Virginia. Later he served as an adjunct professor of Juvenile Justice at the

THE AUTHOR, Page 1