Pause for Purpose

Mark K July 1st, 2009

Today is my birthday, I think.
You see, Dr. Hennig was the one who chose my birthday. He died this year – he was 100 years old.
He lived in Sedona in the last years of his life and must have been very happy there. Dr. Hennig loved to collect rocks and Sedona has some of the prettiest rocks in the world. Whenever he found an especially colorful rock that he wanted to share with you, he would  lick it, leaving a long, wide wet spot where the colors would break through. “What do you think?” he would ask as he handed it to you.
My dad was the doctor who delivered many of my future classmates in the small town we lived, but when it came time for my birth, he asked his friend, Dr. Hennig to deliver the baby. My parents made the trip to the hospital in the neighboring town – our town had no hospital – on the night of July 1 and my mother soon began labor.
The labor continued throughout the evening in the sweltering Sacramento Valley heat. My dad stood at the bedside throughout, but it was Dr. Hennig who finally brought me into the world.
He looked up at the clock and saw that it was midnight. “I’m not sure if he was born before, or after midnight,” he said as he handed me  to my mom, “but I think July 1st sounds better than July 2nd!”
Lloyd Hennig was always known for his mischievous sense of humor. When he was a teenager growing up in San Francisco, he and his friends would  take a ferry across the Bay and then catch the train to Mill Valley. They would stand at the train depot and wave to the tourists who were departing on the steam train bound for the top of  Mt. Tamalpais. As soon as the train left the station, the boys would hike straight up the mountain to the first switchback curve and wave again to the same passengers. By the third curve, the passengers would be rubbing their eyes, wondering if Marin county teenagers only came in three varieties.
I don’t know if Dr. Hennig applied this same sense of whimsy when he chose my birthday, but I do know that eighteen years later, during the Viet Nam War, the Selective Service Commision instituted a draft lottery, based on a person’s birthday. Each birthday was randomly matched with a number, and if your number was lower than one hundred, there was a good chance you would be sent to Viet Nam. July 1 was assigned the number 284 and I was able to remain a civilian and finish my college education.
Last month, by chance, I visited Sedona and was reminded of Dr. Hennig’s passing. It also made my curious about how things might have been different had he not assigned me my birthday. I did some research and found the answer to a question about which I have long been curious.
The draft lottery number for July 2 was 61.
Thanks, Dr. Hennig. July 1 sounds good to me, too.

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