By Larry Efird

Babies don’t choose when they are born. Other people decide those things, such as parents, doctors and God. I happened to be born on a dubious day, Friday the 13th, in May of 1955, to be exact. I’ve never been all that superstitious, except for when I’m watching Carolina basketball and they’re shooting a one and one in the closing seconds of a tight NCAA tournament game. In that all crucial moment, I have been known not to change seats in my den during a commercial time out so I won’t jinx them. Other than that, I don’t base much of my life on illusory thinking, despite my grand entrance on an unlucky day.

I was born the third son of what was to be a family of seven children in all, before my parents were finished doing their part in replenishing the earth. My father always said he wanted a quiver full of kids, and considering seven was the perfect number, my mother acquiesced. We were stretched out over a period of 17 years, with five boys being born in succession before two girls served as graceful punctuation marks at the end of our compound-complex sentence of siblings. I was never told I was a surprise baby, but considering the fact that I began my earthly pilgrimage only 15 months after child No. 2, my feelings wouldn’t have been hurt if someone had told me that. I’ve always been a romantic at heart, but when I have to be, I can suck it up and become a realist.

Because there were seven kids in our family, some thought we were Catholic, but we were just Southern Presbyterians in a blue collar mill town, where the only Catholic church was a tiny frame structure on a dusty dirt road used by a handful of misplaced Northerners who had somehow ended up in our neck of the woods. No one ever bothered them, and no one knew who really went to church there, so their members could have as many kids as they wanted, and it wouldn’t have mattered to anybody else. 

Later on, I would come to vaguely understand their primary method of birth control to be God, who divinely intervened on their behalf during the act of procreation. I presumed that my own parents must have adopted that method too, so maybe all the kids in my family were providential surprises, not just me. I also learned later on that the reason we had fish sticks on Fridays in the school cafeteria was because of the Catholics, but that was actually a little more confusing to me than the concept of birth control. 

Fast forward to 2025 and I am turning 70. I, along with my blue collar mill town, have changed quite a bit. Gone is the ubiquitous cotton mill, as well as some of my original teeth. And the little frame Catholic church has quadrupled in size, now using a brick sanctuary which is surrounded by an acre of cars every Saturday night and Sunday morning. The dirt road has been paved as well. 

Until last week, I would have never dreamed a pope would have come from America. To be honest, I never paid much attention to The Papacy due to my Protestant heritage. To those who grew up in the fifties and sixties, the closest thing we had to a pope was Billy Graham. Sadly, most kids today under the age of thirty have never even heard of him apart from the Billy Graham Parkway in Charlotte. 

When I first heard Leo XIV was from America, something in my soul stirred just a bit. Unexpected tears formed in my eyes. I think the news gave me a sense of hopefulness for our country, to think that an American has been entrusted with leading a worldwide group of Christians. I also smiled when I saw he was born 70 years ago, in 1955. A good year, obviously. 

I’m now a retiree who works part time at the Duke University Chapel in visitor relations, something akin to a glorified Walmart greeter. Often, folks will innocently ask me as they enter the grand Gothic structure, “Is this chapel Catholic or Christian?” Though technically, it’s a non-sectarian space with strong ties to the Methodist Church, their question tells me more than they realize. So, as a new septuagenarian, I’m glad I’ve learned enough to simply answer, “Yes.” 

Larry Efird, a former Kannapolis school employee, now lives in Durham.