Barry DeLozier
A Modern Wonder of the World
"The shape of my life today starts with a family."
from Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Ever tried to write your life's story in one page? 
My parents knew each other three weeks when they got engaged, a few months when they married in January, 1958. Eleven months and ten days later a baby boy named Stevie arrived. He bled to death when he was six months old from a doctor's test to determine why he bruised easily. No one knew Stevie was a free bleeder. Fred and Joyce donated their insurance money to help build a playground at Myrtle Grove Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. Salt of the earth good people those two, still together 53 years later. Playground's gone now.
Nine months after Stevie died my brother Jim was born on April Fools Day, 1960. He didn't bruise so easy. My parents moved down the beach to Panama City where eleven months after Jim (oops) I arrived on March 22, 1961, complete with bruises. At five months, I was diagnosed with "classical" hemophilia at Oschner Clinic in New Orleans. Classical.
My father worked for J.C. Penney so we moved frequently. Jim made friends in school. I made friends in hospitals. When I was almost two we moved to Jacksonville, at four to Atlanta, where I expressed interest in drawing (cars, houses, boats mostly) and writing. I still have the typewriter my parents gave me to occupy time in a hospital bed. When I was ten we went west to Baton Rouge, then at eleven south to Miami. I had knee surgeries and therapy and grew sturdier, less plagued by hemophilia, more of a rebellious teenager.
At fifteen it was north to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I got my first job as a pizza chef (lasted two weeks) and finished high school. There were other jobs: short-order cook, suit salesman, bank teller. At nineteen, I headed south to Tuscaloosa where I graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in communications. I married a girl I met in college and moved east to Birmingham and took a job in marketing with the gas company. That girl and I parted on friendly terms four years later but I stuck with the gas company twenty years.
There were five fun years being recycled, selling gas by day, drawing house plans at night, sneaking off to Paris, L.A. and New York for long weekends ... then an amazing girl named Cathy from Mobile tamed my heart and tempted my stomach with her gumbos and shrimp creoles. We had a short engagement, married and traveled and played house then had a son David two years later and another boy Joe twenty-one months after that. Today, this family is my pride and joy. We play baseball and football and lacrosse, Scrabble and Boggle and backgammon, go to church, connect with causes in our community and enjoy life in an old house on top of a mountain.
After twenty years in the energy business I joined a home building company where I designed a house for ABC TV's Extreme Makeover Home Edition and helped develop neighborhoods in Louisiana and Alabama. Four years later, as the housing market tanked, I launched www.sowowme.com, a marketing communications company, and www.turnkeynewhouse.com, a home plan business. For three years now, I've pursued my passions of art (mostly architectural renderings) and writing - everything from daily journal entries to magazine articles to corporate websites, blogposts and a novel.
And of course, I'm nowhere near "the end."
My parents knew each other three weeks when they got engaged, a few months when they married in January, 1958. Eleven months and ten days later a baby boy named Stevie arrived. He bled to death when he was six months old from a doctor's test to determine why he bruised easily. No one knew Stevie was a free bleeder. Fred and Joyce donated their insurance money to help build a playground at Myrtle Grove Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. Salt of the earth good people those two, still together 53 years later. Playground's gone now.
Nine months after Stevie died my brother Jim was born on April Fools Day, 1960. He didn't bruise so easy. My parents moved down the beach to Panama City where eleven months after Jim (oops) I arrived on March 22, 1961, complete with bruises. At five months, I was diagnosed with "classical" hemophilia at Oschner Clinic in New Orleans. Classical.
My father worked for J.C. Penney so we moved frequently. Jim made friends in school. I made friends in hospitals. When I was almost two we moved to Jacksonville, at four to Atlanta, where I expressed interest in drawing (cars, houses, boats mostly) and writing. I still have the typewriter my parents gave me to occupy time in a hospital bed. When I was ten we went west to Baton Rouge, then at eleven south to Miami. I had knee surgeries and therapy and grew sturdier, less plagued by hemophilia, more of a rebellious teenager.
At fifteen it was north to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where I got my first job as a pizza chef (lasted two weeks) and finished high school. There were other jobs: short-order cook, suit salesman, bank teller. At nineteen, I headed south to Tuscaloosa where I graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in communications. I married a girl I met in college and moved east to Birmingham and took a job in marketing with the gas company. That girl and I parted on friendly terms four years later but I stuck with the gas company twenty years.
There were five fun years being recycled, selling gas by day, drawing house plans at night, sneaking off to Paris, L.A. and New York for long weekends ... then an amazing girl named Cathy from Mobile tamed my heart and tempted my stomach with her gumbos and shrimp creoles. We had a short engagement, married and traveled and played house then had a son David two years later and another boy Joe twenty-one months after that. Today, this family is my pride and joy. We play baseball and football and lacrosse, Scrabble and Boggle and backgammon, go to church, connect with causes in our community and enjoy life in an old house on top of a mountain.
After twenty years in the energy business I joined a home building company where I designed a house for ABC TV's Extreme Makeover Home Edition and helped develop neighborhoods in Louisiana and Alabama. Four years later, as the housing market tanked, I launched www.sowowme.com, a marketing communications company, and www.turnkeynewhouse.com, a home plan business. For three years now, I've pursued my passions of art (mostly architectural renderings) and writing - everything from daily journal entries to magazine articles to corporate websites, blogposts and a novel.
And of course, I'm nowhere near "the end."
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