Bill Speer

Fifty years is a long time.

Maybe it isn’t quite as long today as it would have seemed in my mind years ago, but that’s because everything related to time takes on a new perspective when you are in your retirement years.

Still, 50 years is in anyone’s accounting practices half a century for heaven’s sake.

Because it is a significant amount of time, a lot can happen in 50 years. So it was with the people I hung out with recently.

I was part of a 50-year reunion of former college students who were all part of the Navigators ministry at West Liberty State College in the mid-70s. While today the college on the “cow path to culture” is a university, the road getting to it is still filled with hair-pin curves and steep descents. I forgot just how twisting and vertical those roads with no guardrails could be.

In those 50 years a lot has happened to the group of students whose bond over the years seemed “thicker than water.” Many got married. Some got divorced. Many had children, and now grandchildren. Many were healthy, others were battling various illnesses. Some still lived in the area, others came from places far and wide – like Missouri and Florida.

Each had a story or two to share, and the memories came gushing forth.

There were songs, stories and sharing. And there was a time for remembering those in the group who had died and were no longer here. Unfortunately, that number seemed higher than most realized.

In was an amazing reunion filled with laughter, tears, hugs and many blessings.

For me, the Navigators hold a special place in my heart. Thanks to them, I came to understand the meaning of true friendship that is born from a relationship with God.

Back in 1978, when I first met this group, my perspective about life and theirs was about as different as the east is from the west. I believe the politically correct term to have used back then was that I had led a “checkered past” with my life.

As my wife likes to remind me, while we both went to college in West Virginia, had we met during the days she was at West Liberty and I was at West Virginia University, we probably never would have married.

Instead, we both met at the newspaper in Wheeling, W.Va. – not far from West Liberty – and Diane’s Navigator friends soon became my friends as well. Every weekend we were busy with groups of friends who were Navigators that she had gone to college with.

The men of the group, through their lifestyles, showed me what respect was all about. They demonstrated love toward others and how to depend on God, and not on the vices of the world, for peace and comfort.

Over the years these men would become my mentors and my friends.

Since those days I have been by no means perfect. Many times, I have sinned and had to seek forgiveness. To this day I remain a work in progress.

But my life changed back then. A relationship with God, which I knew about but had walked away from in college, became important once more.

Fifty years later, the reunion was a reminder that with God, all things are possible.