Midnight Ride

It’s hard to know who feels more joy about this story: Reggie Ponder or Steve Armstrong.

The first time they met, it was July 28, 1967. Almost midnight.

Reggie was a few years out of divinity school, working in Rocky Mount. Steve was a newborn, just hours old, at Memorial Hospital.

The one important thing they had in common was Englewood United Methodist Church. Steve’s parents were members, and so was his pediatrician, Dr. Boone Grant.

Reggie, being their pastor, answered calls at all hours. And on this night, Dr. Grant was on the line; his tone, urgent. “He said, ‘Put your clothes on – I’m going to be there in five minutes,’ ” Reggie remembers. “ ‘You’re going to drive us to Duke Hospital.’ ”

They were taking Steve.

Steve had been born with esophageal atresia, meaning his esophagus had not connected to his stomach, and he needed surgery. A team waited for them at Duke – and so they traveled:

Dr. Grant in the backseat hand-suctioning Steve’s airway so he could breathe – and Reggie, up front with Steve’s dad, praying as he drove them three counties west to Durham.

It was a wild midnight ride by today’s standards, with medevac helicopters and interstate ambulances. But they made the trip, 80 minutes flat, and Steve was whisked into the hospital for surgery.

Fifty-seven years later, Steve is grateful for the people who helped save his life – starting with his mother, who had the faith to let her newborn son go that night.

All have passed on except the praying wheelman who remembers everything. Steve wanted to hear the story straight from Reggie, so they got together last summer. “I was a baby in such a precarious situation,” Steve says. “And Reggie was willing to drive me in his car – through the night – to get help. I wondered how I could ever thank him.”

The answer, it turned out, is easy.

It’s a standing lunch date – just Steve and Reggie, the last man standing – to celebrate the blessings of life and the overflow of another year.

Steve and his wife, Amy, recently made a gift to our Overflow Fund to honor Reggie, our senior advisor for legacy giving. Learn about the Overflow Fund