James Robert Redford

James 'Butch' Redford was a normal, but a very extraordinary kind of person. He was a student at Texas Tech University when he left for Vietnam and was the friend of a bunch of high school kids at the Southcrest Baptist Church in Lubbock, Texas. What he wanted in life was to simply be friends with folks that he met, and for the most part he probably achieved that.

However, from what I knew of Butch was his desire to become a Southern Baptist Missionary to Vietnam after the War.

I find it interesting that almost 40 years after his death, one of Butch's friends from Fort Worth is a colleague of mine. And the fascinating thing is that we work together doing mission work for Southern Baptists in Arkansas. I have to think that Butch somehow influenced our lives in some way.

Butch would have chuckled at this irony...