Now and then, one of our married daughters will say something like, “Hey, I was at the 231 Market in Camden yesterday and had a conversation with someone about canning supplies, when all of a sudden, she said, ‘I’ll bet you’re one of Eric Haley’s kids.’ That keeps happening to me! It seems like everybody in Indiana knows you, Dad!”
Then, when he asks for a name, Eric will recall, “Oh yeah, I met her on the picket line at 4th and Romig back in 1987 …”
This is where I temporarily leave my role as autobiographer and become more of a biographer, because my husband, Eric J. Haley, is an amazing man, a legend in his own lifetime, whose story deserves to be told. I told him while we were taking a walk that whether he liked it or not, he was a historical figure in this area.
“Like a memorial?” he asked. “Are you expecting me to die soon?”
“No, but I might as well get all this in print now, while I can still fact-check it.”
Eric J. Haley became my husband in this narrative a couple of weeks ago. And, we're both Air Force veterans, so Happy Veterans' Day to all of us who have worn the uniform of the United States military!
But all you know about him so far is how he related to me. Let me introduce him better.
Eric was born February 15, 1955, at Home Hospital in Lafayette, Indiana, the younger son of Leonard Elbert Haley and Rejonnah Janette Haley (nee Patmore).
Leonard Haley was the youngest son of ten children, born after his father died from tuberculosis, and raised by his widowed mother in Lafayette’s South End, a poor neighborhood. Leonard joined the U.S. Army at age 17, and was part of the Occupational Forces that went into Japan after they surrendered, thus ending World War II.
Rejonnah married him just before he enlisted, as did many brides in those days, not really knowing he was younger than she was. She was literally a “Rosie the Riveter,” who made airplane parts in a retrofitted factory in Evansville during the War.
Leonard and Rejonnah had four children – Gayle, Greg, Elaine, and Eric. Gayle and Greg weren’t always the greatest role models for Eric, being rather rebellious and hard to handle into their teen years, but Elaine (a.k.a. “Lainey”) was his friend, though usually the sickly one in the bunch with chronic asthma problems. Eric was shy and quiet – until he got saved.
That happened because his brother Greg got saved. There was an instant observable change in his life that was not lost on Eric (who shared a bedroom with him), from being a rebellious teenager on the path of destruction, drinking, smoking, cussing, gambling, listening to the Rolling Stones, and wrecking his parents’ car … to a submissive and happy teenager playing George Beverly Shea albums and going to church several times a week.
Greg wanted Eric to go to the Assembly of God church with him and Lainey wanted him to get saved at their Baptist church. Eric wanted what Greg had because he knew it was true and powerful, but he was afraid of the thought of having to walk to the front of the church to get it. He would have despaired of the whole thing except that Lainey informed him that that part wasn’t really necessary – he could ask Jesus to come into his heart right there in his bed. So, he did just that.
At age 14, Eric prayed in his bed before he went to sleep, and when he awoke the next day, he absolutely knew that he was wonderfully saved and powerfully changed.
This change in Eric was no less dramatic than Greg’s. He did go with his brother to the Assembly of God church, where he was baptized in water the next week and baptized in the Holy Spirit a week later. But he also joined his sister in a jail ministry with the Baptist church as a vocal duet. Now, he was no longer shy and quiet – oh no!
He soon met Joe Bell, a Purdue athlete in track and field who was, at the time, setting records for hurdles. Joe had gotten saved at the head coach’s office, and as a result, he left his fraternity parties behind – he just lost all interest – as well as his plans to be a physical therapist. Instead, he occupied his time with starting a Christian coffeehouse called the Natural High, and Eric became an integral part of that effort.
One of the things about new Christians is that, like young children, they simply believe what they’re told. Eric was told that God was a God of miracles, so he applied that faith to matters at hand, such as finding a building for a coffeehouse, and having the rattrap building pass city inspections before their grand opening when … it couldn’t have.
Eric met many friends at the coffeehouse, including Bob Whitesel, who later went on to seminary in California and was Eric’s best man when we got married. Bob has since written several books now and teaches seminars on church growth. Eric also met a young lady named Peggy Collins from Oklahoma, who soon became Joe Bell’s wife. Eric served as an usher at their wedding. Joe went on to seminary and became an Assembly of God youth pastor in Lafayette, and then a Calvary Chapel pastor, one of the first in Indiana.
Eric attended one of the earliest Christian open air concert events ever, in 1971 – the Jesus Trip Music Festival in Muncie. This gave him a great idea for having a similar festival in the Lafayette area. It was dubbed the “GodLove” festival, and was making headway. He and some others had attracted some interest from some of the churches and found a park in a very small backwoods town, set a date, produced some promotional materials, raised some money, booked some bands, and got interviewed by the local paper.
That’s when the trouble started. One of the main issues was port-a-potties. Why had these youngsters forgotten this important detail? Who did they think they were, asking people to stand around all day listening to music and speakers with no place to use the toilet? And this concert had no real sponsors. It was just a 17-year-old boy with a big idea.
Churches pulled their support. The bad press made people want to distance themselves from the idea altogether. The event was moved to Slater Center at Purdue, but finally cancelled because of the pending torrential rains.
There was another idea that started off all right, but just didn’t last. Eric was on the editorial staff of a local Jesus People newspaper called The Agape Press that was distributed free to the churches. It was created periodically by dedicated volunteer newsmen from the coffeehouse who (back in the day) literally cut-and-pasted paragraphs onto a master copy, which was then taken to Ft. Wayne, where the local Jesus People community had a printing press. Copies were produced there and then distributed in bundles to the Lafayette churches.
As it turned out, this idea only lasted for two issues. The second and final issue contained a controversial article called “Pioneer Theology” which compared the Holy Spirit to a scout and God the Father to the Trail Boss, who drank hard liquor and cussed like a sailor. The churches began to cancel their orders and dispose of the issue because it was so disrespectful to God.
But there was no stopping Eric. Once he took the plunge and was baptized, he was determined to be a witness with everything he had in him. At school, he wrote a “What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up?” paper, where he chose “Minister” and described the Plan of Salvation.
His teacher, Mr. Smith, gave him a “C” because he didn’t like it, but then he kept it. And pulling it out one day when he was in trouble, he turned to God, prayed the prayer in Eric’s paper, decided to change careers to become a Minister, and was accepted at a seminary. But before he left, he stopped by the coffeehouse to inform Eric that his life was changed because of him and his paper. Needless to say, this goes against the natural order of things, but Eric was more into the supernatural.
Eric made a slideshow (early version of a multimedia presentation) for a different class at school, Sociology, teaching creatively about the Jesus Movement and about the Rapture, using empty shoes to illustrate the sudden disappearance of The Church. This was, again, the days before computers, so these were real slides, complete with a separate audio tape synchronized with the slides. They were viewed by using a projector to shine light through them and onto a screen. We still have the tape Eric made and all the slides.
The teacher, Mr. Sinclair, liked it so much that he arranged for Eric to miss some of his other classes in order to show it during three more of the teacher’s classes. Eric’s presentation on the Jesus Movement was “an event.”
Once-shy Eric joined the speech team his senior year, applied himself, and won several awards reciting a poem by Larry Norman, First Day in Church. Then he decided to graduate early. His speech coach, desperate to have him stay that last semester, offered to fix his schedule for him so he could have just speech and two art classes. But Eric decided not to. He was ready to move on.
Eric saw people saved during his high school years, hard cases, people who didn’t stand a chance by the world’s standards. One such hard case, after he was saved, turned around on the school bus to preach to everyone else about how he had been saved from the drug culture by a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and they could too.
This tendency to go whole-hog into whatever Eric set his hand to do would later spill into our married life. At various times, we were involved in such projects as planning to purchase and operate a home for unwed mothers, Operation Rescue, and Lafayette Citizens for Decency. You’d probably love to hear about all those adventures and more, but I have decided this will probably need a book of its own, so pray for me! There are over 2500 occurrences of his name in the Lafayette Journal and Courier and most of them really are about him!
This amazing man, Eric J. Haley, is my husband, and I’ve had the privilege of being his wife and his secretary for 45 years. And you know what? Remember my idea of being a secretary in a U.S. embassy when I grew up?
U.S. Embassy, Manila, 1965
Maybe that was fulfilled after all, for Eric J. Haley is an Ambassador of Jesus Christ, and that makes our home an embassy.
Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. ~2 Cor. 5:20
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