After a few more years of trucking with its trials, Dale decided to call it “quits”. My dad needed someone to help him with the watermelons and asked us to move to Arizona to be partners with him. Dale was to farm the ranch in Cornville, growing watermelons. We would live in the folk ‘s house, and Dad and Mom would move to Phoenix where Dad would farm on rented acreage.
We believed that growing up on a farm would be a great place to raise our boys. Without a lot of careful planning, we packed up and moved to Cornville. Dad loaned us his truck for moving that Dale drove with Bruce, now three and a half, by his side. I drove the car with Mike who had turned one year old in October. It was bitterly cold and dry that day in January 1964 when we drove down through Oak Creek Canyon to Dad and Mom’s ranch in Comville.
Dale had helped my cousin move before he moved us, and he had become extremely fatigued. Within a few days of arriving in Arizona he became very sick. I was taking him to the doctor every day, and every day the doctor gave us a different diagnosis and different medication. After several days of this with Dale getting continually worse so that he could not sleep without gasping for air, the doctor said, “I think he has diphtheria. I will take a culture and send it to Phoenix and when I get the results, I will call you. If he has diphtheria, he will have to go to a hospital in Phoenix.”
I was angry. “No,” I said, “I will take Dale to Phoenix now to a doctor who will be able to do the culture and give him immediate care.” This doctor referred us to a doctor in Scottsdale whom I had known as a child while living with my parents in Phoenix.
It was evening when Dale, Bruce, Mike, and I started the 100-mile trip to Phoenix. My speedometer was reading between 80-90 MPH, and a patrol officer stopped me once. I explained I was rushing my husband to a hospital because of possible diphtheria and asked if he could escort me. He said it was out of his territory, but he would call ahead to alert other officers. He did ask me to slow down a little, which I did, and while he was still standing by our car I heard him make calls to other highway patrol officers. We made it to the hospital without further incident. I even ran a few red lights when I could see it was safe to do so. I was honking my home and had my emergency flasher lights on as well as turning off and on my high beam lights.
Dale was telling me all the things he thought I should know if he didn’t make it. It was a very solemn ride. He would mention something, and then in a few more minutes he would think of something else I should know if I were left alone with the boys. Then a few minutes later he would caution me about another item. My thoughts were of getting him to the hospital as quickly as possible while trying to remember what he was telling me. I had called ahead to my mother asking her to meet us at the hospital to take Bruce and Mike.
We arrived at the hospital only to find that they would not admit Dale because this hospital did not have a quarantine unit. An emergency room doctor came to the car, and after checking Dale said he did not think Dale had diphtheria, and further, he did not know which hospital to refer us to if he did have diphtheria. We were dumbfounded! They sent us to a motel and quarantined us there! The doctor we were waiting for came to the motel room and he thought that Dale only had a very bad case of strep throat. He took a culture and gave Dale some strong antibiotics. My mother took our boys, and we spent the next three or four days in the motel. The doctor made daily and sometimes twice daily visits to us. Dale did have strep throat, and we were thankful we did not have a hospital bill.
In his book Truth Led Me Out, Dale gives more details and tells how this experience was a turning point in his life and ours. Dale had promised God that if he lived, he would do whatever God wanted him to do, even if it meant becoming a pastor.
In a few days in answer to many prayers, Dale was well and we returned to Cornville to farm. Dale was working hard, but we learned there was not any money for salary. We had to do something to earn grocery money. We quickly realized this agreement and arrangement with Dad were not going to work. My dad was not much of a business person, and even though my parents had money from last summer’s work, we didn’t have any savings. Dale set out to find employment. We moved to Phoenix where Dale began selling Frantz oil filters. He quickly moved to the top of the company, but he was not satisfied. He interviewed with several life insurance companies and was about to be accepted at a company that looked very promising to him. He had a large reading assignment he had to complete before being employed. My folks were going to spend the day swimming at Oak Creek Canyon and invited us to go with them. Dale would not go because he had all the reading to do, so I though it would be best if the boys and I got out of his way. This would give him peace and quiet to complete his homework assignment.
When the boys and I arrived home that evening, Dale said he had a reading assignment for me. He would not tell me what it was other than it was from Ellen White. Somehow my spirit said, “He has decided to go back to school.” Often we had discussed the question of whether or not he should finish college in conjunction with any life changing decision we were facing. Dale always responded that it was not possible, especially now with a family. We had this discussion before moving to Arizona, and again Dale’s response was the same.
The next day I read the assignment Dale had given me of the many Ellen White quotes about life insurance, and how terrible she said it was. When I finished reading Dale told me he had decided to return to college. He felt God was calling him into the ministry. He shared with me now, for the first time, the commitment he had made while in the motel. I knew in my heart this was what God had planned for him.
I thought of the time when I was about five years old, how on Sabbath morning I would climb those twelve steps to the church and be greeted by the most gracious pastor’s wife I have ever known. She made me so happy I had come to church. I said in my heart, “When I grow up I want to be just like her. I will be a pastor’s wife!” Could this dream now become reality?
The next few days were a whirlwind of activities filled with selling our purebred German shepherd puppies which were about six weeks old, selling a car in exchange for a much older one, arranging with the Arizona Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for moving us to Pacific Union College, and trusting God to provide the necessary funds. We had just settled with the insurance company on my accident so we had enough money for the first two quarters’ tuition and living expenses. The Arizona Conference just happened to have an empty truck going that direction to move someone from northern California to Phoenix. Dale gives the details of how God miraculously worked in all of these situations in his book Truth Led Me Out.
The last picture of Carolyn’s mother and dad together at their new home in Idaho.
Dale, Bessie, and Opal.
My Cup Overflows. Copyright © 2009 by Carolyn Ratzlaff. All Scripture quotations—except where otherwise noted—are from The New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1994 by the Lockman Foundation, used by permission. All rights reserved. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
Carolyn has always been a positive person enjoying life and outdoor activities such as hiking and gardening, and she and her husband currently raise a good portion of their own food in small grow boxes. She also reads many health journals and is often surprised at the contrast between what was taught through the writings of Ellen White on forbidden items of diet and health, and the beneficial evidence of these same items which is supported by a plethora of scientific studies.
She and her husband Dale Ratzlaff have two married sons and four grandchildren.
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