Nineteen years later, David married 18-year-old Ruth Earnil Hubbard in the city of Philadelphia. Neither of them lived in Philly, but there was family there, on my mom’s side. Both parents were born and grew up in North Carolina. These two teenagers returned to North Carolina after the wedding and promptly boarded a westward train. About that ride, Dad recalled, “We were the only black people on board, and the porter came over and drew a curtain between the rest of the passengers and us.” 

Dad also said that it didn’t bother them that much because they were so in love and were leaving the South.

Dad shared with me how challenging it was for people to leave during the Jim Crow era, but he’d made up his mind after local whites lynched a Black man. Dad mused how most black folk wanting to leave the South and needing a lot of support. And just like a jailbreak, you had to be careful who you let know about the plan. The safest way was to join the military. The U.S. Navy was his ticket out.

Dad told us later that he did not want his children to grow up like he did, having to walk in the back door of grocery stores and trying to make sure every day that you didn’t do something that could get you lynched

A year after their wedding, they gave birth to their first of 9 children. That baby was me.

We had hardly any family in the Western U.S. So Dad’s elder brother, Uncle Wade, living in Denver, said he drove all night, some 7 hours. He wanted to be with David and Ruth for their special moment at Sandia Naval Air Station (now closed) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A year and a half later, my sister Bobbie was born.

I was not yet two years old when they moved to California, where seven additional Moore children would be born, some in Oxnard and some in San Francisco, for a total of 9 amazing kids. All of my siblings are adorable.

I realize that it comes off as sexist to only think of God in terms of maleness, to only think of God as Father.  I can also appreciate the internal conflict some people struggle with when reconciling God with goodness because of their unpleasant relationships with their fathers. But for us, David Moore, Sr., helps to redeem the word father. You hear people refer to God as “Heavenly Father,” but for the Moores, our earthly father could be pretty heavenly.

Our parents have always been special to us, but we are impressed by how people who are not family have taken to David and Ruth Moore. To many of us, Dad was a god.  

As Dad’s health declined, he became the favorite patient of medical personnel. He was hospitalized many times over the past few years, visiting four local hospitals. Dr. Gail Simpson, who was not his primary care physician, remained his friend and confidant, someone Dad trusted, until his final day. 

Over the years, I would tell Dad that I experienced three men in my life who will forever live in my consciousness. I said, “Nelson Mandela, who has since deceased, Desmond Tutu, and you, Daddy-doll.”  

Dad hesitated to accept that association, but I would tell him, “I didn’t get to spend time with THEM, but I have been in your presence and experienced your kindness and humility first hand.”

When our family was young, Dad was gone a lot, stationed elsewhere. Still, he consistently conveyed his love, sometimes by phone and letters.

The most memorable means of contact was reel-to-reel tapes. We had a 3M Wollensak tape player, and Dad would talk to Mommy, and all of us, sometimes for as long as an hour. We were greatly amused at how little he had to say to us. It had to be awkward for him to speak into a microphone with no immediate audience. In every recording, he would say, at least 20 times, “And, uh.”

We kids would imitate him. We cracked up over it, and we would repeat it to Mommy, “and, uh,” until she got tired of us.

Even back then, Dad dealt gracefully with suffering.

We never know what kind of burden another person is carrying.

While his career did go well, he eventually achieved the rank of Senior Chief Petty Officer; still, it wasn’t easy being in the Navy. And yet, Dad continued standing. 

He wanted to please God.

There’s a verse that says, “But without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that GOD IS … God is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

So Dad earnestly sought God, because long before

MC Hammer knew, “We got to pray just to make it today.” Of the many things we learned from Daddy and Mommy, one was to pray always and not lose heart. We learned the lesson of Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble. We will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea.”  

The Moore family knows well that earthquakes do come, but we are determined to outlast them because God is our refuge and strength. We gon’ be alright. 

Back in the 1960s, Dad had an important interview. Sitting down with several Naval officers, some of them older, some young, one of them asked, “What do you think of that Martin Luther King?”

Dad answered from his conscience. He said, “I respect what Dr. King is doing.” He said he knew from the looks on the faces of the older officers that this was the moment he lost the opportunity for the promotion and opportunity to take better care of his family.

After 20 years of active duty, Dad went into civil service. Our younger siblings grew up experiencing an even better version of Dad. He seemed to mellow after he left the Navy. It’s when he really began to blossom.

Then came one of our most inspiring moments; Dad graduated with HIS Bachelor’s degree in Sociology after some of his kids did. He might have been the lone student in his U.C. Santa Barbara classes who had three grandchildren.

Dad’s greatness began to bloom in those days truly. One of my takeaways from his life is that the most important thing any of us can overcome is our own selves, our own past. If we can conquer our innermost self, we can be transformed.  

Just four years after dad graduated, he and Mom decided they wanted to become part of my first church, in Santa Barbara. I was a new pastor, still in my 20s and full of enthusiasm and questions. And some people had questions about me.

Dad and I were in a similar space: We wanted to be respectful and polite while reevaluating our traditions. Our concern was that tradition for the sake of tradition can sometimes become superstition. “When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer.”

As I pursued the real and relevant, nobody gave me more intellectual support than Dad. I speak not only for my siblings but so many other people when I say that Dad developed the ability to express higher expectations for people while never shaming them. As he matured, Dad developed a delicate and sensitive touch.  

He touched our lives with compassion. He understood how hard life is when you can’t find someone to encourage you.  

And he understood that everything could come crashing down at any time, and in our fragility, we all need support. Who among us has never been shaken to your core?

Sometimes God does the shaking because God wants the best for us. There’s a scripture that says, “the One whose voice in earlier times shook the earth now makes another promise:

“‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens’”? The phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ means that those things that can be shaken will be removed and taken away. As a result, those things that remain cannot be shaken.”


The writer of this biblical text anticipated that anything frivolous, and fake things, will not endure. If you want to last, you need to find your footing on something that will not fracture and fail. You need to build your hope on things eternal. You need to hold to God’s unchanging hand.

One thing we Californians know well is earthquakes. We also know that whenever one strikes, people stop talking. I’ve never seen anyone carry on a casual conversation while the ground was moving.

The Gospel, in part, is a message of God bringing his Son into the world. Jesus appeared when it was dark, not only when it was dark, but he came BECAUSE it was dark, as someone has said, “It is far better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.”

Dad was born in dark times. He then survived the first 20% of the 21st century. Some of the new evil he saw looked so much like the old evil that he’d hoped was behind him. Whenever he thought about the disrespect, corruption, and lies in the public sphere, and people’s willingness to accept it all, he’d frequently say to me, “David, I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Still, Dad was reliable, steadfast, and immovable, and he instilled within us the power to keep hoping against hop