Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you. The picture on the left is one of my fathers Walter Dagney and my mother Margaret Gallagher Dagney on their wedding day September 28, 1944. They were wonderful parents. I was a prodigal son. I called this story a mystery because it is a mystery to me how such good parents could have been blessed with such a bad son as I was. I say was because I am no longer a bad son. I converted into a good son. How that happened is also a mystery. Mysteries are often about how a person died. This mystery is also about how I lived through many physically and morally difficult and sometimes dangerous times. A mystery of grace. I was born and raised in the Falls of the Schuylkill (East Falls) neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pa. I graduated from grade school at Saint Bridget's (1960) high school at Roman Catholic (1964) and LaSalle College (1968). I served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1970. I was stationed in Italy for nine months and in Vietnam for ten months. After the army, I went to Ireland several times. I also made two trips to Central America. I became an RN in 1980 and worked as a pediatric rehabilitation nurse for eleven years. I have an MA in Creative Writing from Temple University. I studied theology at St Charles Seminary from 1992 to 1996. I published a book Effigies in Ashes in 2005 about my experiences in Ireland and in a pediatric hospital. Soon to be republished as A Sudden Serpent Bit. I worked at Saint Catherine's Infirmary at the Miraculous Medal Shrine in Philadelphia as a staff nurse from 1993 until I retired in 2008. I was my mother's caretaker until she died in 2013."