Click here to view original web page at www.theepochtimes.com
(Courtesy of Larry Clements) People
Second chances are the bedrock of life. A safety net but with more bruises.
Everyone has stories of mucking up—some hitting rock bottom harder than others—yet some get up, fix their mistakes, and are wiser for it, gleaning a greater appreciation for life’s blessings. It’s a story as old as humans.
For Larry Clements, 66, mucking up stemmed from a rough upbringing in a military family in Orange County. He rebelled, stumbled into drugs, and wound up in a tussle with police. Shots were fired, and Larry landed himself in jail.
Nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s parents are perfect. Larry’s veering astray, to some degree, flowed from his “mean” World War II vet dad.
“He was in the Navy. He was actually in the Battle of Midway,” Larry told The Epoch Times. “He was on the ship the Japanese sunk, the Yorktown. He was what you call a lifer in the military. … He was pretty hard on us kids. He was pretty much an alcoholic. Wasn’t until his later years in life that he gave that up.” (Left) Larry at age 7; (Right) Larry’s dad. (Courtesy of Larry Clements) Larry installing flooring in the 1990s. (Courtesy of Larry Clements) Looking to his hoodlum older brother for guidance, Larry was delinquency-bound. “When I was 13, he was arrested for murder-robbery,” he said. “At 13 is when I started messing up thereabouts. I looked up to him; he was my oldest brother.”
Larry dabbled in things he probably shouldn’t have, “you know, marijuana and different stuff,” he said. “[My brother] never told me, ‘Hey, Larry, don’t follow this path.’
“That’s kind of why I went off the way I did … I just kind of rebelled; if [Dad] told me to go right, I went left.“About the age of 18, I started shooting […]
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