Tuesday Voice: Missionary Kid

Book in preparation

By Vic Midyett

As you know from previous “Missionary Kid” stories, I grew up in India to American missionary parents.
    My cousin Randy Somers is preparing a book about my dad, to be titled JT Another Mighty Midyett, which plays off the title of an earlier book about The Mighty Midyetts. Randy’s book will contain many stories of what I recall of growing up in India. I am now over 60 years old and still have to say it was the most magical time of my life. A dangerous and harrowing time, but I knew no other. Ignorance really can be bliss! It may be difficult for readers to believe the things that I as a child and we as a family got up to in this seemingly “abnormal” existence. But they are all true.

My sister Anita and me on vacation in Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas

    Mom was from Brooklyn, NY. Here she is from 1950’s India:

    Dad was from Mason Hall in rural Tennessee. Mom had not laid eyes on a cow until her early 20s, but then, with a conviction in her heart, and her love for my dad, she went to the jungles of India, where snakes would sometimes crawl up the drain pipes and into our home. Mom did a lot of levitating!
    Dad worked with leprosy- and tuberculosis-infected patients, many times at satellite clinics under Banyan trees. He, along with other American missionaries, started two hospitals in what is now called Bangaladesh in Northeastern India. His work began there in 1950. To my knowledge, the hospitals are still in operation and now run by the government.

Dad & me in front of the Taj Mahal, 1960s

    The jungles of the area where I was born and grew up were super dense and tropical with an average rain fall of 350 inches....monsoons...wildlife abundant and our only source of meat...no shops, no running water, no electricity, no paved roads. Our refrigerator was kerosene.

Copyright © 2014 by Vic Midyett