My father wanted me to go to school to learn how to be a pharmacist or druggist, or a professional man, and I chose South Carolina, the university there — because they had a pharmacy school. And I went there to school, and I played under Bobby Richardson for 4 years. Four of the greatest years of my life. Playing baseball under a wonderful Christian man. He came to me on the diamond there at the University of South Carolina in 1970 and he said, “Don, you are getting ready to go home into a world of pharmacy where you will be facing a lot of peer pressure,” like our young people face today, and he said, “Don, you’ll never make it without Jesus.”
And he said, “I realize that you have been sneaking out after curfew and drinking and smoking pot and running with the wrong crowd.” By this time I had been staying up late at night and taking amphetamines, and studying — and I had started becoming addicted already to the speed and the amphetamines, and later on it developed into a cocaine addiction that was probably costing my family over $1,000 a week — when I had built a drug store up to a million dollar business. I was at the top of my professional pinnacle. I’d come home from school — I turned Bobby down that day when he said, “Don, I met a friend names Jesus when I was 16, at high school, went on and carried it to the New York Yankees with me — witnessed to Mickey Mantle and Roger Marris and all the greats. Would you receive Jesus today?” I through up my hands, Richard, and said, “You know, I’m okay, Bobby, I joined the church when I was 12.” But deep down inside I knew that I was living a lie. I never did have the power to say no to drugs and alcohol — that our teenagers and our people need in America today. And I came home and I had a lovely wife, started a family — she was a beautiful Christian — her name is Gwen. And she prayed for me for many years — that I would come out of that fast lane of that party crowd and continue to go to church with her and really make a stand for Jesus Christ. I don’t know how, but I was elected Chairman of the Baptismal Committee in my own church.
But I thank God today for a church who interceeded for me, for the whole SM03 time I was in prison. Acts, chapter 12, it says that the church for Jesus Christ interceeded for Peter daily while he was in prison. ( MS_Acts_12:05 ) I had a pastor who loved me, and who prayed, and who took care of my family. But I would go to church and I would sit on the pew there on Sunday morning and I would hear many messages, but I would allow the pride of life and the pride of the world to keep me from going forward and making a commitment to Jesus Christ. By this time I had built the drug store up to a million dollar business, working over 12 hours a day. And I was president of the club, vice-president of the club. I was what you would call, Richard, as a pillar of the community.
SPRR RICHARD ROBERTS The world would say that you had made it, you had made it.
SPKM DON STANLEY The world said that I had made it. But right there at the top of my pinnacle I realized that I was a lonely man without Jesus Christ. And I was going down hill. And I was on a roller-coaster ride. I became an alcoholic, drinking over a quart of scotch a day. And I was partying with doctors, and lawyers, and politicians and out in the fast lane of the world. And I started supplying friends with drugs – and Demerol and cocaine, and I became addicted — snorting 95 percent pharmaceutical cocaine. Even went to as far in a motel room — one night in Spartanburg, South Carolina as I took out a syringe and I hypodermically injected cocaine into my veins. And you know as that monkey gets on your back the only hope for you in America is the blood of Jesus Christ. (APPLAUSE) Jesus is the hope of the hopeless.
But I was losing everything that I had worked for. And I had my children there at home, and my wife Gwen — I had a young son when I left for prison who’s name’s Chris, that was 14 years old, playing on the high school baseball team. A little girl named Summer, was 4 years old. But I found out that what my children really needed, Brother Richard, was not a daddy who could buy them everything that SM04 they needed in the materialistic world. It says — what profit it a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul. ( MS_Matthew_16:26 ) What my children and my wife needed was a daddy who could get down on his knees at night and open up the word of God and tell them the precious stories about Jesus.
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