This is part 2 of a two-part post about Father Time, a blind, professional wrestler and heavy weight champion based out of Flint, Michigan. Read part one here.
Father Time’s story reflects the genuine highs and lows of a life with a disability. Check out the conclusion of this vulnerable and inspiring story.
Content Note: This interview includes discussion of suicide, cancer, and other traumatic events. Please take care while reading.
What motivates or inspires you?
Father Time: God.
I’ve had two rounds of cancer. I had prostate cancer five years ago. I've had, not because of me, four or five really serious accidents. And just everything else, and the blindness. You know, it’s just been a lot.
I tried to kill myself at one time. That was some years ago. Had a lot to do with the blindness and everything else that was going on. And I don't know, I just always give credit to God for bringing me through.
I was talking to a guy one day and I said, “Man, I get so tired of this, you know, it just wears me out.” And I say this all about the accidents, the cancers, the strokes. He looked at me and said, “You know, if all that stuff never happened to you, you wouldn't be Father Time.”
So I just shut up. You know, it's been intense for me at times. Like I said, because of God and my sense of humor, I make it through. I told one person once, I said, “You can find life and you can find life with a cow patty.” You know what that is, right?
Laura: No, I don’t.
Father Time: A cow patty is poop.
Laura: Haha, okay.
Father Time: And he said, “Well, why is that?” I said, “The cow patty looks like poop. It is something worthless, right? Pick it up, you know, with a stick, and you find life. Look under.”
Laura: Yeah, it's true.
Father Time: So I said, “You can find something good in anything, but you have to look for it.” You know? Because you know it’s like that with life, there's so many things going on now.
You can focus so much on all the peripherals that you forget about the big things. When you focus on those things that is important to you, life not that bad anymore, because now you set goals for yourself. And as you reach that goal, you don't stop there. You reach that other goal, you keep moving. Now, when you look back, you say, “I've left all these other people behind. I’m happy with my life.”
I've tried to instill that in other people, and I try to keep it in me. And at times I do get down. I start talking and somebody say something to me, and I go, “Okay.”
Laura: I think you highlighted something important, which is a sense of purpose for people. Everyone, of course, needs a sense of purpose, but especially when you're disabled. It is easy to get lost in cycles of, “Why me?” and “This is so hard,” and you just don't want to do it.
Father Time: You know someone said, “You know you can sit down if you feel like it, don’t you?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “First of all, you know, you're blind.” I said, “Yeah, and?” He said, “You’ve had strokes, you’ve had cancer. So you can use any one of those excuses not to do anything.” I never thought about it before. So I thought about it, and I decided, that’s not for me, that's an excuse.
Survival and second chances
Father Time: One time, I tried to kill myself. It was bad, it was real bad.
It was at one point in my life where I'd always thought that I was the reason for things going bad. And it just got to me. So I prepared.
I had already taken pills and had another handful. I was at work and I said, Lord, either somebody's going to have to stop me, or I'll see the day.
Then I hear the foreman going, “Napier, Napier, get that next job.” So, I went over to the water fountain, put all the pills in my mouth and a hand came in front of me. I said, “God?” It was a friend of mine. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “What are you doing here?” And he said, “I don't know. Someone told me to come over and check on you.” I said, “I'm done.”
He opened my hand and grabbed the pills. Next thing I know, he was taking me down to the nurse at the shop. He said, “You better not go to sleep. Don’t you dare go to sleep.”
He rode with me to the hospital. I don't remember nothing else after that. When I woke up the next day, I said, “God, I can’t even kill myself right.”
Laura: Wow. What's your takeaway from it?
Father Time: You know, I found out all these people cared about me. Similar to when I found out about this last bout of cancer.
I was at the doctor’s office, he says, “You got prostate cancer.” And you know, I'm thinking, “Oh man, here we go again.” I was like, “Geesh, I don't want to deal with this stuff. I really don't.”
Laura: I get that.
Father Time: The doctor told me all the stuff you got to do about the radiation and the surgeries, and they told me the worst part of it, too. So I said, “I'm gonna ride this out. If I got a year fine, if I got you know, 10 years. I'm just, I don't care. I'm not gonna get all the treatments and stuff.” So I talked to my trainer, and he didn't want to hear that stuff, because he's like my son. And he said, “Well, I don't want you to do that. It will be tough.” But I thought, no, I’m done.
I was a heavyweight champion and at my next match, I went to the ring and I took the belt off. This was legit, you know? So, I set the belt down in the middle of the ring. I said, “I'm quitting tonight.” And the crowd, they was like, “We love you.”
And I'm listening to them, and I'm like, “Wow.” You know, I couldn't believe it. And they were like, “We don’t want you to leave.” There was just so much going on, and I was listening to what they were saying, and I said, shoot. I’m gonna kick the butt of this thing.
Laura: So did you do the radiation?
Father Time: No, I was scared of that. A lot of times, if you do radiation, you can't get surgery. Because the radiation, it kind of fuses the prostate with other stuff.
Laura: I didn’t know that.
Father Time: So, I chose to do the surgery and robotic surgery. Which is really neat, you know? They go in and do everything. So this way, if it came back for some reason. I still have the option of the surgery.
And a friend of mine, he took the radiation and he had to go back. So I was blessed. This is the fifth year cancer free.
Laura: Congratulations.
Father Time: Thank you. So nothing's come back. I’m healthy. After the physical therapy and after the surgery, I’m getting my strength back now.
The physical therapist, she put me on this leg curls/ leg extension machine. She had like 20 pounds on there, and she said, “Do 15 reps.” I said, “Sure.” After about the 10th one, I'm thinking, oh my God. This is crazy. I'm so weak. So she said, “Fifteen more.” And if it weren't for my male pride, I would have given up.
But we've become really good friends, her name is Lisa. She actually came out to the gym to watch me train. She made special exercises to strengthen me in the ring.
Laura: That's awesome. Cheers to Lisa. That's what I would want out of my physical therapist.
Father Time: Yeah, we became really good friends. So, you know, there’s so many positive things that have come out of this. Dr. Weisner too, I got his phone number. We call, we chat.
Laura: Hey, you’re like a VIP if you get a doctor's phone number.
Father Time: I know a lot of this is being blessed, because I always give honor to God because of it. And because of what I do, like the wrestling, and the information on the internet, I get treatment in the hospital most people my age don't get.
Laura: That's awesome.
Father Time: It really is. I pulled up this [Father Time shows his large bicep]. It was about 18 and a half inches. So the doctor said, “Most people your age, we’ll just let it heal. But I'm going to put you in physical therapy and ask them to take care of it.” Normally, that wouldn't happen. The treatment I get, it's just so different. They treated me as I was if I was younger, because I was so busy.
Laura: That’s great. It shows that if you respect yourself and take care of yourself, other people will respect you.
Father Time: They really will. It makes a difference.
Wrestling through panic and pain
Father Time: One night, I almost walked away from wrestling. We had a show down in Holland, Michigan, and I had a panic attack.
Laura: Really?
Father Time: Yeah, it was just the way things were going that week. Normally, I can kind of shake it off, but this time they changed the venue of the match. I’m thinking, “Oh God. I gotta figure this thing out.” I got in the venue, and it was darker than normal. We got in the ring, and it was horrible. And I said, “This is it. I'm gone. I can't see in the ring.”
So, I go downstairs and see the guy that I was supposed to be working with, he said everything was messed up. And I'm right on the verge, I'm like, “I just, I don't want to do this.” It really got to me. I kind of broke down.
He said, “What are you gonna do?” I said, “I'll be alright, you know, but this is hard’. He said, “We won’t have the match. We’ll go home.” And I went, “Wait a minute. No man.” I said, “I ain't going down like that.” You know? I said, “We're gonna have the match.” Even though all everything inside of me was saying, “Run.”
But then I thought about all the people that I have encouraged, that Father Time has encouraged. I said to myself, “What would that look like for me to quit?” And this friend of mine, he prayed for me. Ten minutes later, I started shaking it off. We kicked butt that night.
Laura: That's awesome. You really rallied, it sounds like.
Father Time: I think it's because of all the adversities that I went through over the years. I can get emotional thinking about it.
What do you like to do for fun?
Father Time: I enjoy wrestling, I really do. I also like the preaching part. And the wrestling has helped me with my preaching and the preaching has helped with my wrestling. Because like being blind, you live in this type of area…you know?
So in wrestling you're here, you're larger than life. Before in my preaching, I was always in this little area. But now, since I started wrestling, I'm more out when I preach, you know? When I'm expressing certain things, I interact with the congregation like I interact with the crowd, you know? It's just different. So it has helped both of them.
Both of them is fun. One is more meaningful than the other. But what I found out is that when I'm speaking at wrestling, it sounds like I’m preaching. Even a teacher at one of my matches came up and said, “Were you preaching out there?”
So, I like to be able to touch people. I like to be able to make people feel good. If you’d have looked down when I came in here, I'd have said something that would get you laughing.
Laura: Yeah, that's a special skill.
Father Time: I also don't want you to bring me down. Lemme enjoy this moment, you know?
What change would you like to see for disabled people?
Father Time: Acceptance.
You know, disabled people can do anything anybody else does. The only difference is we have to be trained. We have to have certain accommodations. If they can meet those requirements, we could sit and do anything. You know, especially with what's going on now.
There's a lady that teaches photography, but she’s blind, believe it or not. There’s blind carpenters, blind mechanics. There's a lawyer. There was a blind judge that was up here one time. So accepting us and being able to accommodate disabled people. Don't look at us like there's something wrong with us.
Laura: I would think a blind person probably knows how to do something better than a seeing person would, because you go about things in a different way. Like a mechanic putting an engine together probably knows that engine more intimately than a seeing person.
Father Time: Yeah, because he knows what it looks like in his mind. He feels it, he touches it. He knows how this part moves. You know, it's like a surgeon. If you look at a surgeon and he's trying to find a tumor or a bullet, he's feeling with his fingers in the organ, or in the intestines.
When Reagan got shot, and one of the bullets was in his lungs, they kept putting the x-ray up, the surgeon could see it on an x-ray, but he felt with his fingers to get it. So even if a person is blind, once he knows the anatomy it's there in his head.
It's like me. If you see me in a ring, my eyes are often closed, because I know where the ropes are. I know where my opponent is.