The Lighthouse Effect by Steve Pemberton

Author:Steve Pemberton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2021-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

There have always been questions in the Pemberton family as to whether my father, Kenny, knew of my existence. The reasoning was that had he known, there is simply no way he would have abandoned me. As one of the top amateur fighters in the country, he was respected and feared. Still, he had a soft spot for children, and having a child, even if unexpected, would have required him to step forward to take responsibility.

The problem was that this did not mesh with the facts as I came to learn them. My mother had not only identified Kenny as my father to her own family but had told him as well. Two people who knew of their relationship, including one who witnessed the conversation between my parents about my pending arrival, told me that Kenny initially denied paternity, though he knew it was at least possible, given their relationship. A friend of Kenny’s shared with me before his passing that he had gone to visit Kenny one time and found him taking care of a young boy, whom he remembered as me, in large part because my blue eyes did not match Kenny’s deep brown ones. When he questioned Kenny about this, he had responded simply by saying, “This is my son.” I appreciated the story, but I also knew it would be virtually impossible to prove.

I understood that Kenny’s absence in my life was not how his family wanted to remember him. But the question of his responsibility was a secondary matter to me. For years I had walked through the world with the weight of not knowing where I had come from. Finding my biological family had allowed me to finally put that burden down. Besides, I thought both could be true: that my father had many extraordinary qualities and he did not make the best decisions when it came to my sudden arrival in the world. Over time, and with the wisdom gained from my own lighthouses, I saw his lack of responsibility as a reflection of his own difficult childhood and the fact that he was twenty-one years old when I was born.

When I met the Pemberton family, I could see the resemblance between us, and so could they; it was very clear that I was a Pemberton and Kenny’s son. They said as much, and so did their eyes. It was a look of recognition. When I petitioned a family court to change my last name from my birth name of Klakowicz to Pemberton, the Pemberton family did not protest.

Until one day, one of them did exactly that.

One of Greg’s brothers decided nearly thirty years later that I was not a Pemberton after all. He penned a self-published, incoherent pamphlet, basing the title off my book, accusing me of making up the story of my early years and emphatically denying that Kenny Pemberton was my father. He offered no evidence for his claims about my childhood other than an uninformed speculative opinion. On the

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