My Journey

Ron Overman today and in 1967 (top left).

Finding a New Song

by Ron “Buzz” Overman

Until my mid-teens, my life consisted of poverty, welfare, foster homes, and housing projects. I grew up without a father and was a high school dropout. Then I learned to sing and play guitar and write songs, and pop music became my savior.

In the summer of 1967 at age 23, the band I was with — Don and the Goodtimes — performed weekly on television. We had a contract with Epic Records and went on our first national tour with Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars. Twice that year, we had songs that charted on Billboard’s Hot 100 and an album that spent months in trade magazine hit parades — the first potentially “big money” we had seen. From the local dance scene in Seattle we were thrust into the national spotlight by becoming regulars on Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is, a TV series in the sixties. Our first record, “I Could Be So Good to You,” debuted at seventy-two with a bullet on the Billboard Hot 100.

By December 1967 all this came crashing down around me with the Vietnam War. Once more I found myself directionless and now divorced. I always thought it was rock ‘n’ roll that rescued me from a poor boy’s low self-esteem, but it was really Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

I was born toward the end of World War II, the big band era. Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, and Judy Garland had not heard the term rock ‘n’ roll. By the mid-fifties there were two new household words: Elvis and rock ‘n’ roll. When I was thirteen, a buddy’s parents took us to Spokane, Washington, to see Elvis. There, surrounded by ten thousand screaming fans, I knew what I wanted to be: a rock ‘n’ roll star. After the concert, I bought my first guitar for around $30. Before long, I was singing and playing in a small combo called The Gems.

At a sock hop in the ninth grade at Pioneer Junior High in Walla Walla, I first noticed a thirteen-year-old eighth grader named Vicki Patterson. Her father was George Patterson, the physical education and shop teacher. My friends cautioned me to stay away from her.

Vicki and I went together off and on throughout high school. I always felt that getting serious would hinder my ambition of stardom. Though Vicki was always near with every group I was in on my climb to the top, I was shocked when she told me she was pregnant. We weren’t Christians, and though we loved each other, marriage seemed to be a complication neither of us wanted then. We decided on abortion — before it was legal. Vicki’s older sister knew someone who could set it up.

At the last minute, Vicki refused to go through with the abortion, and we married. Five months later I told her I didn’t want to be married anymore, and left. Eight months pregnant, she went back to Walla Walla to have our baby. All the time we were separated and divorced, I never sent her any financial support and only saw our son, Jason, once.

In June 1968 I was drafted into the Army and went to boot camp. I can’t recall a lower time in my life. A blossoming music career gone; a wife and child gone. And now I faced possible death in Vietnam. For the first time, I felt truly alone. Then, I looked up.

I had always thought there was a God. My mother was a religious woman in her own way and read her Bible daily. In the Army my love affair with the Scriptures began. Just previous to my induction in June, Mom and I went to a Billy Graham crusade. When the invitation was given, I went forward. I was way up in the back row of a huge arena, and I walked all the way down with tears streaming. My hair was past my shoulders. People in the aisles said, “God bless you, son.”

During ten weeks at boot camp, I studied the Bible at every chance and began to see that war wasn’t God’s will. I had become more than willing to fight for God and country, but was it right? I started writing my mother, a member of a peculiar church that kept Saturday instead of Sunday, asking questions on this and other subjects. Upon reading my letters, she realized how much conviction I was under and contacted her minister in Tacoma.

One Sunday morning while on KP, I was peeling potatoes when someone from company headquarters summoned me to the visitors center. He said my father was there to see me. I thought, My father? My mother and father divorced when I was a child, and I had only seen him once since. 

I changed into my dress uniform and went as ordered. The visitors center was large, and hundreds of parents were there to see their sons. Only immediate family members were allowed to visit during basic training. I walked around looking for someone like my father until I saw a man sitting at a table, alone. He waved and said, “Ron?” The man looked in his late thirties and wore a blue suit with his hat sitting on the table next to a Bible.

I walked up to him. “Dad?”

He smiled. “The master sergeant thought I was your father, and I didn’t tell him differently.” He then introduced himself as Elder Wesley Walker and reported how my mother had spoken with him. We talked for two to three hours, and he answered all my Bible questions. I was surprised with his church’s stand on what he called carnal warfare. He was the first to show me a bold new way of looking at war.

I knew in my heart that the Church’s stand was right. Most of his verses were in the New Testament, but Isaiah 34:2 was the clincher for me: “For the indignation of the Lord is against all nations, and His fury against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them, He has given them over to the slaughter.”

In my mind, there will be war until Christ comes; it’s the way of the world. But we are not of this world, only in it. With Brother Walker’s help, I became a conscientious objector. After eleven months of pleading my case, I was found sincere and was released with full honors and excellent conduct.
While I awaited the Army’s decision on my CO status, I had a change of heart toward my ex-wife, Vicki, and our son. I started writing her and sent money for the first time in three years. She came to visit me at Fort Lewis and saw a changed man.
Four months after my release, we remarried. Two years later we had our second child, Sarah. Vicki was baptized and became my sister in Christ as well as my wife. We went on to have a third child, Beth. The child we were going to abort, Jason, is now our pastor in Jasper, Arkansas, and writes for the Bible Advocate. Sarah is an active Church of God member in Entwhistle, Alberta, Canada, and Beth attends the Jasper church with us. Vicki and I have been married thirty-nine years (the second time).

I am still in music today, but God has put a new song in my heart. Vicki, our kids, and our three grandchildren are my biggest fans!