It happened 40 years ago. But, listening to Harold Moore talk about it, you sense that it’s still as real to him as though it happened yesterday.

He was hauling logs at the time, he recalled, and as he pulled out of the yard one morning, a voice said to him, “What if you lost everything here?”

The voice was so strong that he looked around to see if someone was in the truck with him.

No one was, and he knew that the voice was God’s, he said. And he answered, “Everything I have is yours, Lord. You can take it all, and I’ll still trust you.”

That day, his house, car, garage and saw mill burned to the ground.

“But the Lord was good to us,” he said.

He still had young children at home but not one of them was injured. His logging business flourished after the fire, and he was able to build an even nicer house than he had lost.

“God has always taken care of me,” he said. “During the war (WWII), I was right over there at the front, but I didn’t worry. I was in His hands.”

Although he survived the battles, he didn’t elaborate on them. But he described another incident that was also life–threatening.

“I was transporting drums of fuel through the mountains. Traffic had made deep ruts through the snow and I stayed in them as I drove up this one mountain. But as I started down the other side, a big drum in the back of the truck shifted and spun the truck around, and I started going down the mountain backwards, still in the ruts.”

Moore knew that the situation was not in his hands.

“I couldn’t control it, so I just said, ‘God, you’re in control, whatever you want to do,’ and finally I got on down the mountain to a place where I could stop, so I turned the truck around and kept going.”

Moore and his late wife Bernice had five children. They all live near enough to visit, as do some of his grandchildren.

The Chelsea resident celebrated his 88th birthday Aug. 14, with family members and a birthday cake. Other family and friends stopped by during the week to wish him well and listen to his stories.

Shelba Nivens can be reached by e–mail at ssnivens@bellsouth.net.