The Making of an Ex-Minister

Tony Pal is an unlikely name for a person whose grandparents were all born in Italy, but that’s my legal name.  I was christened Antonio Palazzo, which is certainly less common than Tony Pal, but in a fit of rebellion against all that is Italian, my father legally changed my given name and his family name from Palazzo to Pal.  My name sounds a little to me like “Tab” or “Rock” or “Rip,” or some movie name manufactured in the plasticized sterility of the mind of a 1950’s Hollywood publicist. 

I’m quite tall – 6’4” – for a “purebred” Italian, and I’ve been told that I don’t look Italian, whatever that means.

And I think that since my parents had just divorced as I entered college that was why I was sometimes a little too introspective, and then too extroverted at other times.  I would occasionally laugh too loudly and too heartily, and often inappropriately, but I know that this was a defense against the turmoil I was feeling over their divorce.

During my last year of college (1953), I had decided to go into the ministry.  It wasn’t an easy decision, but I’d experienced a genuine and lasting call to serve humankind.  I didn’t think I was naïve, but I wanted to help change the world for the better.  It was something I knew would be difficult, but I would gladly confront all the barriers placed in my way in order to better prepare myself to serve God. 

I’d already had my faith tested, in a theoretical way, by taking many upper-level courses

In New Testament and Old Testament, and I felt rather secure knowing that I’d gone through sophomoric atheism and agnosticism, and had arrived at a “mature” faith that would serve me in good stead for the rest of my life.