Rick Squires walked on picturesque golf courses with no thought of living for the Creator who laid out the beauty.
“I was a golf professional all my life, but that was just a guise — I was a drunk, a drug abuser, a womanizer, and I lived that life,” he said. “I started hanging with the wrong crowd,” he said.
A professional golfer with great potential to enter the ranks of the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA), he was on his way, playing in professional mini-tours and developmental tours in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“I had a talent that I wasted — drank it up and drugged it up and everything else,” he said. He began working as a golf pro at country clubs, including some in Montgomery and Birmingham.
With his career and personal life declining even more in 1992, Squires continued living the life of a prodigal, mostly in Gulf Shores.
From about 1993 till 1998 the once 200-pound man weighed 125 pounds, had three abdominal surgeries and had been in the hospital 31 times, due to his prodigal lifestyle, which included excessive consumption of alcohol and drugs.
“When I’d get a little better, I’d go back to drinking and doing the drugs,” he said.
Often, his abuse of alcohol and drugs left him so sick that he could not eat, worsening his condition.
Having lost his wife through divorce, his career, his money and now his health, he decided to do something worthwhile with the last bit of money he had.
‘Enough is enough’
“Finally, I said, ‘enough is enough.’ I took the last $100 I had and got on a bus to see my daddy. That was July 26, 1999.”
“On the way up there (Sumiton) I was thinking that I really didn’t want to see him, because all he was going to do was preach to me, and I didn’t want to hear it.” he said.
“Sure enough I get there and he picked me up at the bus station. He starts sharing his Jesus with me. He said that every morning at 6:30 he and his wife had a family devotion at their house. “‘I want you there,’” he said.
“The first morning he’s beating on my door and God started working on me. My daddy gave me a book to read. I started at about 3 one afternoon and didn’t stop until I finished it about 3 a.m. When I finished, I got on my knees and accepted Jesus as my Savior and Lord.”
The book was “Rebel With a Cause” by Franklin Graham.
“Immediately, I got my appetite back, God took all of the desire for alcohol and drugs from me, all the cursing and obscenities that I spoke away, and just started molding and making me into the man He wanted me to be right there.”
The next morning a joyful Squires walked into the kitchen.
“I told Daddy that I just accepted Christ last night, and that I was so hungry.”
That hunger was for a big breakfast at the time, but his spiritual hunger had been born and was growing.
Squires returned to Gulf Shores when he found out from a friend’s phone call that the police were looking for him there. “I said, ‘I’m coming back and facing it.’
“I hung up the phone, looked at my dad. He said, ‘You’re going back aren’t you Son?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘But you’re not going alone, are you Son?’ I said, ‘No, I’ve got Jesus right here,’” he said, tapping his chest.
He returned to Gulf Shores, called the police and was taken to jail in Bay Minette. The next day he faced the judge to answer charges of overdue child support payments.
With his newfound honesty through Christ, he told the judge that the court’s $4,000 of child support was incorrect — that he believed it was more like $10,000 that he had not paid. The judge checked and found that Squires was right. Knowing there was no way he could come up with any of that money, he anticipated going back to jail, indefinitely.
“He says, ‘Well, you turned yourself in, didn’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes sir.’ He said, ‘I’m going to let you sign your own bond and get out of here today — just be back to court in a month.’”
He walked the 33 miles from Bay Minette back to Gulf Shores. “It took me all day long; I got one ride for about 10 miles, but other than that, I walked every step of the way,” he said.
And he is once again walking, but this time it is across the state. Squires left in early March to make a nearly 400-mile trip carrying a 10-foot by 5-foot cedar cross from Gulf Shores to Birmingham.
“God was preparing me for this walk even then (the day he got out of jail more than three years ago),” Squires said, noting he spent the night sleeping and praying on the beach after making it to Gulf Shores. The next morning he went into the local convenience store that he had frequented in his old life. After telling the story of his new life in Christ, a worker at the store called the secretary at Lagoon Baptist Church, Gulf Shores. They were willing to help, but didn’t have facilities to house people.
The worker’s sister, Jeri Malyn, came in and told him about an old trailer that her father, Jerry Dubuisson, owned. It was near the church and hadn’t been used in about a year.
She took him over to her dad’s house. They ate a big breakfast, where he shared his testimony with Dubuisson.
“It worked out and I started cleaning up the old trailer and living there. I moved in on a Tuesday and that Wednesday night I came to Lagoon Baptist Church.
“I baptized him here at Lagoon Baptist,” said Pastor Fred Freeman. “He has really grown spiritually since he’s been here. He’s just soaked up things from the books in my library like a sponge.”
Squires said, “I was by the church every day, borrowing all kinds of Christian literature —- I was hungry, spiritually. These people here at this church, they took me just how I was, with nothing to my name — I just didn’t have anything.”
One morning a knock came on his door. It was two ladies from the church, — DeEtte Fontaine and Deedle Potter — bringing groceries and prayers. “We had a prayer meeting for about 30 minutes.”
“They left and I said, ‘God, I know why I’m here now — these people love me and they don’t even know me,’” he said. “I’ve just really grown in this church; I’ve been ordained as a deacon here. It’s the first time a divorced man has been ordained as a deacon here.
“That’s what Jesus is all about. He took me just like I was, and so did these people,” he said.
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