Travis G. Harris is the Founder/President of North Carolina Warriors. He is a Retired 2nd Class Petty Officer.
What inspired you to create a North Carolina Warrior hockey team for veterans?
I came across a post in a veteran Facebook group, and growing up in Upper Michigan, hockey has always had a special place in my heart. Being able to couple that with giving back to other disabled veterans was an easy decision to make. I created this program, not so much as to create a big family, but more so to bring veterans together. After about 18 months of this program being in existence, it has grown far beyond the ice. These brothers and sisters have become good friends, building bonds that you had with your active duty brothers/sisters.
What were some challenges you had to overcome to get the team together?
The biggest challenge was bringing together people from different branches, with different mentalities, and different skill levels. Then add in the fact they do not all live in the Raleigh area and some are driving 2-4 hours to come play.
How did you get the word out about trying to put this team together?
Due to the fact that I was currently coaching youth travel hockey, and playing on 3 different adult league teams, I practically lived at the rink. Once I got it going, I posted in a local hockey Facebook group and that is how I met Donald Urbany who had already been playing for another USA Hockey Warrior program in Maryland. After that, I started posting in local community pages, veteran groups, and word of mouth around the rink spread quick of what we were doing.
About how many players are on the NC Warriors?
As of November 9th, 2020, we have 64 rostered disabled veterans, and 2 volunteer coaches.
Are they all from North Carolina?
All but 2 of them reside in North Carolina, the other 2 live in South Carolina.
NC Warriors Team Photo with opposing team
Do you have any long-term goals for the team? If so, what are they?
To continue to grow the program, to give back to our local communities, to give back to the veteran families in our state, and to spread the word about the greatest game in the world. Eventually we would like to create a youth hockey program that mixes veteran families with local families. A big dream of mine would be to eventually own a hockey rink of our own, that’s a stretch but it’ll be something I will always strive for.
Do you feel like you have reached most of not all of your short term goals for the team?
Looking at other USA Hockey Warrior programs around the country, I think we have progressed and grown a lot faster than most other programs and that is thanks to our members and the amazing support we get from everyone.
What has been the most rewarding part of the team thus far?
Seeing the joy on their faces on and off the ice, and the feedback I get from their families on how much this program has changed their behavior at home. I never created this program for recognition or for glory, I don’t even like taking credit for things that I do, I just like to be able to give back and know that I’ve made a difference in someone’s life.
What was the inspiration behind the Warriors logo?
The thought behind the team logo had come from the biggest military icon in North Carolina, BB-55 USS North Carolina, the most decorated warship during WWII.
How do you promote bonding with the guys on the team on and off the ice? What about the wives and girlfriends, are they close? Do you think this program has given them a good support system and group of friends as well?
We stress, over and over, that the mission of this program is always brotherhood/sisterhood first, on and off the ice. Winning is a hard thing to get military veterans not to focus on, due to our competitive nature, but over time as they are in the program longer, they start to realize what we have and leave the anger or discouragement on the ice. The wives/girlfriends have started growing closer, they had a wife’s night out this past December and have started their own Facebook group chat to keep in touch. This program has given a lot of people something to look forward to, and the friendly military banter that everyone remembers is right there with the friendship.
What is the most important thing you want to accomplish with the NC Warriors?
I want to continue finding disabled veterans that miss that brotherhood, whether they play the game of hockey or not, and show them how therapeutic playing a team sport with like-minded veterans can be. Our reach throughout the state of North Carolina is not as vast as I would like it to be. I would like to get to the point where we have a team in each major city throughout the state, where they can build up themselves to self-support while still being a part of the overall North Carolina Warriors program. This program is so much more than I could have ever expected it to grow into. I started it because I wanted to create a veteran hockey team and travel around and play other teams, this program has turned into one giant family. These veterans in the program will drop whatever they are doing to help out another member, even if they’ve never met that person before, and that’s something I never thought I’d see come from this program.
Truth to tell I’m not much for books about cooking as I’m a fairly basic cook. I’m no Bobby Flay but I can throw together an edible meal that’s reasonably tasty. I’m also not much for books about leadership and teaching you how to be more assertive and focused in life. Self-help books really turn me off. So how did I end up not only reading but reviewing a book entitled Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader which is exactly what it sounds like: a cookbook about the skills and tools of leadership, using the writer’s family recipe for gumbo as the template for acquiring and learning those skills and tools?
Same way I usually end up reading and reviewing a book: it was recommended to me by a friend and my friends usually have good taste and I trust that they wouldn’t recommend a book to me unless they thought for sure there was something in the subject matter that would interest me. And there is a good deal in Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader that did interest me.
Mr. Mayfield’s prose is a bit rough at times and he tends to stray from time to time, zig-zagging from his family reminisces to his career as a Marine to make his point. The effect sometimes gives the impression of a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. But it’s more than that. It didn’t take me long to get into the book to realize that Mr. Mayfield feels intensely about the subject he’s writing about and it truly does come across in his writing. His deep love for his family, his country, his service in The Marine Corps and yes, his cooking is strong enough to overcome the roughness of the prose.
Mr. Mayfield takes the highly unusual notion of adopting his family gumbo recipe that he learned from both his grandmothers to apply the various ingredients of gumbo and how they go together to create one delicious dish to the various ingredients that go into the making of a leader. Mr. Mayfield recounts many incidents from his life as a youth growing up in New Orleans and his time in the Marines to illustrate these ingredients and how they made him the leader and the man he eventually developed into.
It works a whole lot better than my rather clumsy synopsis would lead you to believe. As I said earlier, Mr. Mayfield believes and cares deeply about his subject and he communicates that belief very well indeed. I like how he always uses his own personal history to illustrate the points he’s making. As a result, in reading this book I feel I got to know Mr. Mayfield as a person. At times while reading the book I felt as if we were having a conversation. Not an easy thing to pull off in prose, I assure you. I’ve tried.
Mr. Mayfield has a simple, relatable style of writing that works for him and makes reading his book entertaining. Gumbo Warrior: Recipe Of A True Leader has a lot going for it in terms of being a positively inspiring and uplifting read that will give you a lot to think about if you decide to give it a chance. May make you even think about learning how to make gumbo.
GUMBO WARRIOR: RECIPE OF A TRUE LEADER By Morris Mayfield III 2018 ISBN-13: 987-0-692-07687-3 Johnson’s Publishing Co.
What was the driving force behind you writing this book? Answer: When I began the book I was at my previous church and has someone who’d been in the faith for longer than I’d been alive say, “I don’t know how to make disciples.” He was a well-respected member fo the community and in our church. It broke my heart. I really viewed discipleship-that is essentially mentoring someone into Christian maturity, as fairly simple. So many people think you need to mark out three hours a day and have several connections. You could use several hours a day and saturate your calendar, but I found my approach to be much simpler, make disciples where God has already placed you.
I felt that my background as a Non-Commissioned Officer and mentoring Soldiers gave me a unique insight into how to raise up other Christians as I helped raise up other Army leaders.
Living and growing up in a non-Christian home, what was it that sparked your interest in spirituality? I think everyone is spiritual in one sense or another. But the Apostle Paul writes that no one seeks after God (Romans 3:11), but I think people have an inner drive to understand what makes themselves and the world tick. I was always spiritually curious and seeking after something. I read the Bible occasionally, but it wasn’t until Basic Training that I truly heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was in that moment that I realized Jesus was the answer to all that I had been seeking. It was God’s work in changing my heart (John 3) that saw me seek after Him.
In your book you state, “Over the last few years I’ve learned that the church has not done a great job at making disciples.” Do you have any plans in place to help change that in your community, church, and or congregation as a whole? Other than writing this book? I wish my book was enough! 🙂 But I realize it isn’t. I’ve since written a second book Discover: Ancient Truths For Today. My goal is to create resources that I can use in my local church as well as others can use in their own so that they can more easily make disciples. Go! is meant as a shock to the system while providing some practical advice on where disciples can be made. So the book is meant to help shift a mindset that says the only place to make disciples is within a church building. It does happen there, but it happens everywhere that the local church lives, works, and recreates. The Church is the people of God and we are sent into the world to make disciples of Jesus Christ.
In addition to books, I’m hoping to provide other kinds of content. I host a weekly podcast with a good friend of mine where we try to have conversations about life, faith, and theology. We goof around while walking a tight line. We want people to understand that the Christian life isn’t meant to be sport coats and sundresses. Those things are fine, but we are anything but your stereotypical pastors with a black suit and a red tie. We try to be real and occasionally apologize when we realize we said something wrong. This is discipleship! We are sharing our lives with other people.
In addition to more books and other types of content, I also try to spend as much time present in my community as possible. I’ve coached my son’s basketball team, played hockey, and joined a disabled veterans hockey organization. I use each of those outlets as a place to be present and share Jesus. I’m careful to “shove the Bible” down people’s throats. I try to love everyone in a way that they can recognize and I’m there to answer spiritual questions as they arise. I also meet with men in my church on a regular basis to discuss Scripture as well as life. My first focus is on my wife and kids. If I don’t get that right then the other stuff doesn’t matter.
Why do you feel the church today rarely encourages such depth and intrusiveness? Do you encourage your congregation to go out and be intrusive? This is really a deep question because there are a number of contributing factors. I’ll just cover the top three. First, we have gotten away from the biblical practices of fellowship. In the first century the fellowship within the faith was self-sacrificing and very communal. The first Christians were totally sold-out and willing to part with anything they had to further God’s glory and care for their neighbors. They had the Apostles and early church leaders who oversaw this fellowship and when folks began to walk away, they were reminded of the hope that was found in Christ.
Secondly, the culture has deemed this type of relationship as rude. Ever since I was a kid it seemed that what people considered friendship was a lack of depth and affirming or encoring everything that friend to do whatever they pleased. So even if you thought your friend was quite clearly wrong, you affirmed them anyway. What we have within a biblical Christian fellowship is a sincere desire to see one another flourish to the glory of God. Part of that flourishing is obeying what God teaches. That means we must submit to one another out of love.
Lastly, it takes sacrifice. There are times that to care for your neighbor you will have to go without. Even if a Christian in a moment would rather not sacrifice for their brother, they will anyway, and not hold it against them. That’s a true fellowship! The Christian life is counter-cultural, but the church over the course of time has forgotten this. We can often find greater hope in politics than Christ. We can quickly forget God is in control. Nevertheless, God remains faithful to His people and will correct our course.
What kind of advice do you give your congregation to be “Fishers of Men”? How as a man of God do you encourage the introverted people in your flock to be disciples and spread the word of God? Most people don’t realize this but by many definitions, I’m an introvert. I love people, especially small groups like one to three. Many other pastors are as well. So when I’m around a large group of people and am looked at as having to lead the conversation or I know the eyes are on me, then it becomes a huge energy grain. I’ve even found that being in a large group of people for too long can cause me to get into a depressive state than often lasts days. So I have to be careful.
What I’ve found works for me might not work for others. I recommend to fellow introverts to simply find things that relax them and use it as a means to make disciples. So if you’re an introvert who golfs then go golfing and try to meet someone new, or bring someone that you want to intentionally share Jesus with. It’s usually a lot easier, relaxing, and it won’t feel like a chore. So I tell people to look at their lives and see who they come into contact with on a regular basis. Are those people Christians or not? For those who are Christian try to find ways that you can point them to Christ when you’re around. It is good for both of you. For the non-Christians look for opportunities to share your own story of salvation. This is simply how you subjectively understand how God saved you.
You quote the bible “Unless one is born of water and in the Spirit, he can not enter the Kingdom of God.” I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, I accepted Christ around the age of 12, and I followed in believers baptism shortly after. I was told that baptism wasn’t a necessary step to salvation, it was more of a way to show publicly that you have been reborn. Can you elaborate on the passage of scripture? Certainly! In that text of John 3, Jesus is explaining to a rabbi about how one enters the Kingdom of God. This is accomplished by being “born again” or “born from above.” He explains that one must have a new birth where the person’s heart is changed. Their heart is changed by a work of God and then they are able to respond to God in faith. It is the first miracle that marks the beginning of the Christian life.
You are absolutely correct that your baptism is a sign, given by God, that signals Christ’s redeeming work in your life. There’s also so much more that comes along with that. When one is baptized they are also signaling their entrance into the people of God. You are now part of a worldwide and eternal community whose purpose is to glorify God by sharing the Gospel, caring for your neighbors, and helping others in their walk with Jesus. Your baptism doesn’t erase your sin but is an open sign that Christ has already taken your sin upon Himself and endured the punishment for it.
I really liked how you compared a drill sergeant doing something for a soldier to a bible school teacher. Yes, doing it for someone else gets the job done, but doing it yourself is how you truly begin to learn and understand. How did you come up with that comparison? Was it something you experienced while in boot camp, or in a Sunday school class? I have always been someone who observes people. I like to know what works and what doesn’t. Why doesn’t something work? Why does it work? What is the most effective and efficient way of doing something? I always found the best Drill Sergeants and Non-Commissioned Officers to be the ones who took the time to teach young Soldiers how to do something rather than just doing it for them. The same principle applies as a parent. It’s better to teach our kids to do their own laundry and cook rather than always cook for them.
If you look at the Church, we need to teach people how to pray, read their Bibles, serve their neighbors, and how to live out the Gospel. I can’t live out the Gospel for you. You are called to serve Jesus and my role as a Pastor is to equip you so that you can walk and serve Him as well. That can work out differently depending on your local church’s context, but the principle is the same. Some churches accomplish this by digital studies that focus on training people how to understand the historical and grammatical context of a passage. Other churches might train people to study the Bible through one-on-one mentorship.
“God saves who he wants affording to his own will and not our own regardless of their background.”What does this mean exactly? Wasn’t it MY choice to accept Christ and follow him? Weren’t we given free will to choose him or sin? If “God saves who he wants”, do we really not have a choice? There are books that have been written in order to answer this question. , However, I’ll try to answer it succinctly. Two books I’d recommend: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J.I. Packer and Discover Ancient Truths For Today by me. So let me answer your questions with one word and then provide a bit of nuance. When discussing theology, which is the study of God and His creation, nuance is very important. Oftentimes, one-word answers don’t provide a complete answer.
Was it your choice to accept Christ and follow Him? Yes!
Do we have free will? Yes!
If God saves who He wants then do we really have a choice? Yes!
For God to save regardless of background is to say that the Gospel saves unaffected by race, past religion, or economic background.
Commonly we look at the Scriptures and see that our will is bound by sin. Our inclinations are to rebel against God as displayed by Adam in the Garden of Eden. We don’t want to follow God and worship Him. We want to worship ourselves. R.C. Sproul writes, “He (God) intervenes to change the disposition of the hearts of spiritually dead people by His Holy Spirit.” This is called effectual calling where God changes the hearts of people so that they can truly be free to choose to follow Him. Prior to this calling, they aren’t free to choose Him because they were imprisoned by their sin.
So when I came to believe in Christ it happened over a long period of time. For years I read the Bible intermittently and I was searching. It was God drawing me closer to Him. Then one day His Holy Spirit changed my heart so that I could truly see my sinfulness and need for Him. I was able to turn from my sin and trust in Christ.
One final question, you are a member of the NC Warriors Hockey Team. Have you tried to minister to the guys on the team? DO you ask for a word of prayer together before a game or practice to ask the Lord to keep the guys safe and strong on the ice? Not only am I a member, but I also serve as the team Chaplain. What that means I’m still trying to figure out. I know that it has at least given me opportunities to minister to guys off the ice. I’ve had countless conversations with guys about faith and their struggles in life. Some ask me about Jesus while others simply want to talk about their emotional and psychological wounds from war. My approach has simply been to be present and available. We have two other pastors on the team, so I try to talk with them as well to see how we can care for the team. At the beginning of COVID we each took several names of guys and reached out to check in and see how they were doing. This was back when everything was locked down way more than it is now.
I pray before games to keep everyone safe, even if it’s just to myself. In my experience in the Army, I realized that this approach with the guys was most effective. Most importantly I pray that God would use me to be a witness to these guys. That my life would reflect His love, grace, and mercy. I can get excited easily and sometimes act in ways different than when I’m not playing a sport. I need God to remind me that I’m here to serve Him and the guys, not myself.
Possibly ask him for a win here and there?? Like for real, right?! I think it’s because the other teams have better Chaplains. The NC Warriors are an interesting bunch. Very few are actually from North Carolina and the majority are from all over the country. We even have one that’s from Canada and he’s the most redneck of anyone I know! One of the things I’ve learned from being a pastor and serving in the military is that teams find their identity when they give up their own. Each skater on the ice has to learn to set aside themselves and their identity in order for the team’s identity to take shape. That takes time. We’ve had some success, especially when we were in Las Vegas. But I’m very optimistic for the future as we come together as brothers and sisters.
I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and I’m number 8 out of 13 children. If that sounds like a lot, well let me tell you that it is. Eighty percent of my wardrobe had consisted of hand-me-downs that were either too long or too short. Growing up, my siblings had to share pretty much everything, except toothbrushes, that’s disgusting. I’ve found out in my adulthood that my mother named most of us from characters from movies and television shows. My first name is Darin and you guessed it, she used to enjoy watching “Bewitched.” My only question is whether I was named after Dick York’s or Dick Sargent’s version of the character?
2020 marked twenty years of marriage and my wife and I have been blessed with two teenagers – a boy and a girl. Over the years I’ve posted many stories on social media about raising my children… I’ll rephrase that, I’ve shared many posts about how my children helped raised me. After all, I’m just an adult-sized kid at heart. Being a parent isn’t easy, but there are more positives than negatives and I wouldn’t change a thing. Well, there was that one time my family went bowling and my son’s bowling ball stopped rolling after a couple of feet on the lane. I tried calling myself a hero and stepped out onto said lane, and well… Have you ever seen those cartoons where the guy slips and does a triple somersault in the air and lands hard on his back? That… that, I would change.
As a child growing up in a house with absolutely no privacy, I would find a corner with pencil and paper in hand and worked on creating characters and stories for my comic books. As I submerged myself into these stories, I drowned out the rest of the world and found solitude in an otherwise crowded space. So, whenever I’m asked why I write, I always tell people it’s because it pulls me out of the real world and permits me the freedom to express myself in ways I couldn’t in the real world.
Where do you live and what do you do when you’re not writing?
Currently, I live thirty minutes outside of Detroit. I work full-time in the Information Technology field. I’m perhaps one of those rare people who actually enjoys their job. Because of COVID, I’m been working remotely working from home and still somehow manage to be late for work occasionally.
When I’m not writing or working, I like to play video games. I’m into first-person shooters (FPS) — Call of Duty, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Serious Sam types of games. I’m also a big movie buff. I enjoy classic film noir detective and low budget science fiction movies. My kids used to tease me about why I still watch old movies. I would make them sit there and explain it. They don’t pick on me much about it anymore for some reason.
What keeps you motivated to write?
My motivation to write is easy, I enjoy it. I love storytelling. Also, I get to revisit some of the ideas I came up with during my comic writing days. I get a kick out of introducing heroes and villains into my novels that everyone is clueless about except for me.
How long have you been writing and what have you learned about yourself through your writing?
My writing adventure started when I was a kid. As I mentioned previously, I drew comic books from my preteen years all the way into young adulthood. While I served in the Army, I got into reading paperbacks and it sparked my interest in writing novels. But it wasn’t until after I’ve completed college that I took writing books seriously. What I’ve learned about myself is that as much as writing takes me out of reality, it doesn’t let me forget my past. In all my books, a part of my history has been inserted into the story, it may be one of the character’s traits or it might be the setting or it may be the product of watching too much television growing up.
What audience are you trying to reach with your work? Is there an audience for Keith Gaston?
The audience that I had written for originally has changed over the years. In the beginning, I tried to be wide-ranging to pull in readers who enjoyed different genres. XIII, my first novel was a thriller with elements of horror, action, humor, and a diverse cast of characters. My next book was Lost Hours, a murder mystery featuring a private detective going through mental hardships while trying to solve a twenty-three-year-old murder case. I bounced around between genres with each book, which made it difficult for readers because they were expecting a mystery but got a supernatural thriller instead.
Later, I wrote under two pen names (Keith Gaston and D K Gaston) to try to be less confusing. It helped for a while, especially when attending book conferences. If the conference was about mysteries, I brought only my mystery novels and if the subject was speculative fiction, you guessed it, all the supernatural books came out. Currently, I write for myself. If I write with an intended audience in mind, it takes the joy out of writing.
How would you describe your style of writing?
I write my books in a cinematic movie telling fashion with broad visual strokes, full character building, and a well-paced tempo. What I do not do, is spend too much time on certain details that you might find in other books in the same genre. By details, I mean, filler information, this being what variety of perfume a character sprayed herself with or the exact brand name clothing someone is wearing. If it’s not relevant to the story, I don’t tend to include them because I believe it slows the pacing of my stories. A great example of my cinematic style would be in The Friday House. I tried to put the reader into every scene and have readers go through the story, discovering the conspiracies and threats as the protagonists uncovered them.
Tell us about your latest book.
Wicked & Preternatural: Awakening is about monster hunter Zoe Daniels. The setting is in Detroit. For some, monster hunting can be a lucrative lifestyle for those bold enough to battle the forces of evil, for others… not so much. She speaks with a potential client, a mysterious elderly woman named Ms. Olson about a job that other monster hunters had passed on. Down on her luck and desperate for work, Zoe accepts the work which is to find Ms. Olson’s grandson, E. Ms. Olson cautioned Zoe not too underestimate E. The child is far more than he seems, she warns. It turned out she was right. E has uncanny abilities, and its growing by the hour.
Zoe pursued an uneven trail of chaos and destruction left in the child’s wake. At first, she thought the boy aimlessly drifted the streets. But as she closes in on her target, she discovers E has a mission that he’s dead set on finishing, and he won’t let anyone stop him no matter the cost.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working on a sequel to Wicked & Preternatural called Bitter & Demonic.
Anything else we need to know?
The audio of Wicked & Preternatural: Awakening will be coming out in September 2020, narrated by a fantastic voice actor, Kylah Williams.
Abby E. Murray published this slim volume (29 pages) of poetry in 2018. You can find it at www.finishinglinepress.com.
The poetry inside is by turns gentle and brutal, not in a physical way, but mentally, in the tension between reality, beliefs, and custom. This book has many moments where the rigid expectations of military culture smash against the poet’s solid beliefs and personal integrity, like waves crashing on recalcitrant boulders.
The poet writes a sharp hook, drawing you into a poem and keeping you there to its end:
By the time we move to a seventh city I am portable as a jug of water,
Another one, I hand it to you like a single potato chip:
To sit in the simulated living space at Ikea is to know what sand knows as it rests inside the oyster.
You must continue where they lead you.
The poet paints in colors muted by time and despair and switches palettes to whimsy and joy.
They paint vignettes, portraits in miniature, and the insides of heads.
Page to page this book surprises you, and that’s the best thing poetry can do.
Abby E. Murray is the 2019-2021 Poet Laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington. They are the editor-publisher of Collateral, an online journal about violent conflict and military service. Their latest book is Hail and Farewell, published by Perugia Press.
