Sam Trenholme’s blog
More Marshall Memories
July 24, 2026
In today’s blog, I go over some more memories of Marshall, who was a father figure to me at a very key point in my life. I wrote about him previously in a blog from last year.Marshall and God
When I worked for Marshall, he would read to me from the Bible.
Marshall was from the deep south; the Bible belt. The state he was from hasn’t given their electoral votes to a Democrat since 1976. He came from a world and a set of values that are very conservative Christian.
I was, at the time, an atheist. I wasn’t just any old kind of atheist; I was an intolerant atheist who got annoyed by people reading and talking about the Bible in front of me.
Marshall started wanting to read the Bible to me during our breaks from work in the office. I would object most loudly “I don’t want you reading that book to me!” Marshall was insistent, and since he was the, you know, president of the company, he got his way.
So he would sometimes read me some passage from the Bible. This would invariably lead to me complaining that God was just a myth. We would have long arguments about this.
I finally capitulated and told Marshall I was willing to agree that there is a God. This wasn’t good enough for him. He told me I had to have a Christian faith. When I asked him why, he told me because I was born and raised Christian, so that is the only faith I could have.
Marshall and myself had various spiritual debates. These debates would often get heated; I had a lot of intolerance in my atheism, and Marshall was, at this point, so frustrated with his life he was looking for any reason to get in to an argument.
One of the our productive debates was when I told him about a dream I had many years before, where I met someone named Peter who guided me to a magical place. He was impressed with the dream; when I mentioned the person who led me in the darkness was named Peter, he told me Peter was one of the important apostles in the New Testament, and that maybe it was that Peter who I saw in the dream.
My final conversation with Marshall
Decades after moving on from Marshall, I talked to him one last time. He told me he didn’t even want to remember that part of his life, and with good reason: He lost his car, his house, and the girlfriend he had at the time ended up divorcing him.
I told him it was a pleasant memory for me and that being with him at that time in his life was key to my spiritual growth and becoming an adult.
We said “I love you” to each other before ending the call. That was the last time I ever talked to Marshall; I didn’t find out he died until a couple years after he passed away.
Remembering Marshall today
When I take a daily walk around sunset, something about the light in the air reminds me of my time with Marshall. It is a very pleasant and peaceful feeling today; being with Marshall planted the seed for having a relationship with God that I have to this day. I became a man because Marshall mentored me at a very key moment in my life. This is something I am glad I experienced.