Bruce Beakley

Bruce Beakley is not your typical author.  As an engineer by trade, the possibility of writing a book wasn’t even on his radar.  “Truthfully, I’ve never even been what you would call an avid reader.  An engineer that reads; that’s an oxymoron,” he laughs.  “To me, reading a book is making a serious commitment.  What if you get to the end and find out the book wasn’t all that good?”  A divine encounter in an airport terminal changed everything. 

In 2005, Beakley traveled to Brussels, Belgium, to undergo a new type of hip replacement surgery that had not yet received FDA approval.  As he awaited his flight back to the U.S., he shared the departure lounge with a group of refugees from Liberia.  He felt drawn to a particular couple and struck up a conversation with them.  By the time the flight landed, he had exchanged contact information with John and Bessie Gonleh and promised to visit them.  That visit, during which the Gonlehs began to share their remarkable survival story, would become the jumping-off point for Refuge, Beakley’s first book.

As authors go, Beakley’s motivations differ from the norm.  “At one writer’s conference I attended, they kept talking about the passion to write.  I realized that my passion was to be finished—to quit writing!  The driving force behind this book has been my belief that John and Bessie’s story must be told.  I just want the world to hear it.” 

He approached the project with a design engineer’s sensibility.  “A good engineer is a master at asking questions, at digging for details.  What I really wanted to do was to tell John and Bessie’s story in a way that is very carefully crafted, making sure that everything adds up—but there is no neat, tidy resolution to its complex and difficult questions.  I have meticulously documented all of the one-in-a-million coincidences that fuel the plot so that people can decide for themselves, based on the evidence, whether God was the author of these events.”  The result is an insightful, masterfully organized, evocative account that belies his status as a first-time author.

Beakley received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and is an inventor who currently holds five US patents.  He worked for Shell Chemical Company, NL/Baroid Corporation, and General Electric Corporation before striking out on his own as the founder/president of Trilogy Systems Corp., a manufacturer of linear motors for automation equipment.  In 2004 he sold Trilogy Systems to a Fortune 500 company, freeing up his schedule to pursue mission work with Bill Glass Champions for Life, a global prison ministry which he serves as volunteer regional director.  His missions experience also includes a trip to China in 2003 with LifeWay.

Beakley and his wife, Debra, have been married for 32 years.  The couple has one grown son and resides in Houston, Texas.  Beakley’s penchant for adventure is expressed in his love of international prison missions in Central and South America.  He enjoys tennis, hiking mountains and volcanoes, and trying out his Belgian-imported hip on the ski slopes.

John and Bessie Gonleh

Statistically, John and Bessie Gonleh should be buried somewhere in war-torn Africa.  Their nearly twenty year odyssey from their home in Paynesville, a suburb of the Liberian capital of Monrovia, to the recent reunion with their children in Montgomery, Alabama, has defied every odd for survival.  Perhaps most miraculously, they have emerged from their trials with their steadfast faith intact. 

Both John and Bessie grew up in villages in the Liberian bush but were sent by their families to boarding schools in Monrovia.  Besides teaching job skills and ingraining an affinity for western customs, the school set the stage for John’s first encounter with Christ.  At the age of 16, he became a Christian, an act that defied both his family and village tradition.  He met Bessie, who was raised in a Christian home, on the bus ride back to school.  Though the pair felt strongly that God had brought them together, they had several children together before marrying.  As was typical of Liberian men, John also had affairs with other women and fathered several children outside of his relationship with Bessie. 

Their lifestyle took a dramatic change when the pastor of their local church asked John to be his helper in ministry.  John truly began to live for Christ.  He and Bessie married, and they did their best to pursue God’s best for their marriage and their six children: Gloria, Monica (a child born to John and another woman), twins Annie and Kou, Comfort (a cousin they adopted when her mother died in childbirth), and Chester.  John owned a small construction block factory, and Bessie worked at a local bank.  The family lived comfortably in an air conditioned suburban four-bedroom house, owned a car, and shopped at the local grocery store. 

An announcement made by Liberian President Samuel Doe on Christmas Eve 1989 signaled the end of their idyllic life.  Rebel forces had begun attacking.  In the ensuing chaos, the Gonleh home, along with much of Paynesville, was burned to the ground, and John was taken by rebels to be tortured and killed.  After becoming the lone survivor of a mass execution, he was miraculously reunited with his family.  But the Gonlehs would spend the next fifteen years as refugees struggling to survive in an environment of disease, malnutrition, poverty, and conflict.  Their riveting story is the subject of Refuge (Winepress Publishing, April 2008).

The Gonleh family saga is both tragic and inspiring.  Through it all, they have clung tenaciously to their faith in God and His plan for them.  They have lost three children.  Chester died of a mysterious ailment shortly after they departed Paynesville.  Twelve years later, Comfort was slain in an attack by Liberian mercenaries—and Annie was never heard from again after that day.  Even as they grieved these losses, John and Bessie praised the Lord for preserving their remaining children and adding two others—John Jr. and Miracle—to the family.

In 2005, the family received word that their dream of emigrating to America had finally came true, but the news was bittersweet.  Immigration policy would allow John and Bessie to join Monica in America, but little John Jr. and Miracle would have to remain in Africa until their parents had fulfilled the proper requirements to apply for their relocation to the US.  Even as their hearts broke over the separation from their children, John and Bessie recognized God’s hand working in their circumstances.  During their journey to America, the Gonlehs received a divine introduction.  They met Bruce Beakley, a traveler from Houston, Texas, in the terminal at the Brussels airport.  Since their first meeting, Bruce has become a devoted friend and advocate—and the initiator and co-author of Refuge.

The Gonlehs currently reside in Montgomery, Alabama, where the membership of First Baptist Church has embraced them and helped to meet their needs.  Bessie works at the church daycare, while John, an ordained Baptist minister, is a groundskeeper at Tuskegee University.  After several years of waiting, John Jr. and Miracle were recently able to join their parents in the United States.