Mea Culpa

October 14, 2026

It was February 8, 2019. The inaugural One Yard at a Time Gala at the Grand Bohemian in Mountain Brook. Nineteen years to the day since Derrick Thomas died on February 8, 2000.

I didn’t choose that date. The venue did. It was simply the only Saturday they had available. At least, that’s what I believed anyway.

Derrick Thomas gave me my name: The Bull. That being said, some people might remember Bill Lumpkin’s November 1985 article, when Alabama starting guard David Gilmer complained about how the defensive players stayed after him in practice. “They make me so mad,” Gilmer said. “They stay on me because they know they can get me ticked off.” Lumpkin described how the Bull had come off the ball in practice and cut Gilmer’s feet out from under him. No blocking below the waist, but that was the Bull before Derrick gave the name its meaning.

Nevertheless, that nickname has stuck with me for the rest of my life. Let me show how I know.

On the night of the Gala, my teammates, Bobby Humphrey and Cornelius Bennett, better known as Biscuit, approached me after that first gala and asked, “Bull, why did you pick tonight?” I had no explanation. They knew exactly what February 8meant. I had been so consumed with putting the event together that I hadn’t made the connection.

But they did, and they took it as a good sign for things to come. Looking back, I find it hard to believe it was anything else.

That evening, we honored Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bonwit of the United States Marine Corps, one of the founders of the Semper Fi Community Task Force of North Alabama, alongside Cornelius Bennett. As Dave walked off the stage, he grabbed my hand and said, “Darryl, as any Marine would do, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

I didn’t fully understand what he meant. I certainly didn’t know how prophetic those words would become.

Because for all the celebration that night, our first gala was anything but a financial success. Our largest donor, a man who had contributed a little over nine thousand dollars, left feeling ignored. His guest felt the same way. They supported us when we desperately needed it, and somewhere in the confusion of trying to make everything work, we failed to make them feel appreciated.

The board told me to let it go. But I couldn’t. When somebody believes in your mission enough to put that kind of money behind it, you owe them more than excuses.

I sat down and wrote him a handwritten letter. A mea culpa. My fault. No blaming the volunteers, the schedule, the confusion, or the thousand things that can go wrong during a first event. The responsibility was mine, and I wanted him to hear that from me.

I carried the letter to his office myself.

He made me wait three hours.

I sat there with that handwritten apology, knowing I had disappointed someone who had trusted me. There was nothing to do but wait. No speech to give, no audience to impress, no way to talk myself out of what had happened.

When he finally let me in, he graciously accepted my apology.

I’ve thought about those three hours many times since. Sometimes accountability means sitting with your mistakes long enough to understand what they cost somebody else. Sometimes the most important thing a man can say is simply, “I was wrong. I am sorry.”

When we finally paid everyone associated with that first gala, we had barely enough money left to buy a wheelchair for a veteran. We had worked for months, filled a ballroom, honored men who had served their country, and brought together people who believed in our mission. Yet when the bills were settled, we had almost nothing to show for it financially.

People saw the problems. They saw the money we hadn’t raised, the mistakes we’d made, and the things that should have gone differently. I saw those things too. I had lived every one of them.

What none of us could see was what God was building. Because God is always working. Sometimes He works behind the scenes. At other times, He is out front on full display. Either way, God is always working, as the Son of God said (John 5:17).

In the last three years alone, One Yard at a Time has grown to nine times its former size. At our 2026 gala, 450 people filled The Club. The organization that once struggled to purchase a single wheelchair had become something far greater than I could have imagined that first February evening.

Then came recognition we had never sought. One Yard at a Time earned the Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency, the highest level of recognition Candid offers, an achievement held by fewer than one percent of nonprofits in America.

Think about that for a moment. An organization that barely had enough left to buy a veteran a wheelchair after its first gala now stands among a small group of nonprofits recognized for their commitment to transparency.

We didn’t begin this work to win recognition. We began because veterans needed help, and somebody needed to do something about it. But I believe that recognition matters because of what it represents. Trust. Accountability. Stewardship. The very lessons I was learning while sitting outside a donor’s office for three hours with an apology in my hand.

And there was something else none of us could have known that first night.

Five months later, on July 30, 2019, my heart stopped on my living room floor.

I expired.

The old man who went onto that operating table did not come back. The man who survived would never see his life, his purpose, or his responsibilities quite the same way again. I had been given another chance, and I could no longer pretend that my days belonged entirely to me.

I think back to Dave Bonwit grabbing my hand as he stepped off that stage. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

He knew. Somehow, he knew before any of us did. Or perhaps God was speaking through him, preparing me for a journey I couldn’t yet understand.

Proverbs 20:24 tells us, “A man’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?”

Additionally, and thankfully, Proverbs 16:9 reminds us that we may plan our course, but the Lord establishes our steps.

I used to think I understood where I was going. I believed that if I worked hard enough, planned carefully enough, and surrounded myself with good people, I could somehow control the outcome. But God has a way of humbling a man who thinks he’s holding the map.

We don’t always recognize the path God is laying before us. Sometimes we see only the obstacles, the disappointments, the mistakes, and the doors that seem to close in our faces. We measure success by what we can count, what we can raise, and what we can accomplish. God sees something we cannot.

He sees what those experiences are making of us.

James 1:2-3 tells us to “consider it pure joy” when we face trials of many kinds, because the testing of our faith produces perseverance. I don’t believe that means we’re supposed to enjoy the pain, the humiliation, or the uncertainty. It means we can trust that those experiences are not wasted.

Romans 8:28 gives us the promise that has carried me through more than I can count: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Not some things. All things.

A nickname given to me by Derrick Thomas decades before I understood what it would mean. A gala held on the anniversary of his death, on a date I hadn’t chosen. Two former teammates who recognized the significance before I did. A Marine who told me I would need a bigger boat. A disappointed donor, a handwritten confession, and three hours in a waiting room. A heart that stopped five months later and, by the grace of God, began beating again.

And through it all, a little organization trying to make a difference in the lives of veterans, growing into something none of us could have planned.

I once came across the words mea culpa carved into yellow stone. My fault. The letters were worn into the rock, with a shadow falling across them like a confession only half-spoken. That image has never left me.

Because I’ve come to understand that my mea culpa was never just the letter I carried into that office. It was the beginning of a lesson God would continue teaching me. Every disappointment, every mistake, every unexpected blessing, and every second chance has carved that lesson a little deeper into my heart.

I am ultimately responsible for my mistakes, and I am accountable for the trust others place in me. But I am not the author of the larger story, and I never was.

I can look back now and see how the steps fit together, even the painful ones. What felt like failure was often preparation. What looked like coincidence was sometimes providence. And what I once considered the end of something turned out to be the beginning of something far greater.

I didn’t choose the date. I didn’t foresee the growth. I certainly didn’t plan to die on my living room floor and be given another chance to live.

But I know who was directing my steps.

God did it. All of it.