Don came late to Christian faith - or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that he stood quiet awhile, late in his life, and remembered what he had first known as a child. That secret belongs to God alone.
But certainly in the last years of his life, when we loved him, and were warmed by the charm of that incredible smile, Don was not only aware, but deeply glad that he had not lived those 90 years on his own, alone in the universe.
Don threw himself into life, grabbed for its fullness, and did not hang back on the sidelines. Everyone who knew him says this. Susie can tell you more stories about her dad than you have time to hear - and even his obituary makes good reading!
But he was a complex creature, as we all are. And he wasn't perfect. At St Alban’s and at Rivendell, we knew him as utterly charming, gracious, and good, and he loved us freely, too - mostly, probably, because we loved his Susie!
But sometimes he withdrew into shadowed misery. Like all of us he knew regret, and guilt, and sadness. He knew the names of his sins, remembered his failure to love as well as he wanted to do, and ached with the loss of life’s missed opportunities. And sometimes the memories tormented him.
It was, perhaps, his fear that made him deny the reality of God for so long.
In this world where the evil power of darkness stalks every heart, humans mistake its threatening voice of condemnation for the voice of God, and hide in terror.
That is precisely the story of Adam and Eve, and it is the story of all human life ever afterwards.
It is the tragedy of living in a world infected by Sin.
Humans have indeed gone into hiding, but not from the darkness -  which is the power of death even in the midst of our lives,
but rather, we have hidden - and run - from the Light who is God, who is Love, and who longs to warm us into life again, even in the midst of death.
“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind;
and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.”
This is how the poet, Francis Thompson put it - He goes on:
I fled...”from those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
“But with unhurrying chase,
and unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
they beat - and then a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -“
The poem goes on for several pages, chronicling every attempt by its author to seek out all earth’s pleasures, to drink at every spring of delight,
and at the same time to run from this terrible God, to protect himself from the God he thought would ruin his happiness with harsh demands - and brutal punishments - the God he had miserably evaded -
but every long and agonizing stanza ends with those words -
“With unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace...Came on the following Feet - and a Voice...”
Finally, weary, and old, and out of places to hide, the poet writes:

 

“I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years...
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream....

 

And now my heart is a broken fount wherein tear-drippings stagnate,
spilt down ever from the dank thoughts that shiver
upon the sighful branches of my mind...”

 

And finally he stops. Completely worn out and defeated, he quits running and crouches in despair. Finally he looks up to see his pursuer, his destroyer,
and with the surprise of joy sees, not a monster, but a Father:
“Halts by me that footfall;
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of his hand, outstretched caressingly?

 

‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He who thou seekest!”
“All which I took from Thee I did but take, not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in my arms,
All which thy child’s mistake fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home;
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.”
And this is what happened to Don.
As he aged, he slowed down - he heard the footfalls, and the Voice, and opened himself to the shock of a great welcome, all unexpected.
  He recognized Jesus not as dark threat, but as wonderful Savior and tender Lord, and rejoiced in that Light.
He knew the experience of redemption from sin, confusion, guilt and fear, even when he was shy with the words to express it. He came to communion as a little child again, face upturned, expectant and glad.
And he did not fear death, or punishment or even loss - although he never forgot, I think, and regret clung to him, sometimes.
He knew this also, and above all, that he, Don Sothern, had always been wholly loved and cherished, waited for, sought after, pursued by Love - and found - and that nothing in all creation could separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus, his Lord.
And that is amazing grace.
  Susie will tell you whatever other stories you want to hear - and so will her brothers, Scot and Brian,  and his long-time friends - funny ones for sure, and ones not so funny -
But this is the story that sums up and gathers in all the threads of all the others: It is the one that joins Don’s story to yours and to mine and to Jesus’ story too -
This is the story we most long to hear about Don - because it is the one we long to be told about us, too, some day: that darkness is overcome by Light  and death is swallowed up in Life everlasting. 
We aren’t singing it today, but perhaps the hymn that's likely in your mind needs to be paraphrased aloud just now: It really is:
  "Amazing grace..that saves a wretch like me" - and Don, who "once was lost, but now is found, was blind, but now he sees...” sees Him face to face, “who is his friend, and not a stranger.”