When Death Brings Life

By John W. Kennedy

Editor’s note: This article ran in the Sept. 24, 2006 edition of TPE. Brandy Horton continues to work at the school and her daughters are now in second grade and pre-kindergarten. Business route 81 in Rush Springs has been renamed the “Destry Horton Memorial Highway.”


During his boyhood near Rush Springs, Okla., John Destry Horton lived across the pasture from Brandy Pittman. In between his periodic teasing and tormenting his neighbor, the 10-year-old Destry turned serious. He told Brandy, then 6, that someday he would marry her.

But that idealistic childhood vow sustained a bump or two along the road to adult reality. At 21, Destry embarked on a new venture: cooking up methamphetamine and dealing illegal drugs.

One day, after he shot up a lethal mixture of crank and heroin, a dazed Destry realized he had pushed too far. In a plea to God to spare his life, Destry promised to serve Him the rest of his life if he survived.

God spared Destry that day in 1996 and the young man made good on his promise, doing everything with evangelistic gusto. From that point on, Destry — who never endured withdrawal symptoms or went through drug rehabilitation — told everyone he met how God intervened to disrupt his descent into death, and how Jesus Christ powerfully transformed him and gave him newfound life.

Unlike Destry, Brandy grew up attending church three times a week. But in her late teens she rebelled.
Destry got her interested in the Lord again. After declining repeatedly, Brandy finally accepted Destry’s invitation to a revival meeting, where she renewed her commitment to the Lord. Destry and Brandy’s friendship blossomed into romance, and the couple wed in 1998.
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