J. Allen Reed was born in Texas and raised on the streets of the Fifth Ward of Houston. He is of Italian decent, whose maternal father and mother were from Sicily, Italy. He quit school in the ninth grade and quickly went to work at a feed store on East Houston Road; He quit his job there and enlisted in the Army, with the consent of his parents.

He had his nineteenth birthday in Korea as a combat medic with King Company, Thirty Fifth Regiment, and Twenty Fifth Division. He returned home at the age of twenty and married his childhood sweetheart. He then took her to Temple, Texas where he had enrolled her in Temple High School where she finished school while he finished his enlistment at Fort Hood, Texas.

Mr. Reed then got a barber license and a beauty license. Shortly after getting out of Barber College he opened a barber shop in the north side of Houston on Laura Koppe Rd, which was noted for its "gangs". He ran a poker game for five years in a back room located in the rear of the barber shop. Later he owned and gambled on race horses.

He was also a well known hairstylist among high class call girls who worked the Shamrock and Rice hotels in Houston, often working all night getting them ready to meet their next client. His client base being office girls, housewives, lawyers, police, judges, and movie stars.

After his wife threatened to leave him, he fought and overcame a prescription drug addiction. Still he needed to change many other aspects of his life.

That didn't happen until his wife noticed a childhood friend of his, Evangelist Freddie Gage, was holding a Revival at Southwinds Baptist Church. He went only to please her, only to find that Freddie had to cancel because of sickness and was unable to preach the revival . Evangelist Tim Lee had filled in for Freddie Gage, and it was Tim Lee who said the magic words that Reed needed to hear.

Evangelist Tim Lee was a marine who had lost both legs in Vietnam. Reed told his wife later that it was like Tim was looking right at him when he said "he had run from God 'till God took his legs," and that's what Reed told his wife he had been doing ever since he left Korea. He asked his wife Sue if she would walk with him and she gladly took his hand and walked up and accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior.

Anyone knowing Reed before he was saved will tell you the man has completely changed. He is a member in good standing at Church and attends a men's Bible class and often travels in and out of state with Evangelist Harold Clayton who has contributed much to his walk with Christ.

Reed is a father of three grown children, has seven grandchildren, and as of September two thousand and seven has been married fifty-four years to his childhood sweetheart, Sue. This book in many ways reflects his life.