The Sixty-First Minute

It’s been said that after the flood of Noah’s time, the average life span of a man was shortened to about seventy years. Gregory Victor McBride did not reach that average. His death certificate indicates he died on June 12, 2013. He was fifty-six and a half years old when he was stabbed and bled to death in the Southeast Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. But I know there’s more to it. Gregory Victor McBride lived fifty-six and a half years. That’s just a bit over four hundred and ninety five thousand hours or nearly thirty million minutes. Does it seem strange that I’ve calculated his life to the hour or to the minute? What is even more inexplicable is the one minute that is not listed among the thirty million. Gregory Victor McBride got one extra minute, a sixty-first minute in the last hour of his life, that is not accounted for on his death certificate. In this extra minute is his remarkable story. I won’t tell you it’s true or it isn’t. I’ll simply tell his story as I promised I would. You decide what to make of it.