Tim Brantingham comes from a long line of Ohioan missionaries living in Asia (5th generation to be exact). He was born in Taiwan, returned to the US for college, lived in various cities in Asia as an expat, married an American-Japanese woman, is the father of three kids, and recently relocated from Hong Kong to Japan. He’s not only a Third Culture Kid (third culture = sitting in between home and host culture) and a Sandwich Kid, which means his parents made decisions that greatly differed from what was expected of THEM, he is also a Sandwich Parent himself, creating a unique parenting approach for his family.
This is a very special podcast episode for me as it was an opportunity to reconnect with an old friend from high school. The last time Tim and I had a heart-to-heart chat, we met up in Hong Kong in the late 90s. A decade after our high school graduation, we were both about to make big life-changing decisions about our futures. I was moving from Asia to North America and he was doing the reverse. Like many of our friends, we had not quite yet found a place to plant our roots.
Join us as we discuss how all this moving around impacted his life and how he parents.
Like many of our friends from high school, Tim grew up in Taiwan. I first met him in grade 9. As a new student, I didn’t know him very well, but our school was small enough that we all crossed paths with each other, in the cafeteria, in classes, and in the open grassy area encircled by the U-shaped building with all our classrooms and lockers.
In our senior year, we worked together as Class President and Vice President. I enjoyed working with him because he was (and still is) such a humble, nonjudgmental, and spirited good sport about everything. We split up duties more or less by our strengths: his being that he was spirited in front of people, easily bringing them onside, and mine being that I was overly serious at meetings and stressed about details.
When you listen to our conversation, you will appreciate Tim’s introspection and vulnerability. I like that he thinks deeply about his strengths and weaknesses and that he is willing to share his personal challenges.
We discussed:
- How his father left generations of missionary work for “tent making,” i.e. making money in order to pay the bills.
- How going ‘back’ to the US for college was a ‘horrendous’ transition.
- As the first generation of not working in the church, he and his siblings were also the first generation to probably never ‘move back home’ to the US.
- How his good friend and business partner helped him figure out how to leverage his “artsy creative” strengths into doing business and making money.
- After 12 years of living in Hong Kong, they moved to Japan to find the roots of his half-Japanese wife.
- Parenting for Tim and his wife is about finding balance between the privileges and downsides of expat life.
- Third Culture Kids are great bridge-builders. But there is a deep sense of rootlessness because we aren’t really ‘from’ anywhere, often dealing with an unresolved grief, as we are constantly saying goodbye to people.
- The struggle in parenting, like in business, is balancing meaning, interest, and being helpful (restraining missionary impulses) with financial realities.
- COVID has helped him rethink his priorities.
His final message to parents: “Don’t try too hard. Don’t overthink it. There is no formula. It’s okay to change course in the middle. I want the kids to see my struggle and hopefully they’ll learn from struggle.”
Tim is also Sandwich Parenting’s newly crowned inaugural guest writer! Read his first article “An Introduction to Third Culture Kids: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” here at Sandwich Parenting to learn more about this interesting term, which was originally coined by John and Ruth Useem to refer to expat kids from the United States, but now can apply to anyone who was raised in a culture that was not their parents’ original home. I relate to this identity for myself being not quite Chinese enough but not quite Western enough at the same time. Being a Third Culture Kid means that I’m ‘enough’ just as I am, making a new culture of my own!
Sherry Yuan Hunter 
I am extraordinarily gratified and thrilled to discover this podcast. My great Aunt Isabella and Uncle George Fox DeVol, MD are the grandparents of Barbara Brantingham. Tim of course is the son of Barbara and John Brantingham .
I am beginning my 18th year as an EFC. (Evangelical Friends Church) tent making missionary as an American Forensic Consultant (in camera) for Attorney Ray Alcomendras III Esq. in Tagum City on Mindanao Island in the South China Sea, Republic of the Philippines this year (2022).
I was invited to come from Cleveland Ohio to teach on Mindanao Island originally as a tent making missionary with the title Visiting Professor at the USeP (U of South Eastern Philippines) in Davao City for the 1983-1984 school year as a Counseling Psychologist.
My reason for writing on this blog at present is that I have taken on as a CAUSE CELEBE project to make sure that Dan Mosher gets invited to a Christmas dinner some where in Ohio in the DeVol or allied families. He spent Thanksgiving alone in Canton, Ohio in 2022! Dan is a grandson of Charles DeVol, Ph. D. brother of Catherine DeVol Cattell, grandmother of Tim Brantingham. I called EASTER Westbrook, age 87, the sister of Dan’s mother Margaret (DeVol) Mosher, age 92 to see if Dan would be welcome thanksgiving. We could help Dan raise the bus fare to get from Canton, Ohio to Marengo, Ohio if Dan would be welcome to spend Thanksgiving 2022 with the Westbrooks in Marengo, Ohio. (Aunt) Easter said she was sympathetic and glad that I had befriended my cousin Dan over the years. (For the record on average Dan, my wife Vangie and I have talked on the phone twice a week since we spent a part of Christmas Day with Edwin and Margaret (DeVol) Mosher in 2007.). But she Aunt Easter said at her age she wasn’t up to it.
I also called Bill Cox, son of the late Tom and Percilla (DeVol) Cox. He said he was sympathetic but was going out of town. For the record Bill Cox has also befriended Dan. They talk fairly regularly on the phone.
NOT ONLY DID DAN SPEND THANKSGIVING ALONE BUT HE SPENT HIS FIRST THANKSGIVING ALONE WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS IN A GROUP HOME, GOD FORBID! After his grandfather Charles Edward DeVol, Ph. D. helped pioneer in the neighborhood of 63 EFC churches in the (ROC) Republic of China on Taiwan, and commanded the highest degree of respect of every disciple of Christ in the DeVol FRIENDS family including the writer and my C&MA credentialed minister and wife, Vangie the irony of all ironies is that his own flesh and blood grandson Dan (DeVol) Mosher is left to spend thanksgiving 2022 right in smack dab Canton, Ohio with strangers in a group home of all God forsaken places on the face of the earth!
When Vangie and I were in Canton this year in July to enjoy attending our own EFC:ER Yearly Meeting I will guarantee that Vangie and I took Dan every where we went! We even invited Dan to stay all night in our double bed Hilton hotel room.
Vangie and I were then invited in August 2022 to come down from our camp campsite in Smoke Rise Campground in Pottersville, NY to Ohio to present our mission vision and receive a blessing for our mission work on Mindanao Island in the South China Sea in Damascus Friends Church (DFC) just before we started itinerating across America from NY to CA this past Fall of 2022.
Again we took Daniel (DeVol) Mosher every where we went! Dan was also very much a blessing on that trip to Ohio last Summer. He took us to the grave of Aunt Isabella French DeVol, M.D. in Damascus. Of course every one knows that Aunt Isabella was raised in the DFC and that Edwin Mosher, Dan’s own Dad, served as an associate pastor in the DFC in part of the decade of the nineteen-eighties and nineties.
I introduced Thomas Thomas Graham, Ph. D. to Dan and the Mosher family way back at the very beginning of the nineteen-eighties. That was of course before I left the US to accept a position as a visiting professor for the 1983-1984 school year at USeP. in Davao City on Mindanao Island in the South China Sea. For the record I led Dr. Thomas and one other clinical psychologist to the Lord in my entire life. The other psychologist was Albert Palino, Ph. D., Chief of the Dept of Psychology at CPI (Cleveland Psychiatric Institute). I did a Clinical Psychology Post Doctoral Traineeship (residency) at CPI under the supervision of both Dr. Thomas and Dr. Palino.
Dr. Thomas lived and died in Canton. Ohio. The late Dr. Thomas Thomas Graham, Ph. D.,
declared an interest in becoming a friend of Dan like I have done as a cousin and his immediate Mosher family including his brother David. Doctor Graham, D.D.S., his son, was also practicing in Canton and became the dentist for the Mosher family.
Of course Dr. Thomas had an interest in family dynamics and networking like I do because we were practicing professional psychology at the time in Ohio. I practiced under the license of Dr. Thomas.
I am focusing on Christian Psychologist Dr. Thomas so much at the moment because he published an extremely relevant and important paper to this discussion of what are the whys and wherefores of getting Dan invited to a DeVol and or allied family Christmas dinner in 2022.
The title of Dr. Thomas Thomas paper is Noel Neurosis. It was published as a booklet. It is written about the extreme loneliness of not being invited to a Christmas (or Thanksgiving) family dinner! Dr. Thomas considered not being invited to a Christmas (or Thanksgiving dinner) as an index of the most extreme cause of loneliness in American and Canadian society! Dr. Thomas earned his Ph. D. in Clinical Psychology at Atawa University in Quebec. Dr Thomas had to master French to enroll in the Ph. D. program in Clinical Psychology at Ottawa University. For the record, (I am bragging now) my father William Thomas DeVol (1919-2014) served as a part-time French translator for the International Headquarters of the Assemblies of God (A/G) while he was employed full time (1959-1989) as a graphic artist in the A/G.
I solicit first of all your prayers that Dan will no longer be considered persona non grata in the DeVol and allied families in Ohio . Second, that he will be invited to a DeVol or allied family Christmas Dinner this Christmas!
Thomas Irving DeVol, Ph. D., Medical (allied health) Writing FRIENDS Missionary
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Thank you Sherry & Tim for making this Podcast. It resonated with me as a former TAS graduate (class of 1990) as I try to figure out the best way to raise my multiracial son and daughter in today’s world. Kelly Obermayer Mayaki
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Thank you Kelly for listening and so glad that you found this helpful! Please feel free to listen to other episodes and read some of the other articles. Tim has written a few that have been really well received!
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