ReacriiMG
FOR tAY
HALO
R.eV. ToM SWoTFoRd I
I
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2013
http://archive.org/details/reachingfornnyhalOOswof
Reaching
For My
Halo
The Life and Times
of a
United Methodist Minister
Thomas Hoyle Swofford
The author and his wife
11
Dedication
To my wife Ida, who was there.
I
111
Reaching For My Halo
His training on the church construction came in handy when
he and Ida built their summer home in the mountains. Tom
called this R &: R and they cherish the memories of the visits of
their grandchildren at the "mountain home".
Reaching for My Halo captures the humor (whether it be bitter
or sweet) that the listeners heard on those summer nights — truly
some wonderful stories lived by a wonderful couple.
Helyn G. Lowery
VI
Preface
o VER the years, I have had the rare opportunity to listen to
this "preacher boy" spin his yarns and tell his tales of his many
years in the ministry.
Whether sitting in his yard with neighbors on a hot sultry
summer night, or a neighborhood picnic in the back yard, or his
house or mine, he could always entertain the old and amuse the
young with his experiences.
Ida and Tom are dear to all of us on Owens Drive because
through the years they have been our landlord, counseled us
through problems, baptized and married our children, and
remained our friend and "good" neighbor.
Tom has been reluctant to write a book because, as he said,
"that would be professional suicide". It wasn't until after the
"man of cloth", as neighbor Zeb affectionately calls him, stored
his robe (that means he took it out of the car for the first time in 60
years and placed it in the closet) did he consent to record some
selected memoirs for other "preacher boys" and avid readers to
enjoy.
Tom should have majored in architecture instead of theology,
because it seems the good Methodist Bishop (whoever he was)
always found "the call" for Tom where a new church needed to be
erected. Instead of a "Bible toting" preacher, Tom was a
"hammer and nail toter". Could be a reason for early
baldness — trying to please all the "sisters" in the church with just
the right colors and fixtures.
Acknowledgment
I AM deeply indebted to the members of the congregations I
have served for their support and encouragement. Their
strength where I was weak, have combined to make it possible for
these lines to be written.
To Rhonda Davis and Paula Walkers of Isothermal Communi-
ty College who transcribed these chapters, thanks and apprecia-
tion for long hours of labor. The author has never met them but
has been aware of the important role they have played in the
preparation of this manuscript. The coordinator of this work was
Mrs. Helyn Lowery. Her persistence and direction caused me to
begin this manuscript in the first place. My beloved granddaugh-
ter, Avon Swofford did days of editing and putting these chapters
together. Then to my wife, Ida, who has walked with me 62 years
and shared these experiences with me, I bow in gratitude.
vn
Chapter
1
Sit down and relax and I'll tell you how some of this
happened.
I have always had an aversion for anyone who thought that
people would be interested in what had been done or who did it. I
regarded an autobiography as 98% ego and 2% pride in
achievement. I still have that opinion. Many people, well, perhaps
two, have asked me to set down on paper the joy and the laughter
of 62 years as a Methodist minister. I approach this task with a
keen sense of my inadequate qualifications. I an not an author,
although I have written millions of sermons, most of which
mercifully have not been preached, and will never be inflicted on
a congregation. You do not have to continue; you may lay this
aside without damaging your intellectual growth, or taking
anything away from society's progress. In short, this is done for
fun.
There is nothing in the background that would indicate that
one day I would be sitting by a window in a retirement home
writing and reliving my experiences. Methodist preachers were
no novelty in my family. For 180 years the record shows that there
was a Swofford preaching in the Methodist churches in the area
of western North Carolina, and from about age 141 felt that God
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Reaching For My Halo
wanted me to be a preacher. I saw no way to go to college but one
night walking home from a job in a cotton gin, I said to myself, as
well as a prayer to God, that if I could go to school and prepare, I
would be a minister. The emphasis on education was a reaction to
some ignorant preachers who often came through our communi-
ty with no gospel except their own biased opinion and no
command of the English language. As far as I'm concerned, they
succeeded in making fools of themselves and this I would not do.
But there seemed to be no possible way for me to get through
high school, much less go to college. There was no high school
nearby and I couldn't afford to go to boarding school. Soon they
added the eighth and ninth grade to our two-room school and I
eagerly entered the eighth grade. When I finished the eighth
grade, my brother, the Rev. A. C. Swofford, invited me to come
live with him. He had recently moved to Mocksville, North
Carolina and wrote that there was a good high school there that I
could attend. So I entered my sophomore year of high school at
Mocksville. This was a great life for me, not only was it an
opportunity for future school, but it gave me a warm family
surrounding for which I have always been grateful. My brother's
congregation was perhaps the leading congregation of that small
county seat town and, I came in contact with an element of society
that I had not encountered before Hollis community in the
1920's.
I confess that during the seven months that I spent in
Mocksville, I learned more of the English language than in prior
years. I spoke a version of the English language that was
prevalent in Rutherford County at that time. It was difficult to
adjust to speaking correct English. I tried very hard and came
through with few embarrassing moments. About this time I
revealed for the first time to my family my desire to be a minister.
I had hesitated because I was afraid there would be no
opportunity for education. I do not want this to appear that I was
a poor, deprived, son of the soil, struggling to reach the light.
Poor, I was; struggle, I did, but deprived — never! For surround-
ing me was a caring, loving family from which I drew strength
and encouragement as well as high ideals and commitment to
service.
In the summer if 1923 I found a job painting houses at Cliffside
and lived with my brother, Charles. He asked me to stay on and
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Reaching For My Halo
go to high school there closer to home. I could work at painting
on Saturday, played the piano for the silent movie on Friday
nights and Saturday afternoon and evenings. In this way I
managed my personal finances. The first week of school the
principal of the school called me in to the office and informed me
that if I continued the grade level it would be possible to graduate
in one year. So with two English courses and two Latin courses,
and the other required courses I dug in and graduated in 1924.
Soon after going to Cliffside in the summer of 1923 I met Ida
McCurry at the youth Group of the Methodist Church. We
became interested in each other and spent much time together.
She was one of the six beautiful daughters of Mr. and Mrs. U.S.
McCurry. She also had two brothers - five of the girls names
began with the letter I. They were; Ila, Ima, Ida, Ina, Iris and the
younger sister, Melba. We were soon planning our future
together. Had we been more mature we might have waited for
marriage.
On Saturday February 9, 1924 we drove with another couple to
Shelby and were married in the Central Methodist Church by the
Rev. A. L. Stanford. It was a cold, rainy day. Ida had a reaction to
a smallpox vaccination and had a temperature of 103°. The
Register of Deeds refused to accept our health certificates
because they were from another county. I found a doctor who
was in his office on Saturday afternoon and got the health
certificates at a high price. I later had to borrow $3.50 from Ida to
pay the minister. We also had to borrow a ring from my
sister-in-law, Estridge, but we finally got married about 4:30 p.m.
Our families knew of our wedding, but we told no one else until
just before high school graduation. I invited my class of seniors to
a theater party as my guest and the announcement of our
wedding was flashed on the movie screen at intermission.
We spent the summer working and preparing for college. We
canned vegetables, peaches, blackberries, scrounged in barns for
cast off furniture and one August day we put all of our things on a
two-horse wagon and drove the forty miles to Rutherford
College. This was a Junior College operated by the Methodist
church located in Burke County. We moved into two rooms of
what had been an empty house. This was located on the campus.
It was rent-free and the President of the College said we could do
anything we wanted to do to fix up the house to make it livable.
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Reaching For My Halo
The other two rooms of the house were soon occupied by another
couple. They were older than we were and he was trying to
finance his education by selling a home-made pain killer. He
would cook his ingredients on his cookstove on Thursday, bottle
it Friday, and go wherever he could find a crowd on Saturday and
sell it. His was the only authentic medicine show I ever saw and his
pain killer financed his college work and he became a prominent
minister in the North Carolina conference.
We had been given permission to upgrade this old house and
the only way that it could have been upgraded was to set it afire.
This was done when we moved out to a summer campground
nearby. This too was rent-free if I would seal the two-room house.
My brother bought the lumber and Ida and I did the work and
had a nice comfortable home for almost two years. There were at
this campground six couples. All ministerial students, they lived
in summer houses on the grounds. Most of us were hard-pressed
financially to go to school. We enjoyed each other and made
lasting friendships. All have died except one. But the fun and
fellowship we knew was a lasting memory. The only one of the six
that had money and the only one of the six that was unpopular
was called Catfish, because his mouth was bigger than his brain.
Another student had two girls, age 3 and 5, and was very dramatic
in his talk and preaching. He would go preach on the streets of
Hickory or Lenoir, or wherever he could find a listener. He asked
me to go to Henry River to hear him preach one Sunday night. I
sat on the back seat. He was very dramatic when he described his
deathbed. He was grey and stooped and called his little girls to his
bedside and laid his hands on their head and gave them some
instructions. I didn't know what his instructions were because I
got to snickering at the idea that those two little girls would never
grow up. Then the climax of his sermon he described Noah
loading up the ark with two of everything. The small animals
went in very well, he had a little trouble getting the giraffe and the
elephant in the door and complained that he should have made
the door wider and higher. Then the fish entered and when he
marched two catfish up the gangplank to keep them from
drowning, I hid behind the seat and suffered. I was shaking with
laughter when he suddenly stopped and called on me to pray. I
prayed, but the Lord don't know what I said, because I think the
Lord was laughing at the same thing I was.
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Reaching For My Halo
Those were fruitful years for both of us. Schoolwork was hard,
but enjoyable. My freshman year I began the study of Greek
under a Waldensian who was fluent in several languages. I
continued my Latin studies for the fifth year. The classes were
small and we got to know personally the faculty. I was an eager
student. Ida took a lighter load of studies but enough to keep us
busy. Financially we were having a difficult time. I worked at
whatever jobs I could find farm work, brick making, house
painting, selling dry goods at a Belks in Hickory were a few of the
jobs I recall. A few days before commencement both Ida and I
were in a competitive speakers contest. She did a "reading" and I
delivered an original oration on patriotism. We both won gold
medals. I suppose this was the high point of those two years. Some
honors came our way and at the end we were confident that we
would some way or another get on to Duke which was our goal.
After school was over, we went to Shelby. I got a job helping paint
the new cotton mill called the Ora and on Saturday I worked at a
grocery store that was operated by my brother, Charles. Two
weeks later, I received a letter telling me that I had been awarded
a $200 scholarship to Duke for outstanding grades at Rutherford
College. They also directed me to pick up the check from the
Chairman of the Trustees in Hickory. I lost no time in getting to
Hickory. That was the most money I had ever had at one time.
August, 1926 found us at 915 Buchanan Blvd. in Durham. We
rented a large upstairs room from the Tilley family. We set up
housekeeping prepared for the opening of school at Duke.
Across the hall were two students whom we knew and we
arranged for them to take their meals with us. Ida's role was to
cook the food, I did the buying of the groceries, the boys washed
the dishes and we split the cost of the groceries three ways. I still
have the old record and the cost for the four of us. It averaged
about $8.50 per month. This gave us a financial break and
worked out well for the four of us for about a year. I got a paper
route with the Durham Morning Herald. I got up at 3 o'clock in
the morning, went downtown and walked five miles on this paper
route. I got home about 5 o'clock and studied until 8 when the
classes began. I made about eleven or twelve dollars a week. I
have been an early riser ever since. I did janitor work for a small
church and felt that I was in the money then!
The academic work at Duke was fairly easy for me. I had five
5
Reaching For My Halo
years of Latin studies behind me and two years of Greek, so I
dropped Latin and continued the Greek New Testament. I had
been a lab instructor at Rutherford College in Chemistry and
Physics and it was natural that I was interested in the Science at
Duke. I took Botany, Zoology and Chemistry. In my senior year I
was offered a fellowship to study for my Ph.D. and a place on the
Duke faculty upon graduation. This was a tempting offer as Duke
was expanding rapidly at that time, but the call of the pastorate of
the church dominated. My senior year was a thrilling year for us.
Ida was pregnant with Betty and we moved to 907 Buchanan
V Blvd. where we had a ground floor apartment.
I changed jobs, sold shoes afternoons and Saturdays in a large
downtown department store.
I left Ida in Durham in October, 1927, and with a $20 bill and a
little change in my pocket, I hitchhiked to Asheville to join the
Western North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Church. I
stopped off in Hollis to spend two days to visit my parents and
then went on to Asheville. The meals were furnished by the
conference and at night I stayed with Ila and Martin Bridges who
lived in Asheville. When I left Conference it was with a Methodist
pastor at Chapel Hill. We got to Chapel Hill at midnight and I
caught the last bus running for Durham. I got home with the $20
bill intact. I had been gone eight days and spent five cents for a
trolly fare and twenty cents for a bus ride from Chapel Hill.
January 11, 1928 Betty was born in the Watts hospital. I waited
and walked the halls of the hospital all day, I was teased by the
nurses for being so nervous, and about 5:20 in the afternoon a
nurse brought Betty out to me and put her in my arms and said,
"Now what are you going to do with a baby?" I didn't know, and if
there had not been a bench there in the hall, both of us would
have ended up on the floor. There is no way I can express the joy
that came to me as I held that child; I cried. The nurses gathered
around me and laughed at me. Spectators were wondering what
was going on in that cluster in the hall. I felt the weight of the
world on my shoulders. Only Ida could share it with me. Durham
was a long way from home and we were homesick and now this
great thing had come into our lives. Although it was a cold night
and the streetcar ran right by our door, I walked the two miles
home to be ^lone with my thoughts.
About the time Betty was born, the pastor of Lenoir circuit died
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Reaching For My Halo
and I was offered the job. The four months that I could not serve
were to be filled by a local man. I spent a couple of week-ends
visiting Lenoir and generally looking over the place. June came
and with it graduation and now we were ready to do what I had
wanted to do and tried to prepare myself to do. I chose to take my
theological work through Emory University in supervised
studies, seminars, and summer sessions. This was a provision that
the church had provided for us. There was no degree offered but
it was a four year's study, so it was on Ida's twenty-fifth birthday
we started for Lenoir and moved into the parsonage at Littejohn
Church on June 7, 1928.
c
7
Chapter
2
A HE FIRST parsonage was located at Littlejohn's Church
about seven miles west of Lenoir. We arrived at the parsonage at
11 a.m. on June 7, and found the house spotlessly clean and a
warm meal on the table and groceries on the shelves. By present
standards, the parsonage lacked many things. There was no
telephone. There was no electric power, no modern plumbing. A
well was at the kitchen door. A path led to the necessary house at
the back of the lot. The congregation had prepared a vegetable
garden that on that June day was glowing with promise. The only
guest room we had had a shuck mattress, the first I had ever seen.
Our nearest neighbor was one-quarter of a mile away. There was
a salary check from the newly formed Duke foundation waiting
for me for $125.00. With this I bought a Ford Coupe of many
years of service, and also rotten tires. This literally was all the
money we had and yet Ida and I felt a joy and confidence that we
were at long last ready to be a productive part of society. We had
our five months old Betty, and a home and for the first time,
transportation, and I was pastor of five churches in Caldwell
County.
My Sunday schedule was usually this: Preaching at 11:00 at one
church, getting a bite to eat and preaching again at 3:00 in the
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Reaching For My Halo
afternoon, often going without supper until after the third
service in the evening. The same sermon was used at all three
churches. I had no supply of sermons I could use. The second
Sunday as a pastor is unforgettable. I preached in the South
Lenoir section and was invited by a man to have dinner. His wife
went on ahead to prepare dinner and he rode with us to show us
where he lived. We finally arrived at his house, the surroundings
were deplorable and when we got inside the house it was so dirty
Ida was afraid to lay Betty on their bed. Apparently the lady of
the house was a bit upset at her husband, perhaps for inviting us,
I don't know, but after a long wait, the lady called from the
kitchen, "Preacher, come and get it!" The four of us filed in the
dining room that was so small we all had to sit down at the same
time. When we were seated, the husband asked me to say the
blessing, I closed my eyes and bowed my head just as the wife
shoved a platter of potato salad under my face, so that I buried
my face in the potatoes, I dodged back to see what was going on
and the husband said to his wife, "Shut your damn mouth until
the Preacher asks the blessing." I made the second attempt and
she blurted out, "Good Lord, he'll learn that we're not used to no
such as that." Eventually I said a blessing and got the potato salad
out of my eyes and nose. That meal was the first, and the worst
meal I've eaten with a parishioner.
The husband had promised to go with me to show me where
my members lived so the next week I drove to their house to pick
him up. They operated a little store about 8x10 that had some
staple food supplies on the shelves, a community convenience
store. Just before I got to the store, the husband ran out of the
building followed by a lot of flying sardines and pork and bean
cans that landed in the street. The wife quit throwing things when
she saw me and the husband came back after I had entered the
store. What had precipitated the explosion, she had asked him to
do something and he told her he didn't have time, that he was
called to a fire, that Tar River had caught fire and burned in two
and he had to help put out the blaze. She rushed to the telephone
to call the neighbor to tell them of the Tar River disaster and then
she realized that rivers don't burn. I thought it was hilariously
funny, but this boy preacher tried to counsel with this
middle-aged couple on how to live together in peace. I helped
them gather the cans from the street and the gutter and peace was
9
Reaching For My Halo
restored at least until I left. I could fill this chapter of funny
episodes of this couple, but I must add that they reared three of
the finest children of that town who later made outstanding
citizens.
This was my second week as a pastor and the shots came thick
and fast. About Thursday morning I was working in the
vegetable garden that members of my congregation had planted
for us when a man came and said they wanted me in about 20
minutes at the Littlejohns Church to conduct a funeral. I had
never read the burial service. I suppose I had thought maybe
sometime I would conduct a funeral, but I had paid absolutely no
attention to it. I dropped my gardening, ran to shave and dress. I
told Ida I had to go to the church for a funeral. While I was
shaving someone came to the door and told Ida I was wanted at
the church for a funeral in about 20 minutes. She told them I
knew about it and was getting ready for it.
I put on my suit, the only one I had was a heavy wool suit,
grabbed the Methodist Discipline and ran through the woods to
Littlejohns Church. I arrived just as the hearse was backing up to
the door of the church. I did not know a soul of the large crowd or
the family. I found a woman who could play two songs "Nearer
My God to Thee" and "What a Friend we Have in Jesus". The
crowd packed the church. I sweated profusely, sang these two
songs, read the ritual for the first time and moved out to the
cemetery. While we were waiting for the grave to be filled as was
the custom, I saw another funeral procession winding its way
toward the church and it dawned on me that this was the second
funeral that had been called for. Neither the knowledge of the
Greek New Testament, nor the study of Christian Theology had
told me what to do with two funerals in a strange church when I
did not know either person being buried. The congestion of the
parking space with the two funeral outfits there, each not
knowing the other, gave me time to pronounce the benediction
for the first funeral and run to the church in time to lead the
second procession into the building. I asked the undertaker what
he had in that box and he told me an old woman and he had
forgotten her name. I found the same lady who knew the two
songs, we sang them. I read the same ritual, and finished with the
funeral.
After the crowd got the traffic straightened out and left, I
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Reaching For My Halo
started back to the house, my clothes were soaked with
perspiration and I felt weak so I sat down on a log in the woods
and told the Lord that I didn't mind learning, but I was a slow
learner and not to throw the whole book at me in a couple of
weeks. As far as I know no one of those in the crowd knew it was
my first funeral, and several expressed appreciation for the
shortness of the service.
The summer of 1928 was a summer filled with exciting events
for both Ida and 1. 1 was pastor of five churches in West Caldwell.
The presidential campaign between Al Smith and Herbert
Hoover added excitement. We had a responsive people who
accepted us and endured my shortcoming. They went beyond the
call of duty in making us feel that they were glad we had come to
be their pastor. They paid me money for what I would have
gladly done for free, discretion kept them from knowing about
this. The salary was set at $1300.00 for the year, I actually
received $1613.00. Our biggest expense was the operation of the
Ford we called the "Puddlejumper." When it wouldn't run, which
was often, we called it other names unlawful to utter.
One of my congregations was Olivet Church in Mulberry
Creek section. I had only a few members. They had service at
three on Sunday afternoon, two times each month. The last week
of July each year was set aside for their revival services. Afraid,
but determined, I planned to do the preaching for the six nights.
In the morning I wrote the sermon to be preached that night.
The church was packed every service. Five people made a
profession of their faith. I was pleased and began to feel that I
had established my credentials. One of the converts was a young
man about eighteen years of age. He was asked why he wanted to
join the Methodist church since his family was of another
denomination. He said well; "I joined the Adventist church, later
I joined the Baptist, and still later I joined the Lutheran church,
and now I am joining the Methodist and if all of you can't get me
to heaven my Goose is cooked." For the next fifty years he was a
strong leader of Methodism in that section, often representing
the Charge at the annual conference. He was one of the most
unpromising members I ever received into the church which
demonstrates that God can use stumbling efforts of an immature
preacher to accomplish his work.
11
Reaching For My Halo
The fall came and I went to Charlotte to Conference and
personally made my report. I was proud of it. I returned for the
second year to the Lenoir circuit. This was one of the hardest
years of my ministry. A building project at South Lenoir to care
for the growing Sunday School was underway. I began working
with Boy Scouts, I established a regular service at an old
abandoned church near Whitnel. This grew and a church was
organized and built that year. This required time and effort. But
at the end of the year Collier's was a church of 85 members with a
new church free of debt. During this year the "Puddlejumper" lay
down one day and died and we got a new four door Ford Model A
car. It cost $721.00. To add to the hardships, Ida was sick almost
all winter with one case of flu chasing the other. Help was hard to
get, both medical and domestic, so I asked my superintendent
early in the Spring for a new pastorate.
I suppose I appeared pretty cocky to some industrialist who
wished to buy enough of the South Lenoir Church property to
build a water tank for fire protection. They met with me out on
the ground and patronized me so much that I was disgusted with
them. They picked out what land they wanted and asked me the
price. I told them that it was $500.00. "Hell," one of them said, "I
can buy land in New York City for that price." I said, "Well, in that
case build your water tank in New York" and I walked off. I drove
out home and the next morning the men came out to see me and
were a little more considerate of me, but during the night, strange
to say, the price of that property went up to $750.00 and I got it.
One incident that gave me humor and anxiety. I had four
persons who wanted to be baptized by immersion. I had never
done this, but had seen it done at the churches near HoUis. The
service was planned for Saturday afternoon in the baptism part of
the Yadkin River. One lady was short, but very large and fearful
of water. The river was swift and I realized that if she got loose
that she would float off to the nearest dam. So I baptized her
husband first and placed him on the other side of his wife to help
if I needed him. I led her out into the water up to her chin and
other than panic for fear of water we had no trouble. A Baptist
minister told me, "It was not effective since I had not been
immersed, none of us would go to heaven." I told him that I was
willing to risk it, and I hoped no one would object. I really was
happy when it was all over.
12
Reaching For My Halo
1928 conference was at High Point, North Carolina. Ida and
Betty went with me and we stayed with friends we knew from
Duke.
We had received more than a hundred new members, added a
new church, added some Sunday School rooms in South Lenoir
church, made minor repairs to the parsonage. I made my report
and Sunday was ordained deacon in the Methodist ministry.
When the appointments were made, I was assigned to the Smyre
Methodist Church a place of which I had never heard.
Information from my brother that it was a model, mill village on
the outskirts of Gastonia with only one church to serve, and it was
small in membership. Salary was to be $2,000.00 so we returned
to prepare for moving. This was no easy move. Ida and I learned
the depths of sorrow on breaking ties that had been happy and
profitable. The church was thriving and we had been too busy to
see how deeply the folk loved us. We learned the hard way that it
was not good to break a pastor relation for a trivial reason.
13
Chapter
3
w HEN we moved into Gastonia in November, we had an
almost new brick home with modern equipment located beside
the church. I had swapped 600 members for 104, all of them were
within 5 minutes walking distance, travel was at a minimum.
Instead of all West Caldwell county I had a few blocks to cover my
parish. Ours was the only church in the village and I was literally
the pastor of the village rather than of the church members. I
became a Scoutmaster and looking back on my four years work
there I perhaps did nore good with those boys than I did
elsewhere. Several made outstanding citizens in later life. One
became a congressman, one a university professor and others
made outstanding citizens.
The people were only working two days per week and life was
hard for them. There were only two automobiles in the village.
There was a taxi and mine. I spent lots of time and money taking
people to doctors and families to funerals of their kins folk. One
day a husband asked me to go to Charlotte Hospital for his wife.
We went to the Presbyterian hospital and as the nurse rolled the
patient out to the car the doctor told me she would have a baby
before the day was over. I hurried off and was speeding 80 miles
per hour on the Wilkinson Boulevard when I saw a motorcycle
14
Reaching For My Halo
cop down ahead of me. He prompdy stopped me and I told him
that if he didn't want to deliver a baby in the back seat of the car
that he had better let me go. He asked me where I was going and I
told him. He was no more anxious than I was for the job. He set
the siren going through Belmont and Lowell at 60 miles per hour
and we arrived an hour before the baby was born.
We managed to save a few hundred dollars during the 1930s,
1931 and 32 but managed to lose it all in the bank closings of
1933. I had brought our first electric refrigerator three days
before the banks closed and I salvaged $334.00 of the money we
had in the bank. When the banks were liquidated I got a check for
$1 1.32. I had $320.00 in the building and loan. Years later I got
$60.00 of that back. We considered ourselves fortunate
compared to many we knew. We had a job, the salary was paid on
schedule and it was adequate. During this depression the prices
were so low I could buy a suit of clothes for $20.00, gasoline was
selling for nine and ten cents per gallon, real butter was nineteen
cents a pound, eggs were fifteen cents a dozen, three pounds of
stew beef could be bought for twenty-five cents, coffee was twelve
cents a pound, milk was thirty-two cents a gallon — delivered to
the home. Speaking of costs, early spring of 1933 we decided to
make a trip to Washington, I have kept a record of the trip and
the costs. Geneva, my sister and our family of four visited some of
the Civil War Battlefields in Virginia and stopped at Washington
Hotel located near the Washington Monument for five days. We
went on to Baltimore and to Gettysburg and back through the
Shennandoah Valley to our home. We were gone eight days,
spent a total of $39.40. We did not cut corners, motel rooms could
cost $1.00 or at the most $1.25 per night.
On this trip to Washington, Ida and I left the children with my
sister Geneva one morning to go to the White House. We drove
up to the front of the house, parked and went in the front
entrance. We were welcomed by the doorkeeper and escorted to
the elevator and to the second floor, and only when we got to the
Oval Office did they discover that we were tourists, and did not
have an appointment with Mr. Roosevelt who was the President at
that time. The guards were red faced, but showed us the upstairs
as well as the usual tourist rooms. That afternoon I tried the same
stunt with my sister but we were not parked before they directed
us to the visitors parking and we were not taken upstairs this visit.
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Reaching For My Halo
A man from the hills of North Carolina had come to Gastonia.
He seemed a bit odd, one afternoon in routine visiting I stopped
in to see him. I knocked on the door, he called from the kitchen:
"Come in preacher, I'll be through in a minute." I went on into
the kitchen, and he was vigorously pulling on a cloth that was
attached to the back of the door. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm milking off a curse put on my cow. If I don't get it off, she is
going dry." The lady down the street, he said, was a witch. She is
supposed to have killed his turnip patch, and now had a "spell" on
the cow. The milking of a dish cloth on the new of the moon was
supposed to counter the power of the witch. I couldn't prove it
didn't work because the cow continued to provide milk.
In 1933 a bizarre and sad event both amused and shocked me.
A neighbor pastor who was at that time pastor of the largest
congregation of that denomination in North Carolina came to the
parsonage and wanted a confidential talk with me. I invited him
to the study, he appeared ill at ease, he inquired if Ida could hear
through the walls. I assured him she was in the back part of the
house. So he got up and locked the door on the room. He was a
fifty-two year old man and his problem was a hernia. His church
did not believe in modern medicine, they expected to be healed
by prayer. He had consulted a local doctor who told him; "He
could pray until hell froze over and it would not cure the hole in
his belly." The doctor sent him to me for advice. I told him I
would go and have it fixed. He asked me to recommend a
surgeon and go with him. So I took him to Charlotte to a Dr.
Scruggs that I knew. I waited in the waiting room during the
examination. The nurse came for me when he refused to make
plans for the operation until I had o.k'd them, and promised to be
with him. The date was set and before daylight one Monday
morning I took him to the Presbyterian Hospital. He refused to
go into the operating room unless I went with him and held his
hand so I put on a white jacket and a mask and off I went to the
operation. Just before he took ether he pulled me down and told
me, "Don't tell anyone where I am, I told my congregation
yesterday that I was going to Mississippi for five weeks in an
evangelistic campaign." Well, I stood and watched the operation
wondering how a man could think it's a sin to have repair work
done on his body and could lie to a congregation that he was
supposedly leading in rghteousness. The man recovered and I
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Reaching For My Halo
brought him home after dark. He stayed indoors with shades
down until the five weeks was over. He told his congregation of
great success in Mississippi and he worked so hard that he had lost
fifteen pounds.
There is a sequel to this story, I learned that he neither paid the
surgeons, nor the hospital bill. Years passed and during the
World War II, I was in Presbyterian Hospital and met Dr.
Scruggs in the corridor, we talked a bit and he said, "By the way,
your friend is in Mississippi again for evangelism. He is in the
third room down, I took his appendix out yesterday." I never
learned if this last bill was paid or not.
This incident profoundly affected me. I was shocked to say the
least. I was and am very zealous of the honesty and integrity of the
Christian ministry and I could not reconcile an absence of ethics
under the pretense that he was trusting God for his physical
needs.
An amusing instance took place here. I told the congregation
on Sunday morning, "Since I came here I've heard a lot of
"gossip" that is hurting the community. Tonight I'm going to
reveal the source at the evening service." I was preaching on "The
Devil", but one of the community's worst trouble makers became
frightened and in the afternoon told her employees: "If I called
her name, she wasn't guilty." The church was packed that night
and no one's name was called, but the frightened lady got the
message.
These years jobs were scarce and once a job was lost another
was hard to find. An executive of a firm and a member of my
church was for some reason fired. He went from firm to firm but
no job was found. He brought pressure on his old firm to rehire
him. He held one man responsible for his problems. One
morning I went by to see him and found him standing on the
ground at the edge of his porch whetting his knife, an illegal
switchblade knife. He had it so sharp it would shave the back of
his hand. "Don't try to stop me because I'm going to kill Mr. So
and So, this morning. A man has to do what he has to do." I didn't
argue with him, but told him that I would go with him to the office
where the murder was to take place. When the knife was
satisfactorily sharpened he said, "Are you ready to go?", I
answered "Ready to go?" I was stalling for time, but I didn't know
what I would do. I stepped down from the porch and he stopped
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Reaching For My Halo
me with this, "Preacher, this is a serious matter and would you
lead a prayer before we go?" He didn't know I had been praying
all the time. We knelt down on the sidewalk and I prayed for
guidance and justice. This is one prayer when I kept my eyes
open. When I had finished, he handed me the knife, then a small
pistol, then a large pistol in a shoulder holster, then a loaded
night stick and some steel bands with cleats to wrap around the
hand that he said would make barbeque out of Mr. So and So's
face. He gave me the bullets for both of his guns, so I marched
down the streets of the village carrying the armory with me. I
stored them for several days. Incidentally, this man got a good
position with a firm in South Carolina and as far as I know never
had any more trouble until his death several years afterwards.
Another incident involving a job loss came in 1932 during the
worst of the depression. A man quit his job saying "before I'll run
that machine I'll make me a wooden bill and eat with the
chickens." He couldn't get another job and his family was hungry.
I got involved when I carried them a basket of groceries. The man
was desperate and was begging me to use my influence to get his
old job back. The former employer agreed if I would come in to
the office with the man. I did and we sat for awhile and the
tension grew before the employer said, "The bill didn't work, did
it?" The man denied saying it in the first place. The employer told
him he didn't want him around, but because the preacher was
having to support his family the boss would put him to work on
the streets until the man could get out of town.
The four years we spent in Smyre village were years of maturity
and growth. Our son, Thomas Jr., was born July 14, 1930. The
doctor that delivered him told me that he had a slim chance to
live. We had a touch and go situation for several years with his
asthma and frail body. The joy he provided overwhelmed us so
that his struggles were forgotten. Now the children became the
central focus of our lives. Their care, education, and pleasure was
never far from our thoughts. When we prepared to leave Smyre
in the fall of 1933, we were leaving a church whose membership
had almost tripled in the four years, the management of the
textile company offered Ida more than they had been paying me
to stay on as a community worker. This humbled me because I
thought I had worked pretty hard myself.
18
Chapter
4
X HIS IS a short chapter in this story, not because it was dull or
inactive years, but because of the brevity of the pastorate. My
district superintendent told me in conference on Sunday
afternoon that I was going to go to Aldersgate Church in Shelby. I
went home that night very pleased with the prospects of living in
Shelby where two of my brothers lived. I got the shock of my life
on Monday morning when I heard my name read as pastor of a
new charge. It was composed of two churches. Thrift and
Moore's Chapel in the western edge of Charlotte. Hardly had I
gotten home to tell the news to Ida when the new superintendent
of Charlotte district called to tell me of a last minute mix up in
appointment and that he would see that I wasn't hurt next year.
We moved into an adequate parsonage located beside the Thrift
Church. The children were growing and took a lot of our time.
The congregation responded to my ministry with warmth and
full support and we gained some friends that we have cherished
since.
One of the best remembered events of 1934 was a strike in the
local textile plant. Some members of a Communist group
infiltrated the work force and called a strike. The mill shut down
and after three weeks there were some people getting hungry. I
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Reaching For My Halo
tried to talk the management into starting the mill but they were
afraid it would cause trouble and someone would be hurt or
killed. They told me if I would distribute the food, they would pay
the costs. We opened the basement of our church and brought
large amounts of flour, beans, sugar, oil, and potatoes and milk
for the children. The bakeries furnished us with day old bread.
Everyone thought that the Methodist church was furnishing the
food and I couldn't tell them that the folk they were condemning
were feeding them. Each week they would mail me a check to
cover costs and asked for no record of what I bought. This lasted
for six weeks and the mill opened with no trouble at all.
An amusing incident took place during the strike. Ida was
giving a dinner party for a new bishop and some other important
guests. We were at the table in the dining room near the front of
the house when the doorbell rang. I answered the door and a lady
with a voice that could be heard by our guests asked me, "Are you
the man that gives milk to little babies?" I agreed that I was, and as
long as that bishop was here, I was the man that gave milk to little
babies.
The year 1934 was the last year of the Chicago World's Fair.
After the labor trouble was over, the management of the local
plant, in appreciation of my help in feeding their people, paid
our expenses for a trip to the World's Fair. We had been married
for ten years and had no real honeymoon, so Ida and I parked the
children with my parents and went to Niagara Falls across
Ontario to Chicago, from Chicago we boarded a Lake Michigan
ship for a cruise. We were gone for 14 days and we count that one
of the high spots of our travel experience.
Betty started to school at Thrift. She had been in school for a
couple of weeks and she announced one afternoon to her
mother, "Mother, I've got me a boy." We were amused and asked
why would she have a boy. Well, she explained that every girl
must have a boy because that is the way it is done in the modern
age. She made an effort to educate her backward parents on the
relationship between boys and girls. She was six years old at the
time.
The task of a minister is often frustrating. He cannot measure
the contributions to the kingdom by rule of thumb. He may raise
a lot of money and preach to crowded churches or become a
leader in the community and do little to help folks fmd a Saviour.
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Reaching For My Halo
There is an unseen grace that is often at work and the minister
never knows the result. On the last Sunday I preached at Moore's
Chapel I met a young lady who was a stranger. I welcomed her
and thought no more of the incident. Some weeks later I was
called from the Mercy Hospital to see a dying woman who had
asked for me. She told me of a wasted life that she had not been in
church since she was a girl until that last service at Moore's
Chapel. She had come in a rebellious mood and the warmth of my
welcome had led her to Christ and forgiveness. I baptized her and
gave her the vows of the Methodist Church there in the hospital,
three days later I conducted her funeral. Her wasted life is not to
be recommended but I wish all Christians would extend to the
lost a warm invitation to the Christ. Over the last 62 years I have
had many instances where something I said or did produced
results that were gratifying much later on.
I fully expected to stay on as pastor of those two churches when
I went to conference at Greensboro the fall of 1934. The charge
was organized and the people were congenial and requested my
return. My salary was $ 1600 for the year and they increased it the
next year to $1700. I did not ask to be moved and I was sitting in
the balcony at the auditorium of UNC-G when I heard my
appointment was to be Chadwick's Church in Charlotte. I would
have to move only four miles. With me was a dear layman, F. A.
Wilkinson who never would believe that I was as surprised as he
was. It was very difficult to go home and prepare to move and
convince the people that we were not running away from the job.
21
Chapter
5
It is an unwritten rule among Methodist ministers to prepare
for a change of pastors, church affairs are left in good order and a
welcome for the new pastor is arranged. Neither of these was
done in this change. There was no welcome and the church
affairs were in a deplorable condition. The Great Depression was
in its fourth year and had been devastating to the part of
Charlotte that I would be serving. Unemployment was high.
Wages were low. The homes had been without repair for years
and people were weary and discouraged. All of this was reflected
in the church and parsonage. Here I had a congregation of about
500 with the church building needing repair and in debt. The
parsonage was poorly furnished and had a bad roof. We did have
assets however. We had an excellent choir and a small group of
dedicated laymen. These members who had little income held the
church together and saw it through the darkest days. I think of
Charlie Campbell, Wriston Helms, Issac Dotson, Beulah Smith
and Eugene Grimes. These were people who at great personal
sacrifice saved the church. There were others but these leaders
came to mind as I recalled those days. The salary of the previous
year had been reported as $2100. I found when I got there that
$400 of that had been paid by the minister himself which is not
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Reaching For My Halo
according to the Methodist procedure. The official board
refused my suggestion to set the salary at an honest $1700 as they
had paid before. But they insisted that it remain at $2100 for my
benefit and they would make it honest. This they did and it not
only helped me but it raised the morale of the entire membership.
With this stumbling start, I began what perhaps were the best
years of my ministry to that date. The church building was
packed for the 1 1 o'clock service and an evening service was well
attended. There were a lot of people who were members of other
denominations that joined us on Sunday evening. One such lady
told me at the close of service one Sunday night that the Lord had
sent her a message for me. If I would come to her home at 4
o'clock on Monday she would deliver it to me. I wondered why
the Lord felt it necessary to go through Mrs. Yarborough to get to
me. I tried to keep an open mind to him, but to please a neighbor
I went to hear what message she had. She told me that the Lord
wanted me to preach three sermons on three consecutive Sunday
mornings. The first was to be on the sin of women wearing silk
hose, the second was to be the sin of women wearing short
dresses, the third was to be on the sin of women smoking
cigarettes. I made a remark that the Lord seemed to be picking on
the women, and tried to ease myself out of the house and the
interview without hurting the feelings of what appeared to be a
very sincere person. I couldn't get out that easily. She demanded
that I promise to preach these three sermons. I knew very well
that I wasn't going to make a fool of myself by preaching such
stuff, so I told her that I couldn't do that. She asked me to explain
why. This placed me in a tight situation and I decided to be blunt
about it. I tackled the evil of silk hose saying, "I am not an expert
on women's clothing and if they want to wear silk hose to look
nice, I see nothing wrong. The answer would be the same about
wearing black cotton stockings. It is not a moral question with me.
That makes it one sermon I will not preach." Regarding the
second sin of women wearing short dresses, if God gave me a pair
of shears and told me to cut the tails off the women's dresses at the
proper length I wouldn't know where to start or to end, and I
would be a fool to get up in the pulpit and pretend I knew how
short the dress should be to not be a sin. As to the third sin of
women's smoking, "I don't like to see a woman smoking. Matter
of fact, I don't like to see a man smoking. But the women are
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Reaching For My Halo
smoking, they got ahead of me and I am trying to persuade them
not to chew tobacco. My wife doesn't smoke, but if she used
tobacco in any form I would rather she would smoke than dip
snuff." Mrs Yarborough had her mouth full of snuff at that time.
She was digusted with me and could think of nothing worse to say
than, "You've turned out to be a durned old modernist." She
continued to attend our church, but if she had any other message
from God for me, she failed to deliver them.
Of all the thousands of people that I have preached to, only one
ever tried to tell me what to preach. This was a man who had a
well paying job in the depression and felt like he could dictate to
the congregation and the preacher what should be done. The
Sunday night before we were leaving on vacation the next
morning, he came up after the service and complained about my
preaching. "I come to church seeking comfort and your
preaching tears me up so much that often I cannot sleep that
night." I thought that was complimentary. He needed that kind
of preaching. Then he threatened me by saying if I didn't change
my sermons he would have to ask for my removal come
conference. My indignation and independence were aroused. I
told him, "I didn't get my call to the ministry from you, and until I
hear from someone higher than you I will continue the same
way," and furthermore, "I didn't ask to be sent here and when I
return from my vacation I'll go with you to the district
superintendent and we can make the request unanimous." That's
the last I heard of that. He continued to come to church but with
less enthusiasm.
Sometimes I did things on the spur of the moment and often
wondered whether I had a right to do what I did. The following
story illustrates this tendency. In the Lakewood section of
Charlotte were many unchurched people, and I was called quite
often for funerals and weddings and sickness when they wanted
or needed a minister. I often suspected the reason I was called for
funerals was because I had short funeral services. A lady who
lived alone died. She had several married children. They were
divided and opposed anything suggested by another child. They
had no church connection. I spent two days trying to get them to
agree on a funeral plan and then had to go ahead and ignore the
family. After the burial, I went by the house as a courtesy, and
found the two daughters holding a quilt, trying to wrestle it from
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Reaching For My Halo
the other and screaming obscenities at each other. Their
husbands behind them with a stick of firewood threatening each
other if they helped their wife. I got the quilt, got the family
seated and told them I was taking control. The house was going to
be locked for a week to let them cool off. I instructed them to
come at 10 o'clock one week later prepared to act civilized, and
divided their mother's things fairly. They surprised me by
leaving without further trouble. I directed some neighbors to
take some leftover food away. I locked up the house and took the
key with me. One week later they gathered and divided the
household belongings wisely, and as far as I could see fairly. All
agreed that the quilt went to another sister who had not claimed it
at all. I overheard one of the sons tell a sister; "Don't get that
damn preacher mad again or he'll lock it up." I probably did a
service for the family, but what I did was illegal and I've always
tried to be law abiding.
Then there was the time I wanted very badly to beat up one of
my members. "It was a dark and stormy night", literally. A spring
tornado-like storm was moving across Charlotte, and rain was
falling in torrents. Tom, Jr. was very sick with measles and it took
one of us to care for him. I was called out at about 10:30 to a home
where the husband was missing. The family was distraught and
suspected suicide. We organized search parties. A city policeman
and I teamed up and we faced the wind and the rain and the
darkness. We stopped in at our house to check on Tom from time
to time. We were soaked, water in our shoes, but we went through
the night searching. The eight search parties came together at
daylight at the man's residence. We sixteen men looked like
drowned rats as we assembled. Then the hunted man walked up
dry as he could be. He said that he was in a boxcar nearby for
protection. He also said that he had heard my voice about 1 a.m.
looking for him, but that it was raining too hard to come out in it.
I wanted to beat him up for putting us through a night of torture
and anxiety. To have knocked him about may have been against
the law, but at that time, I felt it was no sin. But I said and did
nothing, leaving the tongue lashing to the police officials. I was
informed later that it was adequate.
The congregation slowly pulled out of this crisis, caused by the
Depression, bills were paid, a roof was put on the parsonage,
furnishings added. Betty began taking piano lessons and
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advanced rapidly. Tom, Jr. started to school and had difficulty
keeping quiet. He was active, talked a lot and so when his report
card came with a notation that his conduct rated a C he was
downcast. No one mentioned the C to him. When he was saying
his prayer that night, he included the usual request then paused
and said "Lord, there's no need of a C on my report card, we must
change that next month." Well, it was done, with or without
divine help, but no one ever mentioned it to him.
While in Charlotte I was twice elected president of the
Methodist ministers of Charlotte. I was often called to hold
conferences for the district superintendent. I helped organize
the District Mission Society that would in the next ten years
establish 22 new Methodist churches. I could have stayed at
Chadwick Church longer, but I liked to move to new situations
and new challenges. I was deeply involved in the annual
conference of 1938. It was meeting in Charlotte and as President
of the Methodist ministers I had to arrange many of the details of
the session. I knew we were moving but little had been said as to
where. We were surprised to be assigned to the Polkville Charge
in Cleveland County.
26
/
c
Chapter
6
The appointment to the Polkville Charge was a shock to
say the least. This was a shift from a thriving city church to a
circuit of six churches in upper Cleveland County. It was a radical
change from the city environment of Charlotte to a rural setting
with an agricultural economy. On top of that I would now be
serving as pastor to people that had known me all my life. Many of
them were my relatives. Also, my children who were doing well in
the Charlotte city schools would be in a rural school where two
months of the term was in the hottest part of the summer and the
rest of the term came after the cotton was picked.
Ida and I went to Polkville to see the parsonage. We found it a
filthy wreck. After a few minutes inspection we got into the car
and drove a few hundred yards, then parked in order to get
control of our emotions. We knew that there was no way we would
live in that house as it was. We drove up to my mother's at Hollis,
six miles away, to ask if we could stay there until we could get a
place to live. She agreed so we drove back to Polkville, saw a few of
my new members, and found that they were aware of the damage
that had been done to the parsonage, no people we ever served
did more to welcome us than the people of this charge.
When we arrived on moving day we found thirty-five men and
27
Reaching For My Halo
women working with mops and paint and burning the furniture.
They threw out everything except the dining room table and the
kitchen stove. I think one iron bed was also saved. We did not
have to live with my mother after all we now had a newly
furnished parsonage. When we moved in, the folks of these six
churches showered us with food, especially fresh pork and
poultry.
The children settled in school and I set out to find where my
people lived. There wasn't a foot of pavement on the road except
the blacktop road to Shelby. I wore out two Ford cars on those
washboard roads in three years. I found my people, all 1100 of
them scattered from Lattimore to Casar. They were the cream of
Cleveland County society. The Stameys, the Covingtons, the
Edwards, the Griggs, the Crawleys, the Elmores and the Jenkins,
all were families of stability and character. It was a joy to serve and
count them as friends. I could name many others that fall into this
category, for man to man, I have not found a better group for
sincere goodness and character.
An embarrassing moment happened a few days after we
moved into our house in Polkville. A large family invited us to a
Sunday dinner in was an effort to get acquainted with the new
minister and his family. The parents, the grandparents, a sister
and their children all were included. We were gathered around
the table, and food was being passed when Tom, Jr., aged eight
spoke up. He made a hole in his mashed potatoes to hold his
gravy. The gravy had overflowed and run out in his plate. In
disgust he called out in a loud voice, "Oh, Mother, my dam thing
broke." We knew what he meant, but we were not sure the others
understood the the new preacher's son was not using profanity at
the table. Ida was red-faced for a couple of days and Tom, Jr.
learned that the word had other connotations.
The first Christmas that we were at Polkville, we tried to attend
all of the Christmas programs at the six churches. One program
will be remembered always. It took place at Clover Hill Church.
They had a pageant and distributed treats to everybody. They
gave presents of candy and fruit. Everything that could go wrong
went wrong. The angels halos were sideways and the players
forgot their lines. Two of the little angels got into a shoving match
that was less than angelic. The baby Jesus in the crib kept pushing
his head up to see what was going on and Mary had to spank him
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before he would lie down in the straw. All this transpired as the
Wise Men and the Shepherds tried to say their lines. Then gifts
were distributed to the folks from the Christmas tree. The last gift
given out was for the minister. It was a 22 pound turkey gobbler,
alive, and protesting the entire proceedings. It was a cold and
rainy night, the children were sticky with candy and Ida had to
drive the six miles home while I wrestled that 22 pound turkey in
the back seat of the car. He had not been house trained; when he
gobbled he frightened the children. Ida couldn't tell what was
happening in the rear seat. Had she known, she might have
thrown us all out. We got home alive, the turkey made a
Christmas dinner, and by spring the car was clean. This story
sounds flat unbelievable, but you have my word that it was the
funniest thing of my entire life.
The farm people I served depended on the sale of cotton for
their living. As a result, they only had money in the fall of the
year. Little of the pastor's salary was paid until then. In the spring
and summer, the collection plates were sometimes unfortunately,
empty. I had an insurance policy with a premium of $45.00 due
April 6. The day before the 30 days of grace had expired, the
collection was $1. 13 at the first service at 10:00. We were going on
to Casar for the second service. Just as I left the church, Colon
Edwards stuck an envelope in my coat pocket and said "This is a
tithe of a calf I sold yesterday." I was telling Ida as we rode along
that there was no way I could pay that premium when Betty,
curious as to what was in the envelope, opened so she took it out
and opened it up to fmd the three hundred dollar check. I would
have been happy if Mr. Edwards could have sold a calf every
Saturday.
In 1939 we bought a house in Shelby and rented it. We fully
expected to live in Shelby upon retirement. We had to do some
repair work on the house, but we gained a little as the rent paid
the building and loan payments. The house was sold in 1945. Also
in 1939 came the first loss in my family. My brother Charlie died
at the age of 42 years. He left one daughter Beth. This disrupted
the entire family. He was a favorite brother, a good citizen, and a
churchman. Many of us felt that he would have made a
wonderful minister had World War I not disrupted his life.
At the end of my first year at Polkville, I told my district
superintendent that, because of the school situation, I wanted to
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move. I felt guilty as things in the church were going well.
Conference was in Greensboro that year. An hour before the
appointments were read, I learned I was to go to the first church
of Murphy, North Carolina. If we were to go to Murphy, I would
be following the same minister that had left the Polkville
parsonage a wreck. I had never before refused to go were I was
appointed, but this time I went to the Bishop and told him my
reasons for refusing to go to Murphy. He said "It's too late now,
the appointments are made." I told him that either he change it
not or conference. The Bishop was peaved at me but he called a
meeting of the cabinet and sent me back to Polkville. I learned
that the man they sent to Murphy found the parsonage unlivable
and only stayed one year.
There are many amusing things that happened during church
services. A minister is prepared for infants crying or sudden
illness, but recovery after something funny happens is very
difficult. Once at Polkville, our pianist was jazzing up the Prelude.
She almost had that piano hopping around on one leg. Abruptly
she stopped playing and from the audience came the clear voice
of a farm woman who was discussing some canning. "I always put
mine up in molasses," she said loudly. I might just as well
pronounced the benediction right then as far as the service was
concerned. Folks all over the church couldn't stop snickering and
trying to suppress laughter. We never found out what was
preserved in molasses.
One of the high points of my years at Polkville was the building
of a new church at Rehobeth. They had talked of a new church
for a generation but had never made a move toward building. I
persuaded two Baptist laymen to give the church a couple acres of
land across the road from the church cemetery. This was the
incentive that broke the way open to build. The building
committee elected to use some of the material in the old church to
frame part of the new. The old church was torn away. The Sandy
Plains Baptist church invited us to use their building while the
construction was in progress. During the winter of 1939-40 we
accepted their gracious invitation and had our services in this
church building. The building of Rehobeth Church was a happy
event. The congregation was united in the project and the
anticipation of the new church brought excitement. They
accomplished much more than they had possible. The first
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Sunday we worshipped in the new sanctuary, many people had
tears of joy flowing down their cheeks.
The churches, all six of them, usually had a week of revival
services during the summer months. One year the Stewards
asked me to do the preaching for all of the services. Mt. Harmon
and Lee's Chapel elected to have a combined service. That left
five. I felt flattered that they would want me since they had been
having prominent ministers visit them and do the preaching. I
scheduled the meetings to move from one to the other and
preached twice each day for five weeks. For most of these weeks
we ate two meals a day in the congregation's homes. These meals
included the family. We ate more chicken and hot rolls than the
law allowed. I was a comparatively young man then, but I was so
tired that I was not thinking or preaching well by the end of this
period. I've dodged that kind of stress since. Who said preaching
was easy? I was as near a breakdown as I've ever been.
One Saturday, I had a wedding in the parsonage living room. It
was a couple of neighbor children. They were only about 18 years
of age and had invited their families. We had counseled with
them and they were familiar with the ritual. We expected a simple
ceremony. Things began to go wrong when one member of the
family was late, and they all wanted to wait for Joe. When the
ceremony began, the bride was vigorously chewing gum and
giggling. We came to the groom's part of the service where the
groom is supposed to say "I will". He was so tense and frightened
that he nodded his head and couldn't get the "I will" spoken.
When I came to the close of the ceremony, I heard a thump on the
floor and the groom was stretched out on the rug in a dead faint.
The bride looked down at him, giggled and said "What are you
doing on the floor." I got the poor fellow up, led him into an
adjoining room and sat him down on a kitchen stool after shaking
him to help him recover. He fumbled for his billfold and about
$200.00 spilled out on the floor. I started picking up the money
off the floor when he said, "You just take that for your fee." I
stuffed it back in his billfold and put it pack in pocket. I don't
suppose he ever knew that he paid no fee for his wedding.
When the union of the MP's (the Methodists/Protestants) and
the Southern Methodists churches was pending, I was invited to
preach in several of the Methodist/Protestant churches. It was a
get acquainted effort with each other. One of the churches where
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I spoke, was within two miles of where I was born. After the
service we had a picnic meal under the trees in the church yard. A
leader of the church asked me where I was born. I told him, "up
the river about two miles." "Well", he said, "from your speech I
knowed you were not from this country". This taught me that you
can be a foreigner, even close to home.
The day we moved to Polkville, we met James and Norma
Riser. A friendship developed that has blessed the Swofford
family for 47 years. They have remained close friends. We have
shared laughter and sorrow; we have traveled thousands of miles
together. We have stood on New England's rocky shores, we have
followed Lewis and Clark's route to explore the Northwest, we
have tried to find the Ladies room in Quebec where only French
was spoken. We walked on the shores of the Pacific where the
Columbia river joins the ocean. We checked on Old Faithful to
see if it still erupted. It did. We saw the buffalo herd in the Black
Hills and walked where Custer died on the Little Big Horn. These
bonds of love still bind us as we grow older.
A World War was raging in Europe in 1941, and it seemed
inevitable that we would be involved. We were asked to consider a
move to Salisbury to Park Avenue church. The salary was the
same as what I was receiving at Polkville, but we chose Salisbury
because of the school, especially High School. Conference was in
Winston-Salem. Ida came for the closing session. We received the
expected appointment and returned by Salisbury to look over the
church and the parsonage.
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Chapter
7
We MOVED to Salisbury on November 1941. The children
settled into their new school with no major difficulties. Betty
made the orchestra playing second violin and Tom began his
band studies playing a french horn. Betty enrolled in piano
studies with a Dr. Rich at Catawba College. For five years we had a
pleasant and profitable association with Catawba College. Our
congregation was warm in their welcome and worked to make us
comfortable in the old house used for the parsonage.
I followed a minister whose wife told him he was a great
preacher. He apparently believed it for he preached long and
loud, often continuing until 12:30. In order to suggest a shorter
service the congregation had placed a large clock on the front of
the balcony. That clock stared the preacher in the face. I,
however, have no trouble getting to the end of a sermon in 22
minutes. The clock irritated me. One day I went over and moved
the clock off balance. It promptly stopped. The old gentleman
who took care of the clock started it the next Sunday. Again, I
moved it an inch and it stopped. For about 3 or 4 weeks we played
this game although he did not know he was playing. He said to
me, "Would you mind. The clock refuses to run and I'm going to
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take it down." I was perfectly willing. That was the last of the
clock. I never told him that the trouble with the clock was a
minister who stopped on time and didn't want to watch the clock.
This same old gentleman was greatly loved by all the
congregation. But about 25 years before he had planted a tree
near the church that had grown until it was discoloring the wall
and leaning against the church building. No one would suggest to
the man who had planted the tree that it should be removed. A
neighbor said to me one day, "If that tree were to die, would you
tell who killed it?" I promised not to tell. He bored a hole a few
inches below the soil level and filled it with salt and buttermilk. I
don't know what the buttermilk did but a few weeks later the tree
was dead. The old gentleman lamenting the death of the tree
said, "I guess the new sidewalk killed it." Some wondered why the
stump didn't sprout. But I never told them.
Park Avenue church was located only a few blocks from
downtown Salisbury and only two blocks from the train station.
Many of my members were railroad men. I had to learn a new
vocabulary to be able to talk with them. I quickly learned the
hierarchy of the railroad. The elite were engineers and
conductors. The repair crew of the freight cars and the coaches,
the machinists and the boiler makers were each proud of their
particular craft and would set you right if you classed them in the
wrong craft. There was friction in the home often since the wives
claimed their husbands loved the engines more than their wives
and his families. I heard a wife say, "I was sick and he left me to go
down to the station and polish the brass on the old 4800." This
was the name of the line of engines that was popular at the time.
One man was so obsessed with the railroad that he spent his spare
time walking around the equipment and talking shop. He had
never taken a vacation. One summer, his wife and daughter kept
pressuring him to take them on a trip. He agreed and set the date.
Their destination was to be a secret. He obtained three passes
free, and went from Salisbury to Asheville on the train. They sat
in the railroad station until the afternoon train left for the return
trip. For lunch he bought three hot dogs for 25 That is all they
spent on the entire trip. The wife and daughter refused to speak
to him all the way home. When they got home he said, "Now
you've had your vacation and I don't want to hear no more about
it." For months, I heard about this family vacation.
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I had hardly gotten adjusted to my new responsibilities when
December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I didn't
even know where Pearl Harbor was located. Since the railroads
were very important, military guards were posted all over town.
We did not know how wide spread the attack would be. It was
unnerving to go to bed one night and wake to find soldiers with
submachine guns patrolling your streets. The next few years I
saw 113 young men and women go into some branch of the
military. I wrote letters from the church to them by the hundreds.
I tried to make them personal. I still have some responses that
have won my heart. I wonder sometimes if I didn't get more
benefit from this correspondence than the soldiers did. In 1985, 1
met a man at Lake Junaluska who told me that those letters
sustained his faith while fighting in the South Pacific. They would
write me, "This is a letter from ?????????. Go see if my wife and
children are OK and write me. I wonder if they tell me the truth."
From Holland, "Send me a copy of the Lord's Prayer. I've
forgotten it in this hell." And from another, "Pilot, your prayers
brought our plane back from Germany without gas. I have a piece
of shrapnel from the gas tank that I'm bringing home to you." I
still have that piece of shrapnel. Eight of them did not return.
Trying to ease the pain of the heartbroken families was an
impossible job. But I learned how important the pastor was in the
ultimate crisis of our lives. I did my best to minister to people, and
I may have learned to share their sorrows just a little more.
My close relationship with Catawba College was blessed. I
spoke to the student body quite often. They set aside one
morning each week for a student assembly. The first time I spoke
to the assembly, I picked up a couple of freshman at the bumb
corner in downtown Salisbury and brought them to the college.
They did not know me. They told me they had to get back for the
assembly. I asked them what took place at the assembly and they
said "oh, they make some announcements, and then some "d"
preacher bores us to death for an hour." When I came out on the
platform, I saw these two boys in the front section. I told the story
and brought down the house. I was royally welcomed whenever I
appeared after that.
There was one time when I tried to play psychiatrist. Even
though I had no license, I succeeded. It was a long story dating
back nine years. The central fiure was a woman who objected to
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her youngest daughter getting married. She tried begging the
couple not to marry. When that failed she tried a screaming
tantrum but that failed too. The wedding went off on schedule,
but she collapsed with a fake heart attack and unconscious coma,
which broke up the couple's honeymoon trip. She came out of the
coma, but stayed in bed for nine years. Her husband cared for
her, did the housework with some help from the two daughters,
who now had families of their own. One day her husband died
suddenly. She didn't seem to mind him dying, but it left her in a
bad situation. During the death and funeral of her husband, I
suspected that she was faking an illness to get attention. The two
daughters and the daughter-in-law were driven to distraction
trying to satisfy the old lady. Every time I saw her, she would tell
me that for nine long years she had not put her foot on the floor.
One day I walked up to the front of the house and saw her run
from the kitchen to the bedroom, I sat by the bed and listened to
her array of troubles. They were legion. She said that I had no
idea of the suffering she'd endured. She told me the church had
neglected her and the minister's wife didn't come to see her as
often as the other minister's wives did. I told her that Ida was not
her pastor, and that she had her family to look after. Then I
added "if she never comes to see you again, it is o.k. with me."
Well, the next time I visited, I shocked her again by saying Mrs.
, I know, and you know you are faking this disability. I
know you are running about in this house when no one is
watching. You do whatever you want to do but if you don't get out
of this bed and look after yourself, I am going to tell your family
you are a fake. She said, "You wouldn't dare!", "Yes I would", I
told her. She was furious. I patiently listened to how poor a pastor
I was, how I was a disgrace to the Methodist ministry, how I would
grow old someday and my children and grandchildren would
neglect me. She assured me that I deserved all the wicked things
that would be heaped upon me. When she had exhausted her
vocabulary of vicious things to say, I said "Well, I'll give you two
weeks to get out of this bed. You can take a step at a time, then
two, and then across the room, and save your face. Then you can
care for yourself." If indignation could have killed me, I would
have been dead as I left that house. It was entirely out of character
for me; I was operating by intuition. The following Sunday night
at church one of the daughters came to me and said, "Mr.
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Swofford, there is good news. Mother walked almost across the
room." A few days later she was caring for the house. She was in
good health and lived until she was in her late 80s. Twenty-five
years later one of the daughters said to me, "something happened
between you and mother that was good, would you mind telling
us what it was." They wondered why they never caught on in nine
years.
Then there was Pauline. Pauline was a most unusual person.
She was a tomboy, wore boy's clothing, played boy's games, was
interested in planes and stayed around the airport much of her
time. By the time Pauline was 14, she could tear down and put
back together an airplane as well as an experienced mechanic.
She could fly a plane years before she could get a license to fly. I
performed her wedding ceremony and the people wondered if
she would wear a dress for her wedding. She did. Pauline and her
husband went to the coast of North Carolina to patrol the
coastline. They were not a part of the military, but civilians
helping to spot submarines. She got sick, and the doctor in
Elizabeth City told her she must have her appendix removed
immediately. Pauline left a note for her husband, who was flying,
got on a motorcycle, and rode all night, arriving at the emergency
room about five o'clock, admitted herself to the hospital in
Salisbury, got in touch with a surgeon who removed her
appendix, and then she called me about seven o'clock and asked
me to go tell her mother that she was in town. Ten days later, on a
motorcycle, she was back at the coast, looking for submarines.
If anything funny is likely to happen, it will happen at a
wedding, and if the bride has an old maid aunt to direct the
wedding, it is sure to happen. Several times in my ministry,
weddings were led to the brink of catastrophe because of the
maiden aunt's expertise. In one particular case. World War II
tensions were high and travel was hard. The couple, both
members of our youth department, had reservations on the train
for New Orleans. The wedding was set for seven o'clock. The
temperature was 98° with no air conditioning anywhere. The
wedding was to be in the home. I was called about five o'clock to
the home of the groom. His mother had had a heart attack. The
director of the wedding, an old maid aunt, wanted them to
postpone the ceremony. The couple wanted to go ahead as
planned and the doctor agreed. So they wrangled until 6:45 as to
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whether to proceed. The house was filled with guests, and each
ten minutes a new report came from the house next door as to the
condition of the patient. Finally, the doctor came and acted as a
stabilizing factor. The wedding ceremony went well, considering
the tension. Then we proceeded to the dining room to cut the
cake. The Aunt's voice, almost a scream by then, could be heard
telling everybody where to stand and what to do. When the cake
was cut, the heat was almost unbearable. The Aunt snatched the
knife from the newly weds and sliced into the cake. She did not
know that there was cardboard between the layers and one layer
bounced off, and flopped onto the table. She did not see the
trouble and when the layer was placed back on the cake, she
attacked the cake more vigorously and the entire cake slipped off
of the platter, rolled down the table and landed on the floor in
hundreds of pieces. When I left, the Aunt was shoveling wedding
cake off the floor and urging all to get a piece and eat it. She said it
would bring good luck. If I ever saw a place where a little luck was
needed, it was that wedding on a hot August night.
Girls and their families would come to Salisbury from a
distance, to arrange for a wedding, then the groom would come
from one of the camps to meet them. I participated in many
weddings. I met some delightful people during these ceremonies.
While waiting for a soloist to sing at the wedding of a Marine
Lieutenant, his company gathered just outside the church and
softly sang a popular tune, "Give me Five Minutes More." Many
people whose marriage I performed have kept in contact
through the years.
In 1944, I spent the summer as director of Boy Scout of
Uwharrie Council Camp near High Point. Tom, Jr. was the
bugler for the camp. We went Sunday afternoon and returned
Friday night. We had a camp full of 135 boys each week. I have
never spent a harder summer than that, but it was rewarding in
that we touched the lives of nearly 1,000 boys with the challenge
of clean living.
The war ended and we needed an educational building very
badly. The congregation was growing. The two old buildings we
were using were in poor condition. We tried to get a permit to
build, but new construction was frozen. I asked the fire
department to come and condemn the old building we were
using. They did. We used that fact to get a building permit and
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constructed a building that, for its size, I consider the best church
school building I have ever known.
Betty graduated with honors from high school and entered
Greensboro College in the fall of 1944. She had already spent
three years studying at the Catawba College music department.
We were proud of her accomplishments. She was young for
college, but handled it very well. After four years, she received
her bachelor's degree in Music. She was not yet 20 years old.
Tom, Jr. was doing well in high school. He was very popular with
the girls and working part-time for a book and stationary shop. In
this work, Tom met many well-known people. He was awarded
the Eagle badge in Scouting in the shortest time he could have
obtained it.
During this period of World War II, women began to smoke
cigarettes. They made a great effort to hide it from the minister,
especially. Just as I walked into a hospital room I saw the lady
snatch a cigarette from her mouth and stick it under the bed
covers. I sat down by the bed for a short visit just as the bedspread
caught in flames. I doused the fire with a pitcher of water, but not
before the woman was slightly burned on her side. She was home
and well before the burn healed, but she could never be
comfortable around me as long as I was her pastor. She was
apparently afraid I would tell the story and her neighbors would
know about it. Now it is told.
A prominent member of my congregation told me he was
donating a new organ for the church. No one was ever to know
who the donor was. You are the only one who will ever know. I, of
course, said nothing, but the next Sunday several people told me
in confidence that Mr. was giving a new organ to the
church. Within a week's time two-thirds of the people knew of the
gift. The donor came to me and said, "Somebody has let the secret
out." I was preaching that Sunday on the subject: "Do your good
deeds in secret." He got more mileage out of that organ than most
folks get out of a lifetime of giving.
Another of my flock came to offer me a one-third interest in a
corporation he was about to form. The initial value of the stock
was by his estimate, $50,000.00 We were to market a perpetual
motion machine that would make us millionaires within a few
years. I was flattered since no one had given me this opportunity.
I spoiled it all by asking: "What of the laws of physics concerning
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counter motion?" The old man was irritated. He said college had
ruined me. The study of physics had kept perpetual motion from
blessing the human race. I suppose I'll have to carry the blame for
blocking unlimited power for mankind. I heard nothing more
about the corporation. A few months later I conducted the old
gentleman's funeral. I suppose the dream was buried with him.
40
Chapter
8
.AlFTER five very happy years in Salisbury, we were
appointed to Central Methodist at Mooresville. The leaving of
Salisbury was emotional. It was home to our children, I was
deeply involved in the town, we had a growing church, a
remodeled parsonage, a good people to serve. We were pleased
with our new charge. I knew little of the church or the town. I
knew only I was following an old gentleman who for several years
just marked time until retirement. I found an unorganized
church of 1,000 members. Their methods of operation were out
of date. The budget was low by design. About six or eight old
men, some in this position for thirty years and seemed dedicated
to opposing anything that was younger than 1890. My ministry
had always been a loving relationship with my people. I soon
learned that these officials who controlled the Church considered
the minister the adversary and it was their duty to keep him from
doing anything different from the way "we have done it always
like this." There was a large group of young adults that were
pressing to be heard and noticed. Before I arrived on the scene
they had pushed a resolution through the church conference of a
rotating official board and some of these young leaders were
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coming on the official board. This created tension in the church
that I didn't know how to handle. I had nothing to do with the
changes, but I was new and naturally I was to blame for the "new."
The church buildings were run down, needed repairs almost
everywhere. The parsonage was a 14 room house built in 1892
and probably had been painted twice in the 60 years. It had a bath
on a landing between the first and second floors. The furniture
was about enough for three rooms scattered over 14 rooms. It
looked like an empty house. There was no underpinning to the
house, and when the wind blew, the linoleum on the kitchen floor
would rise and fall with the wind. This is my way of telling you
that we knew we were in for a cold winter. Two young couples,
the Joe Thompsons and the Ed Kipkas did what they could to
make us comfortable, and we will ever had a warm spot in our
hearts for these people.
The day we moved in there were boxes, papers scattered on the
floor, that we had to clean up before we could unload the truck.
We were in the midst of this clean up when the telephone rang.
Tom, Jr. found the telephone under some paper, and answered
it. The caller thinking they had the undertaker asked; "Do you
have Mrs. Johnson's body?" Tom, quick on the answer, "We
haven't run across it yet, but I'm sure it is here somewhere." We
got the floors cleaned and lived in the old house for twelve
months.
The Women's Society had planned to introduce us to the
congregation at a family night dinner. They forgot to tell us until
about an hour before the dinner. We hurriedly dressed, and went
to the reception. We stood in line, and shook hands with what
seemed the population of the town. When we finished with the
receiving and went to eat our dinner, there was nothing left for
us. We got away as quickly as we could, and went to the parsonage
and opened a can of "Beenie Weenies" for our supper. That
reception should have tipped us off to what we could expect, but
we were new and laughed about the clumsy manner. We had
expected them to be more sophisticated and modern in their
approach.
We moved into the winter of 1946-47. 1 was preaching to more
people than I had ever had Sunday after Sunday. The church was
crowded. Often chairs were placed in the aisle and at the back of
the church to accommodate more people. New members were
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coming into the church and for the most part were young
couples. Soldiers of World War II had married and were setting
up their homes, and starting families. They were eager to be
useful. It was a matter of frustration for me that I could not
assimilate them with the stagnant leadership on Palm Sunay in
the afternoon at a special service I baptized 23 infants from these
new families. The people of the community seemed to like my
speeches very much. I spoke to every club in town ranging from
Capping Ceremony of Nurses to commencement sermons. I even
think they organized a new club so I could address them. I held
revival meetings in several nearby churches. It seems now that I
worked as hard that year as any year of my life but much was
outside of my own congregation.
Good Friday there came a couple to my door, and their
appearance was as tramps. They said that they were gypsies and
were camped outside of town. They asked me and I quote "Will
you say a mass for our baby on Easter Sunday afternoon?"
Talking with them I gathered they wanted their child baptized.
We set the hour and forty or fifty gypsies came to our church.
They were very reverent and appreciative of my service. They
said not all ministers would "bless" their babies. After the service I
shook hands with all of the tribe. The father gave me a $1.00 fee.
I told him he didn't owe me anything. He replied: "You always
have to pay for a mass." I took the dollar. These gypsies looked on
me as almost a god, I was very humbled. Some of them even called
me a "Jesus, who blesses babies." I watched them depart in their
rags and go back to their homeless wandering with the knowledge
that for one brief moment they had been doing what God wanted
them to do.
I was very unhappy with the undercurrent of reaction in the
congregation. The new official board employed a Director of
Christian Education and some folk screamed to high heaven that
it was costing too much. They also employed a part-time
Secretary which the church had never had. In mid-year I went to
see the Bishop and told him I wanted to move. He tried to
convince me to continue to try to bring the congregation into the
20th century. Looking back over the years I think I should have
stayed. It is the only time in my ministry that I ran away from a
hard job. I could have been more flexible but I was in no mood to
sit up with some practices that had died yesterday, or try to pump
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life into forms that showed no prospects of making a contribution
to the kingdom. When rumor was around that I might move at
conference the official board raised my salary.
The District Superintendent made no move to place me hoping
I would change my mind at the last minute and agree to return.
As a consequence I was given an interim appointment at Morris
Chapel on the outskirts of Winston-Salem.
44
Chapter
9
IjOCATED in the northeast section of Winston Salem the
Morris Chapel Church was a two-point assignment. Morris
Chapel was a former Methodist Episcopal Church, Mt. Pisgah
was a former Methodist Protestant Church. I was a former
Southern Methodist Minister. Neither one of the churches
wanted to be linked with the other. They did not want to share
their pastor. These problems were minor compared to the
factions in the Morris Chapel congregation. There were three of
these. They wanted the minister to preach to them, and also
referee their battles. The older former Methodist Episcopal
fought against changes that Union had produced. The new
members that had joined the church after Union were for the
most part liberal, energetic and progressive. The "swing" faction
were a group of Pentacostal Fundamentalist who deemed it their
duty to let all the world know how good they were. I know how the
first two came to be, but I've always wondered how these super
self-righteous folk ever got into the church anyway. Fortunately I
had the respect and support of all three groups. One church
offered to raise my salary $1,000.00 if I would stay with
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them. The parsonage was too small for our family, and we moved
on to the next stop.
We lived near the church and one faction of the church used
cheap, paperback song books. The cheap-john type of music that
I would not tolerate, but they had hundreds of books stored in the
furnace room. On Sunday morning when the furnace was hot I
tossed in 30 or 40 books. It took almost all winter to get rid of
those books. When the books were missed they inquired as to
what could have happened to the books. I have never regretted
burning these trashy songbooks. I think the Lord would have
done the same thing I did.
The year 1948 Betty graduated from Greensboro College with
her Bachelor in Music Degree and entered Duke Divinity school
to work on her Masters. Tom, Jr. graduated from high school and
entered as a freshman at Duke. The two churches went their
separate ways, both becoming strong congregations. The old
Methodist Episcopal faction died out, the United Methodist
continued to grow, and the self-righteous group ceased to be a
factor. I'm glad I shared a part of my life there, and I rejoice in
the strength of those churches today.
46
Chapter
10
The opportunity came to move to Greensboro in the fall
of 1948 to Glenwood Avenue Church. It was a strong
congregation in a thriving section of the city. Ida and I moved in
the parsonage without any children. It was the first move with no
children. We were a bit frightened with two in college, but Betty
had a good scholarship, and with some income from her work in
music she was self-supporting. Tom, Jr. worked at different jobs
so we managed very well.
We had a nice parsonage, the best we had had up to this time.
The entire family was thrilled with the new work and living
arrangements. We had a congregation that was what I believed a
church should be, and be doing what a church should be doing.
Before us lay a challenge. A new church was needed and few
funds were on hand to pay for the project.
My first move was to organize an effort in outreach. This
resulted in a large increase in the membership of the church. The
worship at 1 1 a.m. was overflowing and we used the basement for
the overflow crowd. Many singers have requests that they sing. I
was gently, and quietly requested not to sing. The problem I was
standing close to the microphone and the overflow congregation
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Reaching For My Halo
could hear no one but me singing. I cannot imagine a worse fate
than to listen to three or four verses of a hymn that I was
butchering. Those first months were exciting times and the
hands of love and friendship were formed that have not lessened
during the years. When Ida and I think of Greensboro we think
in terms of the Zink family, Jess Richardsons, the Fredricks,
Crawfords and Coltranes. These and many more moved into our
hearts, made the five years spent there the happiest pastorate of
our lives.
One day I met a man who was a leading layman of another
denomination. They were having trouble getting a pastor. He
told me they were going to have an all-night prayer meeting to
heal the rift in the church. He asked me if I would come and
spend an hour with them. I agreed to the request. I asked him to
tell me when, and what I would be expected to do. Weeks went by
and I forgot the entire project. My telephone rang at fifteen
minutes of two in the morning tell me I was to preach from 2 until
3. 1 rolled out of bed, dressed and walked in freezing cold the two
blocks to the church. I was not prepared to preach on anything at
that time of morning. I found 40 or 50 weary-eyed folk there
drinking coffee. After the cups were put aside, I took a text:
"Except your righteousness exceed the Pharisees and Publican ye
cannot enter the Kingdom." I preached a solid hour, and my
usual sermon is only twenty minutes long. The rift healed, they
united behind a new pastor, and years later I was told by one that
was present that "you shook us up so we no longer dared to
quarrel for fear you would come back and preach to us." Oh well!
You do your work wherever you can.
A wedding was schedule to take place in the church. The
couple came to me for permission to have a grandfather perform
the ceremony. He was from Georgia and they said he invited
himself to perform the ceremony. At the rehearsal the man
couldn't get himself together and the kids asked me to help.. The
man resented me helping and said "I didn't drive up here from
Georgia to help anybody in a wedding ceremony." I would gladly
have stood aside but the couple in tears begged me to save the
wedding from being a disaster. The next day the father of the
bride and another of my laymen concocted a scheme to just
before the wedding to take the grandfather to show him the town
and have the car break down and miss the wedding. He was an
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Reaching For My Halo
auto mechanic and he said I can fake a breakdown. I persuaded
them to abandon the old gentleman to me. I eased myself into the
control of the wedding service and left a minor role to the
grandfather. There was no hurt feelings in the family and
Grandpa went back to Georgia despising the young upstart of a
pastor. He never knew how close he escaped kidnapping.
Weddings have a magnetic aspect that attracts the unusual. I
was home alone one day when a long lumber truck stopped in the
front. An overhall clad man climbed out of the cab. He was thin,
about seven feet tall, his clothes hung loose, hardly touching the
body. A girl with him was a short, fat person that would have been
as tall lying down as standing up. Her mother was with them. The
man said to me, "We want a Methodist preacher to marry us." I
invited them into the house to see if everything appeared on the
level. When I would ask the young people a question the
prospective mother-in-law would answer for them. Meanwhile
complaining how they would not listen to her and wait a while. I
supposed the people were sincere and I summoned a couple of
neighbor women to be witnesses.
The Bride and Groom were placed in front of the fireplace, the
mother seated on the couch. I opened my ritual and got two
words spoken, "Dear Beloved" when the mother interrupted to
say, "He ain't got no money to pay for the wedding. He ain't
drawed yet." I didn't understand the "he ain't drawed yet." She
said he hadn't got the money for his load of lumber that he had
brought from the eastern part of the state. I assured her money
was not a requirement for a marriage, however helpful. Then I
asked her to keep quiet until the wedding was over. That was too
much to hope for for when I asked for a ring I told she blurted
out, "He ain't got no ring, I told you he hadn't drawed yet." Some
way we got through the ceremony without further interruptions.
Since I didn't have blank certificates we walked a block to the
church office. I told Rose, my secretary to keep the old lady so I
could have a private conference. She tried but the woman pushed
her aside with "I'm not going to miss any of this, that's why I came
along." The certificate was duly signed, and as a parting shot she
said: "If you will give me an envelope - backed (meaning
self-addressed) I'll see that he puts something in it when he draws
and sends it to you." She was given the envelope but he never drew
as far as I know.
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Reaching For My Halo
Soon after moving to Greensboro I was working real hard to
find the homes of my membership. One afternoon after a bad
afternoon I came home about as tired as I ever got. Ida met me at
the door with an emergency call. One of my flock was near death
and directions wre riot clear as to how I would find the ill lady.
After driving several miles I found her. She met me at the door
with hat on and pocketbook on her arm about to go out to dinner.
I introduced myself as the new pastor of Glenwood. She was
courteous and told me she used to be a member of that church,
but when a new Methodist church, St. Andrews, was built she had
transferred her membership five years before. I said someone
told me you were sick. Well! She said "I've been having some
middle age problems, but nothing serious." I extracted myself
from the situation about as gracefully as a cow would have
crawled through a barbed- wire fence. I learned later not to
depend on what this woman told me. She often called the
parsonage under the idea she was helping the minister. The
minister could easily do without that kind of information.
Then there was Sue, she would call on the telephone and talk,
and talk, and then talk. I often laid the receiver on my desk and
went on with my work, stopping occasionally to grunt or say yes. I
really think there was no organic connection between her tongue
and her brain. I never knew what she was talking about at times.
She would complain about her husband. He was a quiet, humble
man, a very good churchman, but he failed to measure up to her
requirement. He did not pray in public, he could not sing in the
choir, he didn't like Billy Graham, and he resented her sending
money each month to him. I liked the man very much and for five
years we worked together in the church with his carping, wife
nagging at every point. In 1985 I was at Homecoming, one of the
warmest greetings came from Sue. Her husband had been dead
for several years. She told me and I quote, "You greatly
contributed to the happiness of my family, and you made a good
man out of my husband." I'm sure he has been well-rewarded for
his patience.
In Greensboro I had a brief encounter with the TV as a
counselor. It was short-lived because I was overwhelmed with
alcoholics. They seemed to crawl out of the walls and find me
either at home or the office. The choice I should continue the
conventional ministry, or I could try to advise and help alcoholics.
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Reaching For My Halo
There was no way I could do both. The choice was easy, I was
happy being a pastor, and wasn't keen about the sordid tales that
every addict wanted you to hear. I backed off from the
counseling, and even yet I'm known to some people as the pastor
who was a friend to drunks. We did open a chapter of A. A. which
met in the church each Monday evening. I occasionally attended,
but only occasionally. I met a millionaire lawyer on a downtown
street. He embraced me, and asked me had I heard what
happened the night before at the AA meeting. I had not heard.
"They made me chaplain of the damned thing." That could have
helped me to remain in the regular ministry.
During the second or third year at Glenwood we built an
educational building that was sorely needed. We included offices
and a chapel. We made all the mistakes we could make in one
building so that 35 years later they are still trying to fix some of
the results. Then after a year at High Point Betty accepted a job at
Starksville, Mississippi at the First Methodist Church there. Ida
and I made a very pleasant trip down to see her in the springtime.
Tom, Jr. had met Betty Loyd and was much in love with her.
Betty came home after a year and worked at Ardmore Church,
Winston Salem until she and Sterling Turner were married in
Glenwood Church. Tom and Betty Loyd were married Christmas
in Glenwood Church, 1952. Betty and Sterling were married in
September, 1953.
I was president of Greensboro Methodist ministers. The
Greensboro Daily News carried an extract of my Sunday sermon
in Monday's edition. I was closely associated with a Billy Graham
crusade. They seemed to be more eager for the collection, than to
be of service and the permanent results were disappointing.
I was not fifty years old and requested to be assigned to another
pastorate. My preaching had matured, and I believed I had
reached my potential as a pastor.
51
Chapter
11
.^LFTER FIVE years at the Glenwood Church in Greensboro, a
move was anticipated. The Bishop asked me about a district
superintendent's position. He asked would I rather go to
Reedsville or the Marion District. I immediately said Reedsville.
He was thinking more about placing the Marion District man at
Glenwood than he was about my appointment. I heard nothing
more of where I would be stationed until the second day of
conference. I met Jim Byers and E. L. Walker in the basement of
the conference church in High Point, and they told me I was
going to Forest City. It was O.K. with me since I was going back to
my home territory after an absence of nearly forty years. Betty
was in Tennessee where Sterling was serving a church at Johnson
City. Tom and Betty Loyd were in Durham where he was in the
third year of the Divinity School at Duke University. We had
some calls and letters from our Forest City people welcoming us.
So we moved to Forest City on my fiftieth birthday, October 6,
1953. I had good office help and a competent music director.
There was approximately $100,000.00 in the building fund, and
a good lot, one block away on which a new church was to be built.
The architect had been chosen to draw plans, but had not been
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Reaching For My Halo
properly authorized to start sketches and the detail. It was plain
what the move meant for me — another building project. It was
also obvious that the congregation was not organized or united
for an undertaking of this size. So, for the first year, we marked
time, launched a fund-raising effort for $50,000.00. On this note
I began my ministry at Forest City. It was good to be home where
I had relatives and where they called me Hoyle rather than Tom.
It had been the custom for the minister to use the communion
offering to help folk in need. After Communion Sunday, I would
have a flock of panhandlers at the parsonage door. I opened the
door one morning and a woman went into a well-oiled story of
need and distress. At the close of the memorized speech, she
looked up to see a strange man standing there. She said, "You
ain't the one!" She was expecting to see the former pastor. I
believed the money we gave was being used to buy alcohol so I
instituted a new method. I sent them to the store for groceries or
to the cafe for lunch. It cut down the calls for help about 90%.
I was asked to go see a sick woman that I did not know. I
knocked on the door and heard an intimidating voice say, "Come
in." I hesitated, then knocked again. An angry voice said, "Damn
it, can't you turn the door knob." I opened the door. A woman
was in bed in the room. She reached under the pillow and handed
me a dollar bill. With as much anger as she could muster, she told
me, "Take this dollar, or you can take this
furniture and both of you go to hell." I thanked her for the
invitation to go to hell, but as I was a Methodist preacher, I was
not a likely candidate for the trip. She covered her face with the
bed clothing and said, "Oh my God, what have I done now?" She
was supposed to have been a prospective member of my church,
but I never saw the woman again. Do you suppose that she was
offended by my reluctance to go to hell?
One day I walked into the old hospital at Rutherfordton. They
had a four-bed ward for heart patients. A nurse, whom I knew,
met me almost in tears saying, "I want to kill a preacher. There's a
man in the ward preaching to those dying men. Two of them are
unconscious." So, I went in the ward. A large man had laid a big
black Bible on a tray stand. A huge black hat was lying beside it.
The Preacher was exhorting loudly to these men to make their
peace with God for it might be their last chance. I said nothing but
walked over and closed the Bible, handed it and the hat to the
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Reaching For My Halo
preacher and motioned him to the door. He went out and
complained to the receptionist that there was a man in there who
had broken up a Divine Service. I had no authority to do what I
did, except the authority of right. It prevailed at that instance.
The next day I was playing golf with some laymen on the city
golf course. As we approached the fourth hole, I lofted a high ball
that dropped on the green and hit a game rooster on the head,
killing it instantly. Someone told the local paper about it. The
Associated Press picked it up and sent it over the nation's wires
under the heading of "Minister gets a Birdie." I received many
letters from as far away as Oregon and California as a result of the
killing of that rooster.
One cold winter evening with occasional sleet falling, there
were eight or ten boys from Bob Jones College in Greenville,
South Carolina there in Forest City. They had been preaching
that Saturday afternoon on the street and passing out tracts.
About seven o'clock that night with no one around, I found four
of them huddled together in front of Smith's Drugs. I invited
them to the parsonage to get warm before their drive back to
Greenville. They found the others in their party and they all came
into the warm house. While Ida served them cake and ice cream,
they became enthusiastic about helping me. They offered to
come the next day, saying that they would simply take over all of
the preaching, the singing, and teaching of the classes in the
Sunday School. I tried to let them down easy by saying that the
sermons were already prepared and the teachers were ready to
teach. But it took me about a month to convince these
well-meaning boys that their leadership was not needed at the
First Methodist Church.
We had a good building committee. They worked well with the
minister and architect. The congregation united, and the second
year we made a positive move toward the new building. We
presented a plan which the church adopted, voting unanimously
to proceed with the building. This church building had been
needed for twenty-five years. Now it was nearing reality. So, one
hot Sunday afternoon, we held the ground-breaking ceremony.
Then the Beam Construction Company began the construction
of the building. The congregation was elated and thrilled with the
prospects of entering a new era of church life. My experience has
taught me that there are three critical points in the life of a new
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Reaching For My Halo
church building. The first comes in selecting the plan. The
second comes when the walls are up and the roof is on and the
cost is increasing. The tendency is to start cutting corners and
cheapen the entire structure. The third crisis comes when the
building is nearly finished. Suddenly, out of the blue, there will
appear all sorts of experts on how to finish up a building,
including the colors, the kind of pews to be bought, the type of
chairs, the kind of lights in the building, or the type of windows.
Persons who had never built a bird house suddenly acquired the
knowledge of how a half-million dollar building should be
finished. One such instance I'll relate since both of the
participants are gone.
These two people saw the columns in the sanctuary, then called
me in and said, "Take those columns out." I explained that those
steel columns were the roof supports. It would cost a great deal to
eliminate them. "Take them out and I'll pay the cost" one of the
people said. The architect was nearby. I called him and asked how
much it would cost to take the columns out. He got out his slide
rule and figured with it for a few minutes, then said it would cost
between $30,000,000 and $35,000.00. We never heard any more
of that request — the columns are still there.
Another family was giving an organ. A representative of the
family gave me no end of trouble all during the building of the
church. I had no trouble dealing with the family, themselves, but
their representative had no expertise in dealing with the
Methodist church or knowledge of the Methodist practices. She
undertook to brow beat me into allowing her the right to say who
could play the organ, who could use the organ and when it could
be used. She finally threatened to go over my head "to higher
authority." Well, that did it. I called her in the office and told her
that the highest authority in the First Methodist Church was
doing the talking and that the donor was under no obligations to
give an organ, but once given, it was the property of the church
and would be used as the church saw fit. She cried but that didn't
change things. She then told me that I was ungrateful and
stubborn and no one could reason with me. That still didn't
change my decision. I partially agreed with her, but I would not
be brow beaten or shoved about. It was a painful experience for
me, I had to take a hard position which was out of character for
me, but I felt it was necessary to free the gift that would have been
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a constant source of trouble. The members of the building
committee offered to deal with the lady but I chose to take full
responsibility of my actions. That relieved the pressure and I had
no more trouble on this score.
As we approached the time to begin using the new facilities, an
amusing incident took place. One prominent lady of the
congregation assumed that I knew nothing about ritual or how to
use an altar centered pulpit. She came quite often to the office or
the parsonage to bring me pamphlets or books on a liturgical
worship. I led her on a little, I suspect, until she told me one day
that I wasn't concerned enough about learning how to use our
new pulpit. She offered to take me around to some Lutheran and
Episcopal churches to observe how they did it. I told her I had
preached in those churches and would try to do my work with the
knowledge that I had. If I fell on my face, I would absolve her of
any fault. It was months before I felt that she trusted me, but after
I retired, she came to me and apologized for her presumptions.
We ran an ad in the Asheville paper for an organist when we
went into the new church. We had one applicant that gave the
committee lots of fun. He aspired to be a musician without any
training. He said God gave him the talent. He said, "I mastered
the piano in seven days and while I have never played an organ, I
feel sure I can master it in a week's time." He also told us that he
did not read music, but caught on rather quickly when given a
chance. Well, we never gave him a chance, but declined his
services. I asked an insurance man that I knew in Asheville if he
knew George. "Oh yes", he replied, "we pay him $200.00 per
month to be crazy and I think we are getting our money's worth."
The day we entered the new church was a high moment for the
congregation and the pastor. I had worked so hard that I was as
near total exhaustion as I have ever been. Robert Watkins has
pictures of almost every stage of building. Mrs. Virginia Rucker
covered the projects in the paper from the beginning to
completion. The old church with all its memories was difficult for
some older people to leave, but the enthusiasm for the new one
was unbounded. The next day, Ida and I slipped off and went to
Howard Johnson's motel at Asheville and rested for two days.
This was the best recreation I had had in months.
The windows of the church were not complete, but the subjects
were planned. In a few years we had some of the loveliest
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Reaching For My Halo
memorial windows in our part of the state. The church cost a little
less than one-half million dollars when complete. I felt that I had
made a contribution in the planning and the building of it.
The third year in Forest City we bought a little brown house on
108 Owens Street. We had thought for years that we would live in
Shelby when retirement came. We had bought and sold one
house in Shelby and owned a lovely lot in the west end of that city.
We had our house plans, but we really had no deep desire to live
in Shelby. One day, while visiting with Babe Owens, we saw that
they were laying the foundation of a house. I became interested
in that house. Babe sold the house to us for what it cost him. The
total cost, including the seeding of the lawn, was slightly over
$7,200.00. 1 had no money to put down. The Building and Loan
of Rutherfordton said they couldn't loan me more than
$10,000.00 on it. I didn't need that much. Oscar Mooneyham was
anxious for me to retire in Forest City so he loaned me $1,200.00
at no interest, I borrowed $6,000.00 from the Building and Loan,
then rented the house for enough to cover the monthly
payments. For the most part, the people who lived in the house
took care of it. We were especially happy to have Zeb and Helyn
Lowery for seven years. They kept the house in good condition
and Zeb tended the yard as if it were his own. This was the best
financial move I ever made. We greatly appreciate Babe and
Edna Owens' help in getting our retirement home.
While at Forest City, I served as chairman of the Conference
Board of the Ministry. For eight years all the candidates for the
Methodist Ministry came under the supervision of this Board.
There were fifteen others on the board and the fellowship with
these men left a real memory. We had some very difficult
situations to face and complex problems to solve. In the hundreds
of decisions we had to make, I never saw one decided on the basis
of prejudice or caprice.
One case involved a man who we felt lacked the training or
dedication to make the grade. He came before us and attempted
to bowl us over with his competence. He said he could fill any
pulpit in the church. We questioned him on his theology and his
concept of the ministry. He sensed he wasn't doing very well in his
answers and said "if you don't want me, I have at least two Baptist
churches that are clamoring for me as their pastor." A member of
the committee leaned forward and said gently to him, "If the
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Baptist churches need you that badly, it would be unChristian of
us to deny them your services." That remark deflated him
completely and we proceeded in the normal fashion with his
application.
Our two oldest grandchildren, Ann and Avon, were born,
while we lived in Forest City. We were as foolish over these
children as new grandparents could be They stayed with us off
and on as much as their parents would allow. The congregation
was settled in their new building. I was ready to move on to the
next assignment. I developed some health problems and Drs.
Elliot and Becknell tied to find an ulcer but finally decided that it
was fatigue. They tried to help me relax, but I found it very hard
to keep from working fourteen hours a day, seven days per week.
So, Ida packed her Sunday dress, and I my Bible, and we were
ready to move again.
58
Chapter
12
f
The bishop talked with me about my next appointment. I
told him that I had built so many buildings that if I ever got to
heaven, St. Peter would hand me a set of blue prints and tell me to
build my own mansion. But, you guessed it, I was assigned to First
Church at Mt. Holly where there was a church to be relocated and
constructed. The former pastor was a lovable character beloved
by his people. He was also popular with the ministers of the
conference. He had a long pastorate at Mt. Holly and had
prepared the way for me in an excellent manner.
In June, 1957 we moved into a new parsonage with new
furnishings. We had never before had such a convenient and
livable house in all our moves. We were located on a quiet street,
near the business section and also near the church. We were well
received by the people, we had office help that was adequate, and
we had a Duke Divinity student as assistant pastor. The schedule
of preaching was very heavy. Sunday morning I preached at 9:00
and 1 1:00. Sunday School was between the services, and we also
had a well attended evening service. I followed this schedule with
few exceptions for the next four years. The church was packed
for both morning services, and I think I did the best preaching of
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my entire ministry. The music was good, the congregation
harmonious, and the work hard, but rewarding. Here at Mt.
Holly was the first time I could take a day off each week. I did just
that, leaving the assistant pastor to look after matters that came
up while I was out of town.
An amusing incident took place soon after we arrived in Mt.
Holly. The new Presbyterian minister was being honored at a
reception in his church. I along with half of the town was invited.
I had met few people outside of my own congregation. I was
introduced to a man as the new Methodist preacher, but he paid
no attention to the introduction. He hung around me until he
could get to talk with me. He said, "you're new here, aren't you?" I
said that I had been here only a few weeks. He asked me if I had
heard Dr. so-and-so preach? This was his pastor. I told him that I
had not had the privilege as yet. He then proposed to come for
me and take me to hear Dr. so-and-so the next Sunday morning. I
realized then that he had paid no attention to my introduction, so
I casually remarked that when I went to a new town, I usually
attend the Methodist church. That set him afire. "Well, you won't
want to here. The Methodists have a church next door and I hear
they have a new preacher, but he is no doctor. I suppose he is just
the run of the mill preacher." He was getting warmed up to the
subject. He really meant to hijack me into his church when the
Baptist pastor came and said, "How's my Methodist neighbor
pastor tonight?" The man glanced at me and then took off. I
never saw him again that night. I was later teasing my predecessor
about being a run of the mill preacher and with one guess he
named the man who had put his foot in his mouth.
One of the first major problems I encountered in Mt. Holly was
the selection of a building committee. We had about $100,000.00
in cash and a new lot two blocks from the present church, but no
plans had been formulated. Ten competent people were
nominated by the official board and five were to be chosen to be
on the building committee. It was about the time that woman's lib
was being discussed and the title of Miss or Mrs. was being
dropped by some in favor of Ms. I thought at least one woman
should have been on the committee. Two women were on the list
of ten, but one missed by a few votes. The other, a woman who
campaigned hard, came in last. It was all good natured fun and
left no lasting division. One man who was elected turned out to be
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an alcoholic, but we worked around him. He wanted the church
built and contributed heavily to it. He was agreeable to work with
when he was himself. It was a difficult building project. Here we
were confronted not only with a major building, but we were
moving the location of the church from where it had been for 85
years. However, we moved through decision after decision with
good will and harmony. I want to pay a special tribute to J. B.
Thompson who guided us smoothly through the first project,
that of the educational building.
Before it was abolished, the county operated a poor farm, a
county home where homeless or the infirm with no resources
could live. Ma Paley was a resident of what she called the poor
house. She was a notorious woman. She had been in and out of jail
more times than she could remember. She openly admitted that
selling whiskey was her life's work, though she drank up her
profit. At her death, the operator of the farm asked me to come
and do a short service for her. The county health officer, the
operator of the farm, the county sheriff and four prisoners came
out and constituted the only mourners. As we were walking to the
grave, a sudden thunderstorm broke. We stopped in an open
shed for shelter. We were talking of her wasted life and the
tragedy of no friends in death, when lightning struck an oak tree
nearby. The thunder was frightening. The first to speak was the
sheriff who remarked, "Well, Ma got there alright and is raising
cane with the devil already." The prisoners were not happy
carrying this evil woman during an electrical storm, but the storm
passed and we went to the grave that the prisoners had dug. It was
muddy, when they placed the casket on the grave, one of the
prisoners slipped and slid under the casket into the grave. It
scared the young prisoner who screamed for help as the other
prisoners ran. So the doctor, the sheriff and the preacher pulled
the black man out of the grave. He was as white as he will ever be.
We had to persuade the other prisoners to return and fill the
grave. Thus, Ma Paley was buried.
Speaking of lightning, I was called to a home where a son had
been killed in a motorcycle accident. The funeral was in the
home. I did not know the family. The house was packed with
people for the funeral. I got to the front door and an old lady
grabbed me by the arm and said, "What do you know? I've been
struck by lightning three times. Once I was sitting under the
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house and it knocked a pillar out near me. Once when I was
helping my husband load hay in the field, and the last time I was
milking a cow. The lightning knocked the cow down and I spilled
a bucket of milk." I made an effort to go on into the house. When
I was at the casket, the old lady got hold of me again and said,
"What do you know, I've been struck by lightning three times."
She proceeded to repeat all the details. By this time, my interest in
her close call was rapidly declining. I slowly made my way
through the crowd into the bedroom where the mother of the
deceased was. I stooped to talk to her while the old lady almost
climbed up on my back and said, "What do you know, I've been
hit by lightning three times." I tried to speak words of comfort to
a distraught mother while the old woman recounted the three
events for the third time. During the funeral service, I glanced
around and saw she had corned the undertaker and was telling
him something. Then on the way to the cemetery, he told me of a
woman who had been hit by lightning three times. I told him yes,
I had heard something about it.
Our church at Mt. Holly was located only a few feet from the
police station. One winter was very cold with snow on the ground
for weeks. We noticed that the heat was on in the church each
morning. Also, we found cigarette stubs on the floor of the
sanctuary. Someone was sleeping in the church and costing the
church money for heat. I told the chief of police, who happened
to be a member of the church. "I think I know who it is," he said.
The next morning the heat was not on, nor were the cigarette
stubs there. A few days later, I was called to conduct a funeral of a
wino who had been found in the cab of a discarded truck down on
the river. He had frozen to death. I had never seen the man, no
one knew his name, and yet, I felt a sense of responsibility for his
death. I asked myself if I, by speaking about his using the church,
had contributed to his death. I'll not soon forget the agony in my
heart as we buried this unknown man in the Potter's Field.
Our church had a set of bells that played hymns at noon and
five in the afternoon. It could be heard all over the town. They
were especially loud in the cold weather. Someone had misset the
timer. One cold morning about 2:30, the police called me and
asked me to please come down to the church and turn off the
bells. They had aroused the people of the town with a rendition of
He Leadeth Me over and over again. To this day when I hear this
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song, I think of that cold night and my fumbling to fmd the keys
to the central cabinet to stop the music so Mt. Holly could go back
to sleep.
We had an excellent Boy Scout program in our church. During
Boy Scout Week one February, six of these boys were camping
out on the church lawn to prove that they were rugged men.
Saturday night, it turned bitter cold. Sleet and snow was falling. I
became concerned that we would have some boys frozen or their
health would be endangered so I went out to the camp about
11:00. The tents were closed up and I noticed an electric line
from the church to the tents. The boys were cozy and warm under
electric blankets. They were living up to their motto "Be
Prepared."
The winter of 1958 I was invited to Cuba for an evangelistic two
weeks. One hundred twenty men were invited from the U.S. We
flew from Miami. The plane carrying my party landed in Ogines
Province about forty miles from Victoria De Las Tunas where 1
was to be stationed. I stayed at the parsonage with another
minister from North Carolina. The pastor was a young Cuban
woman whose mother lived with her. There were about
twenty-five members of the Methodist church there at the
parsonage to welcome us. It was after 6 o'clock as we got in. While
we were eating supper, I was told that I was expected to preach at
the 7 o'clock service that night. This was Friday. I had thought
that I would preach Sunday morning. We walked a block with the
welcoming committee to fmd the church overflowing with
people. 1 had never spoken through an interpreter before, and I
knew only two words in Spanish — oui and gracias. I had been
warned by the pastor that there would probably be government
soldiers at the service to see that no anti-government ideas were
promoted. The Castro Revolution was in full swing, but 1 was not
prepared to fmd four uniformed soldiers with submachine guns,
two waiting inside the church and the other two on the steps. The
two inside the church stood silently against the back wall and
made no disturbance, but it had a chilling effect on the
congregation. 1 never worked as hard in my life as I did in Cuba.
For ten days, I preached to large groups of people two and three
times a day. I preached on street corners, in abandoned
buildings, in sugar mills, in sugar cane fields, on store porches as
well as in churches. I bought a plot of land in a sugar cane mill and
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the converts formed a unit of the Methodist church. I later
learned that they had built a church there. The government
controlled the countryside during the day while Castro's united
forces controlled it by night. There were few clashes during my
stay there. Each side didn't dare to attack the other.
One night I was preaching from a little store front to about 100
people. Just as I began my sermon, 200 uniformed Castro
soldiers came out of the cane and gathered around for the
service. They carried their submachine guns. At the closing of my
sermon an invitation was given to accept Christ as a Saviour. We
used the edge of the porch as an altar. Twenty-five or thirty
people came forward including a dozen of these soldiers who laid
their guns on the porch and knelt in confession of their faith.
After the benediction I got separated from my translator. The
200 soliders came to shake my hand. They understood no
English; I understood no Spanish so for about 20 minutes I shook
hands, was hugged, patted on shoulder, and smiled at. All I could
do was smile back and say gracias.
The next night I was to preach at the church and at a Sunday
School outpost in the cane fields. The service was over at the
church about 8:00. We hurried out eight miles to the outpost.
The little room was packed with people crowded around the door
and another oepning in the wall in the corner. They made room
for me and the interpreter. While I preached, Castro's soldiers
were setting fire to cane fields all around us. When the service was
over we were ringed by fire and had to be guided a safe way back
to town. When the invitation was given, it seemed the entire
congregation wanted to join the Methodist church that night. I
was hours into the night relaxing after the two glorious services
and seeing how the gospel was not affected, even in the midst of
war. My second Sunday in Cuba I preached seven times to seven
congregations and had converts at all seven. I could not have
sustained that level of labor for many more days. We flew home
Monday evening and I rested for a whole week.
Contracts were let for the new church. The groundbreaking
ceremonies were over. Ida and I decided to find a mountain
retreat and take the doctor's advice to do manual labor at least
once each week. We had no real estate except our house at Forest
City and it was rented. So, one day each week we would head for
the mountains seeking a secluded place to build a modest cottage.
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We were not too particular about where to build, but we wanted
seclusion. What we found was either not for sale or the price was
prohibitive. It was simply more than we wanted to pay. One
Monday we stopped in Gerton, North Carolina and were told that
a Mr. Carrier had some land for sale. We visited him and told him
what we wanted. He asked, "do you want to build a house on it?".
I told him yes. He then said "let's walk out to Rockbriar Road and
you can pick out what you want, and I'll give you a deed for it."
Well, we walked out the road which lay on the south side of
Rattlesnake Knob. We selected a spot that we liked and insisted
on buying it. He said that the only string attached to it was that we
build on the lot. We had never seen Mr. Carrier before and he
knew nothing about us. I was very hesitant about accepting any
land as a gift from him. We went home thrilled with our fmd, but
wary of the obligations acceptance of the gift might entail. Before
the week was over Mr. Carrier's son called me from Charlotte and
told me not to hestitate to take the land. "If Dad gives it to you by
all means take it, because he has never given anything away." To
shorten the story, in January of 1959 we took a deed of the lot and
recorded it located on Rattlesnake Knob. The people in the
village of Gerton were very curious as to how we got a lot in the
middle of a 1,000 acre tract from Mr. Carrier, since he was a
difficult man to deal with. We found it a delight to know and be
with Mr. Carrier, and after his death, his daughter. It was a
pleasant relationship.
During the remaining part of the winter we collected material
for the house. We got a simple house plan from a young architect
consisting of two bedrooms, a living and dining area and a large
outside patio. When spring came we were ready to start building.
Tuesdays was my day off. Ida and I would drive to Bear Wallow
and work on the house. In the afternoon, exhausted, we would
return home. Some of the grandchildren named it the "mountain
house". It was a family affair; we all worked toward building it.
Tom, Jr. was the first to spend the night there. It was only a shell
of a house for many months as we had little time to work and no
pressure to finish. Ida and I dug septic tanks and drain lines, did
plumbing and electrical work, laid flooring, put up ceiling and so
forth. For several years, it was the gathering place for our family.
We all have rich memories of the "mountain house", especially
the grandchildren who did a lot of growing up there on that
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rough mountainside. After I retired, I no longer needed to hide
away and the house was sold. The grandchildren have not
forgiven me for selling the place and I confess that at times I have
a longing for the solitude and rest we knew there.
The mountain house story would not be complete without a
word about Furman and his ox. Furman was a young man about
30 years of age when we first met him. He literally lived in the
woods with Dan, his ox. His was a simple mind; he had never been
to school and had grown up on the vast acreage surrounding
Rattlesnake Knob. When the house where he was born burned
down, he simply went into the woods to live. He would accept
charity from no one. The community got together and built him a
two-room block house but he would not use it. He mowed lawns
for summer people down in the village and occasionally
ploughed gardens to get money to buy oatmeal and "maders"
which were his principle food. He offended no one, and he would
tell you that he was a good boy. He broke his leg in the woods once
and crawled three-quarters of a mile to get help, dragging his
broken leg. His brother took him to his home, but two days later
Furman slipped off and went back in the woods to look after his
ox. He stayed on crutches until he could walk again on his leg. He
told me one day that he would spend his old age at the state
hospital where his mother had died. The last I heard of Furman
was in Winter when he was sleeping under a porch of an old
house. The temperature was 5° below zero.
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/
Chapter
13
In 1961 1 grew restless and wanted to move on. The educational
building was almost ready for use and I wanted the new minister
to have the joy of these new facilities. I requested a move to the
mountains since I had never served in a mountain district. So,
when the assignments were made, I was sent to Main Street
Church in High Point. It was a downtown church of about 1,000
members with no building projects. Tom, Jr. was pastor of St.
Johns in nearby Greensboro, and it was a joy to be near he and his
family. The former pastor informed me that he would be out of
the parsonage by 8 o'clock in the morning on moving day. We got
there about noon. He was not packed and had decided to remain
another day. Well, there we were with our belongings and no
where to go, so we left our property on the truck and drove over
the Greensboro to our friends, the Richardsons, and spent the
night. We delayed going back the next morning to give the pastor
time to vacate the parsonage. But when we got back toHigh Point
about noon, they had made no effort to start packing. The fact of
the matter is that the preacher did not want to leave High Point
though the congregation wanted him to go.
While waiting for the parsonage to be emptied, we went to the
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hospital to call on some very sick people. Ida sat in the waiting
room while I made my calls. The temperature outside was about
100 degrees. My temperature was rising as well because of
frustration. A nurse came to Ida and told her she would admit
her to the hospital in a few minutes. The second time the nurse
came with a wheel chair to admit Ida, she was almost willing to go.
We finally got to move into the lovely parsonage about 5 o'clock in
the afternoon. Then we learned that the former pastor had
wanted a going away reception. When he found that they were
giving a welcoming reception for us the night before, he did not
inform us and turned it into a reception for himself. The folks
who arranged the reception were angry at the former pastor, but
it made our welcome more cordial. The next week, when the
Main Street people turned out to welcome us, they went all out.
The fellowship hall was crowded with people milling around,
talking and getting acquainted. Ida was a beautiful woman to be
the grandmother of six. Everyone talked about how youthful she
looked. I casually remarked that my children were my first wife's
children. This was true, but Ida came to me in a few minutes and
said, "you've got to fix something. The folks think I'm your
second wife." Then gossip spread across the room of 200 people
within 5 minutes. The correction also traveled fast, so no damage
was done by my wisecrack.
I was in my mid-fifties by now and thought nothing could shock
me, but I was mistaken. The hospital social director called me one
morning to ask me to see a lady whose baby had died. She said
they had no pastor and the father of the child had requested a
minister be called. I visitied with the father and did what I could
to comfort him. Then went to see the mother. She was sitting up
in bed smoking a cigarette. I expressed my sympathy over the loss
of the baby. She cut me off short with "no need to waste your
sympathy here, I didn't want the damn brat anyway. It was my
husband's idea." I left as quickly as possible and returned to the
husband who was genuinely grieved and was reacting as a decent
human being would.
Speaking of surprises, I was called soon after moving to High
Point by a lady who wanted me to call at 2 o'clock that afternoon
for a conference. The manner in which the conference was
arranged caused a warning bell to go off in my mind. So, I asked
Ida to go along with me. I scarcely knew the woman. When she
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opened the door and saw Ida was with me, her shocked
expression gave us laughs for twenty years. She was dressed in the
flimsiest negligee possible and she had forgotten what she wanted
to discuss with me. I was her pastor for four years and that was the
only time she wanted to have a counseling session with me.
Early in my ministry in High Point we became friends with
Frank and Kathleen Alman. We spent many hours together.
They owned a house at Chigger Lake where we spent much time.
We used the house for church outings, and small parties. We
made trips to beaches together and also to Florida and the
mountain house. When we think of High Point years, only one
unpleasant thing comes to mind; Frank died soon after we left
High Point and I lost the best of all friends.
I had served some heavy pastorates and at High Point I began
having trouble with my heart. I had brief periods in the hospital
and was advised to slow down my activity. Over a thirty year span,
I had often preached revivals in other churches as well as my own.
Frankly, I liked to preach and it was never a burden to me. I also
enjoyed the fellowship of neighbor pastors and their Methodist
people, but I began to decline invitations for revival meetings.
While in High Point, I was a guest in the home of a family that
had a five year old boy who had been told to be on his good
behavior, because the preacher was coming. When I was left
alone with the boy he asked, "Are you a preacher?" I agreed that I
was. "Well, you don't look like a preacher to me." I never knew
just what a preacher looked like, but he put the clincher on it with
this. "If you're a preacher, preach something to show me that you
are a real preacher."
After four years conference time came and I had an
incompetent district superintendent who played a secretive game
about where I was going. We were at Lake Junaluska when I
was told Green Street at Winston-Salem would be my next
assignment. It was a good place and a fine congregation to serve,
but, it was in the inner city. They needed a more vigorous man for
a pastor. I was sent anyway. We moved to Winston Salem for a
second time. The primary duties I had were preaching and
pastoral visitation. The membership scattered across the entire
city. Getting to know my people was an exhausting period. I was a
regular visitor to the Baptist Hospital for treatment of esophagus
trouble. In the middle of my second year at Winston-Salem, the
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doctor who had seen me for several months told be bluntly,
"you'd better retire." He said, "you have run too far, too fast, and
you have about six months to live if you go on in your present rate
of activity." This stunned me. Then he added, "if you retire now
at conference, you may live a year or two." I did not want to retire
as I loved what I was doing. November and December, 1966 were
months of decision. Christmastime came and we decided to
follow the advice of the doctor. The house at Forest City had no
mortgage on it. So we bought our furniture in High Point and
stored it until June. Then, with heavy hearts one cold, foggy day
in January, Ida and I drove to Forest City to meet Jimmy Stamey
who would remodel our house. We drove up to the street in front
of the house just as the city crew was placing a sign on the street
that said, "Dead End". We sat in the car and had a good laugh at
the sign. At that time, we thought it was "The End" of the road for
us, and the sign "Dead End" was very fitting.
After a series of farewell parties we moved into our house in
Forest City in June of 1967. The Bob McDuffies helped us
complete our house furnishing. This was the first home that had
belonged to us. The fact that we could no longer call a parsonage
committee when things broke down was a new situation for us.
I have included some bizarre events in this chapter, and some
oddities in former chapters. It would be a mistake to close this
walk through the years without some mention of the people who
have made our lives happy, and we hope useful. I'm sure I'll omit
some and to those, I offer my sincere apology. These are just
some of the folks who came to my mind as I wrote. During my
first pastorate in Caldwell County, I came to know two families
whose contribution to the church and to my life cannot be
measured; Everette Clay and his family and the George Tuttle
family have for years been the strength of Littlejohn's Church.
They have given ministers, one missionary and a large number of
consecrated laymen and women to the church. The two men
mentioned were great supporters of me as I, fresh out of college
with no experience, tried to be a Methodist Preacher. Looking
back I feel that these men were placed to be of most value to me.
Twenty years later it was my privilege to know Bill Zink and his
family. For almost a century the Zink family had been deep in the
Glenwood Church. Their vision of what the church should be
and the willingness to make the sacrifices needed to achieve the
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purposes stand out in my mind. Bill and Helen opened their
hearts to us. We were welcomed into their home with warmth.
Their Christian fellowship was rich and enduring. Their
nephews and nieces, and sister Lena continued to serve with
distinction. While I was pastor of Glenwood I had the best
treasurer, the most cooperative choir director, organist, and the
most competent secretary, all members of this illustrious family.
Through the bitter years of the depression in the 30's a
gracious lady comes to mind, Mrs. Marshal Dillon of Gastonia.
Her services to the Smyre Church and to the community she had
no equal. She used her resources not for display, but to humbly
help the people who were struggling through the Great
Depression. She distributed used clothing and provided lunches
for some children who would have gone hungry without her
help. She planned a trip for mothers each summer. These
mothers would not have been able to get away even for a day. One
year, a week in the mountain, the next year, a week at the beach
were all planned and arranged by this lady, in addition to helping
raise funds for the outings. She often kept a child to relieve an
overworked mother so she could go out and shop or just get away
from the pressure. I was simply a spectator to her labors, but she
qualified for my top rank in labors of love.
I could write volumes of lay people who have influence my life.
There was Charlie Campbell, Gilbert Miller, Agnes Kirk, Gladys
Kimbrell, Joe Thompson, Fielding Kerns, Viola Brigman, Bert
Shooping, Carolyn Westmoreland, J. B. Thompson, Bill Elliott,
Fannie McKinney, and Rose Lawrence. These and many more,
but these come to mind as I think of the excellence observed. The
virtue of giving all of their talent to God and his church are
exemplified in these.
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Chapter
14
.AlS many experiences as I've had, it would be strange if there
were not instances that could not be classified. So in this chapter I
propose to relate some of those incidents. This is not to say that
they were leftovers or bad experiences, but simply that they were
unusual, no blame attached, no harm intended to anyone. It's just
the way it was.
I begin by recording my worst failure, the most humiliating
experience that I ever had. I had been a pastor for only a month
and an old gentleman sent word that he wanted me "to get him
ready to die." He was 84 years old, and never been to church in his
lifetime and had never been more than six miles from his
birthplace. He could not read; he knew nothing of the world but
the few acres of his mountain farm. He never married and had no
family. When I called that afternoon he told me that he was old
enough to die. "I want you to do whatever it takes to get me
prepared," he said. He seemed to think I had the power to baptize
him or give him some secret word that would get him to heaven.
He put additional pressure on me by saying he would do anything
I said to do in order to become a Christian. That was a major
responsibility. He could not understand my language; he did not
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know what I was talking about. When I used the word love at one
point he asked me if Jesus was one of the presidents and assured
me that he had always voted the straight Democrat ticket that
someone had marked for him. After three hours of talk, prayer
and sweat, I was convinced that I could not break through to his
mind. The basic elements of our faith were wasted upon him.
With a heavy heart I prepared to leave. I had a preaching
engagement that night. He asked me what I charged for three
hours' work. He said a preacher must be paid and handed me 60^
and "your time ought to be worth 20^ per hour," he said. Rather
than offend the old gentleman, I took the 60^. I kept the fee for a
long time as a reminder of a colossal failure. It was reported to me
later that the old gentleman had said "I'm ready to die. That
young preacher at Olivett fixed me up with good directions." I do
not judge. He is in the hands of a compassionate Lord whose
property is always to have mercy.
In the fall of 1928 I was given a battery radio by Esley
McGinnis. We were living about 7 miles out of Lenoir in open
country, and there were no radios in that community. I strung a
wire antenna from the house to a pine tree in the yard. At night I
could get KDKA station from Pittsburgh and WLW in Cincinnati.
A member of my congregation at Littlejohn Church asked me if I
would show him "that thing you have that talks." One Sunday
night after service he came home with me to see my radio. I
turned on a few knobs and got some whistles and squeaks, then
turned some more and got a band playing dance music in
Pittsburgh. The visitor listened to the speaker that sat on the
mantle, came over, cautiously looked in the box and said,
"Preacher, you can't fool me, where's the record." I assured him
that the music was coming from Pittsburgh without the use of
wires or records. He didn't believe me and went away that night
convinced that I had a record concealed in a box hooked up to an
automobile battery. It was hard for one who knew nothing of
electricity, not even home lights, nor anything of the telephone to
conceive of music coming through space with no wires. Soon
there were radio sets that operated on house current and had no
need of major outside aerials. The selling of radios became a big
business. By 1930 almost every home had a radio and
personalities had a wide following: Milton Berle, Arther
Godfrey, Will Rogers, Kate Smith, Amos &: Andy, and Major
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Bowes all became households names, to say nothing of the
various music groups such as Benny Goodman and Guy
Lombardo. The 1930's were the years of good music, Oklahoma
and Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin were very popular due to the
new radio. This was the first time in history that the average
citizens could hear and enjoy all types of music and all types of
musical instruments.
Other experiences I had during the 30's convinced me that a
labor dispute throws out for public view the very dregs of human
greed and depravity. A communistic group descended on
Gastonia in 1929. I got my first-hand knowledge of the group.
There was a strike, the police chief was killed, a woman striker
was ambushed and many went to jail losing their self-respect and
dividing the community for years. In May, 1934 a strike was in
progress in Paw Creek. Tension was high, some people were
getting hungry and my church was in the doghouse with the
union because we had a Sunday School teacher who was a
supervisor and we did not fire him. The person I am about to
describe was unknown to me. He showed up at the parsonage
with a small sack filled with money. He said things were getting
out of hand and he wanted me to keep his money until the strike
was over. He was one of the strikers. I agreed to take it to a bank
and asked him how much he had. He didn't know, but it was an
inheritance from his father's farm. He didn't know me so I asked
why he was leaving the money with me. He told me, and I quote,
"my Daddy told me I could always trust a Methodist preacher."
With that he left the bag of money lying on the floor and hurried
out. He was afraid that someone would see him talking to me.
When the tellers at the old Independent Trust Company counted
the money, it totalled $17,218.12. This was a sizable fortune in
those depression days. I had to make inquiries as to the man's
name. After the strike was over, no one came for the money. I saw
the man often on the street but he said nothing about his money.
After about six months I told him to come and get it. I took him to
the bank and closed the account. He put the cash in a cloth bag,
thanked me for keeping it for him and disappeared. I haven't
seen him since.
Someone called me to tell me that a woman, the mother of six
small children, had died just a short while before. It was about
daylight. I dressed and drove down to the house. I found the
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husband outside sitting on a pile of wood whittling on a stick. He
didn't seem too grief-stricken when I expressed my sympathy. He
simply said, "Yes, it's bad for her, but I would rather it was her
than me." He went on to tell me that he had just planted a large
crop, and if he had died the crop would have been a total waste.
He did express one regret of his wife's death. He said that he had
counted on his wife's help to cultivate the large crop. If he had
known she would die, he would have planted less acres. He
certainly earned the oddball classification.
A well known lady called Miss Tina lived in a two-story, frame
house that was filled with valuable antique furniture. She was
deathly afraid of fire. She was afraid her house would burn and
all the antiques would be destroyed. One morning she smelled
smoke and called the Charlotte Fire Department. She ran out of
her house screaming for help. Some neighbors rushed in to carry
the furniture out into the yard. Miss Tina, hysterical, dashed into
the house to get some papers. After some minutes she ran out of
the house carrying a fly swatter, crossed the busy highway,
climbed a bank and carefully laid the fly swatter on the railroad
track. There was no fire however, and after the fire trucks left, we
carried the furniture back into the house. I remembered the fly
swatter and rescued it just before a freight train came along. This
whole episode gave the neighbors thirty minutes of excitement
and the furniture a trip to the yard and back.
During the tense period of the World War H there was a lady, a
faithful worker in the church, whose only son was convicted of a
crime and went to the state prison. She was a widow, fifty-four
years old and this was her only child. He had been a problem child
and this last episode broke her heart. She lost her will to live. The
church members were very supportive of her in her trouble. She
wanted to die, and talked with me about suicide, but was afraid of
what pain it would entail. She went to bed and did not get up. The
doctor said there was nothing wrong with her physically. He and I
worked every avenue to give her an incentive to live. She was
taken to the hospital but she told the nurses she was going to die.
She told others and went so far as to tell them what they could
have of her personal things and house furnishings. Dr. Stroup
and I were with her when she died. We were urging her up to the
end to fight for life but she would only smile and say "it's best to
get out of this tragic world." The doctor and I waited until the
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mortician came for the body. As he rolled the stretcher out the
door the doctor said to me, "Preacher, when you conduct this
woman's funeral, don't say the Lord gave and the Lord taketh
away, the Lord didn't take her, she died on him."
In the Glenwood Church we had a strong Woman's Society that
annually contributed a $1,000.00 or $1,200.00 to the conference
missions. At the end of a year nothing had reached the
conference treasurer. The lady who was the local treasurer could
give no clear picture of what happened to the money. The
President of the organization and I went to see her. She told us
how proud she was of her daughter who had won the beauty
pageant and was Miss North Carolina. We knew the girl who was
a lovely person, but that was not our interest. She told several
conflicting stories of what had happened to the money. It was
obvious that she had used the mission money for clothing for her
daughter's beauty pageants. Now she could not replace it. The
money was never recovered. The same lady sought the
treasurer's position in the local PTA but we were able to get
someone else to take her job.
I'm about to relate a human interest story that I've watched
unfold for sixty years. It began for me on muddy bank near the
parsonage. A thirteen-year old boy was on the bank digging his
bare heels in the soil and crying. I knew him as a member of my
Scout Troop. I inquired as to his trouble and he told me that his
father had told him he would have to quit school and enter the
cotton mill on his fourteenth birthday. In those days, fourteen
year olds could work in the mill. He said that he wanted to get an
education and be something other than a "linthead". I nvent to the
father and urged him to encourage the lad. The father said every
person ought to pay for their upbringing and children now were
of no profit to their parents. That boy should to go to work to pay
for his raising. On his fourteenth birthday the boy supposedly left
home, and ran away. The father said good riddance, he was of no
value anyway. What the boy had done was simply to move his
personal things into my basement and to sleep nights in a pup
tent in the woods behind of the parsonage. He would sneak home
while his father was at work and his mother, who was supportive,
prepared his food for him. He completed the school term in this
manner. He spent the summer in the Boy Scout Camp. That fall
he entered high school at a self-help mission school in the
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Reaching For My Halo
Appalachian Mountains. I visited him one day and discovered
that the boy had some shirts and pants but was working outdoors
without a sweater or underwear. A sister sent him some
underwear and someone else sent him a coat and a $5.00 bill. He
did his high school work in three years, transferred to a self-help
junior college and then to a four-year college in the north. It took
him five years to get a degree. Then he hung in there and got a
master's degree. He is now retired from one of the major
universities of our land after a distinguished tenure as a professor
and on the side, wrote several plays that won him wisespread
honors.
77
Chapter
15
When dr. ASHLAND of the Bowman Gray School of
Medicine told me that I should retire; it came as a shock. He
suggested that I had only six months to live if I continued to work.
I was completely worn out. Perhaps if I could rest completely I
could live a couple of more years. I had planned to serve two
more years at Green Street and retire at the age of 65. The next
month was a month of decisions. Ida and I held many sessions
discussing our finances, our health, remodeling our house and
purchasing additional furniture. So in the early days of January
we agreed that it would be unwise to try to continue. For 40^2
years I had received appointments at the sessions of the Western
North Carolina Conference. It was hard to visualize a life without
a job, a church, people to serve, or programs to plan. The choice
as to where we would live had been made when we bought the
house at 108 Owens Street, Forest City, NC. We didn't know that
we were making a decision then when we bought the house in
1956. We had a lot in West Shelby secured years before that we
expected to be our retirement home. Now I was tired and had no
desire to go into building a house. We made some additions to the
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Reaching For My Halo
108 Owens Street so we could have a place to go when conference
came in June.
One of the bright spots of the winter months of 1967 was the
warm welcome extended to us by many people in Forest City
when it became known that we were coming back to the city.
Especially our neighbors who opened their arms in welcome and
assisted us in many ways to get ready to move into our house. My
brother Bill and his wife Lallage went all out to help us by
providing lodging, food and labor as the remodeling of the house
progressed. We had the house ready and began placing furniture
in it the week following Easter, March 27, 1967. The congrega-
tion of Green Street observed our retirement with parties,
dinners and a substantial retirement gift. So the third Sunday in
June I closed my pastorate there at Green Street feeling that it
was the fmal word of my being a Methodist minister. We drove to
the mountain house at Gerton for a few days rest before we took
up residence at Forest City. We had eaten something that day that
poisoned us and we were very sick all night long. Ida was
hospitalized Monday morning in the Bat Cave Hospital. I called
Tom's wife and she called our daughter Betty. The Turners came
and nursed us through the week. This was a close shave with
death during our first week of retirement.
One of the more amusing things that happened when I
announced my retirement was the invitation to Tom, Jr. and
Sterling Turner, my son-in-law, to get what they wanted out of
my sermon files. Each were preachers in their own right and each
could take a sermon of mine, tear it to pieces, perhaps add an
illustration or two and make it much better. Sterling was a better
organizer of the material than I was. Tom, Jr. was adept at
clearing up my involved language. I thought then that I would do
no more preaching. They took about half of my original sermons.
That was nineteen years ago. I have preached more in these
nineteen years than in any previous nineteen years of my
ministry. Many times I have longed for some of those sermons.
They did not help the young preachers, but they helped me by
forcing me to make new sermons rather than to use the old as
reruns.
I suppose everyone that has a busy life dreads retirement. They
ask questions about boredom or finances or doubts as to their
health. I had all of these. My social security was $186.00 per
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Reaching For My Halo
month and my church pension was $184.00 per month. This
proved adequate. In fact we began to lay aside funds for later
trips that we had long planned. I cannot really say that I ever had
to bother with boredom. Never have I engaged in activities that
seemed dull or unexciting. The summer I retired was no
exception. I accepted preaching engagements all over the
conference. I filled in for other ministers or attended special
occasions such as homecoming and so forth. I had only two
Sundays where I did not preach from June until November. The
freedom from administrative duties did wonders for my health.
By the end of the year I was rested and enjoying living in our own
home, so much so that I would not consider taking an
appointment that would call for another move. Most couples
make an effort to live in their own house very early in their
married life. Ida and I never needed a house. The parsonages
belonged to the churches and were for the most part well
furnished. We lived in some lovely homes. They were better than
we could have afforded, yet we longed for a house that belonged
to us. The house on the mountain was never been intended as a
permanent home, only a place of quiet rest and retreat. Now we
had our own place. No one can know how pleased we were. It was
an emotional thing with us.
This was our state of mind as the year 1968 was about to begin.
A friend of mine who was pastor at Polkville and Rehobeth
churches died. I was called to fill in until a new pastor could be
found. I had served these two churches in 1938-41 and knew the
people. A few weeks later, the Bishop telephoned and asked me
to take these churches and serve them until conference. I was not
reluctant to fill in since they were nearby and I was acquainted
with the congregations. But this is how I got into a new career of
taking appointments until conference. The calls that came to me
were all within easy driving distance of home. They were short
pastorates in length, Polkville was seven months, Saluda was
three months for three summers, Henrietta and Providence were
five months. In Wesley Parish I served a year as third minister on
the parish. I served Tanner's Grove Grove and Kisler's Chapel
for three months. Old Fort for five months, Weaverville for six
months and then again to Old Fort for six months. I was third
minister on Ashbury Parish and finally, co-pastor of the Mt.
Hebron charge. When conference came, I was delighted to turn
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Reaching For My Halo
over the churches to the new pastor and go back to my routine of
study and walking. My experience as an interim pastor was one of
pure joy. It gave me an opportunity to serve my church. It also
gave me an opportunity to know hundreds of fine people that I
would never have known, not the least of these benefits, of
course, was a pulpit from which to preach.
With Frank and Melba Rice, Ida and I left North Carolina for a
trip to the west coast in September, 1969. We were gone
twenty-two days. We drove a little more than 7,000 miles. None of
the four of us had been farther west than Kansas City. The
scenery was lovely and Yellowstone Park captured our imagina-
tion and affection. We could have stayed there a long time. We
went on to Salt Lake City, then across the desert to Reno where we
were shocked to see the wide open gambling. When we came to
Sacramento, California, we felt we were in the far west. We
toured San Francisco; it was the period when the hippies were
flourishing. After the sights of San Francisco, we started south
and spent three days getting to Los Angeles where we spent a
week-end. From California we came to Las Vegas and the Grand
Canyon. We stopped one night at each of those places, then we
came on home. Before we left Forest City on our trip west, Dr.
Elliot had given Ida $2 to play the slot machines in Las Vegas for
him. He said he knew the preacher wouldn't do any gambling.
We teased Ida about being a gambler all along the way. When we
got to a casino in Las Vegas, she put a nickel of Dr. Elliot's money
in a machine and pulled the handle. Buzzers started ringing. We
didn't know what was happening. It turned out that she had hit
the jackpot of that particular machine and she had $10 in nickels
on her hands. The gambling was over for the trip and Ida was
loaded with 200 nickels in her purse all the way home. When we
got home and tried to give them to the doctor, he refused to take
them saying, "it's tainted money." Later Ida and Mrs. Elliot
divided the nickels.
In the fall of 1972, with James and Norma Kiser we went west
again. The Risers were among our oldest friends and they made
wonderful traveling companions. We planned to follow the route
of Lewis and Clark in their exploration of the northwest. We
came to the Missouri River at Sioux City and then traveled north
to South Dakota, Black Hills, Deadwood, Little Big Horn where
Custer lost his life, then to Yellowstone Park for an overnight visit
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Reaching For My Halo
and north to the state of Washington. We came down the
Columbia River to its entrance into the ocean. We visited Ft.
Clatsop where Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1805. We
didn't have an Indian woman Sacagawie, but that didn't hinder us
from seeing a marvelous section of our nation. This trip enriched
our knowledge of the history of the northwest. We moved fast as
if our motto was "if you've driven by it you've seen it." We came
back by Salt Lake City. After a short delay by a snowstorm in
Wyoming, we arrived home. Later we took a ten day trip to New
England and some of the eastern provinces of Canada with the
Risers. The focus point of the trip was the city of Quebec. A later
trip with Jess and Lucille Richardson to New Orleans was
interrupted by the death of a brother-in-law. We also went with
them to central Texas for ten days.
Ida and I closed our travels with a trip to the midwest. We went
as far north as North Dakota. We visited some cities such as
Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Chicago. This was a very
pleasant journey. None of us had ever seen the enormous farm
crops of the midwest or the dairy industry of Wisconsin and
Minnesota. Our traveling companions were my brother and his
wife, Bill and Lallage.
Our son. Tommy died in February, 1973 after a long battle
with his health. He was 42 years of age. He was just settling into
what promised to be a rich ministry. He had a pastor's heart and
often went to see his parishioners in the hospital when he was in
great pain himself. He was a loving and lovable, child and his
parents were very proud. He grew into an unselfish man with
great compassion for others. His death brought a deep sorrow to
his parents, from which they have never recovered. He left his
wife Betty with three children to finish rearing and educating.
She has done an excellent job. Avon is a writer living in Los
Angeles, Lynn and Brett live in Greensboro near their mother.
The keenness of our loss has not been lessened by the passing of
the years. His mother and I will carry this sorrow in our hearts
into our graves.
I had been, over the years, teaching short courses in Christian
training. When I was 72 years old the opportunity came to me to
teach in the Isothermal Community College near our home.
What began with a course in World Religion turned out to be
several years as instructor in religion. Old and New Testament
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Reaching For My Halo
were included. So was a couple of courses in beginning
philosophy. This entailed a strenuous period of preparation, but
I thoroughly enjoyed my contact with young minds. The most
difficult part of my teaching came when I had to go and teach
religion on a third grade level. The students for the most part had
bright, eager minds, but the essence of the Bible was a strange
new world for them. It brought home to me in a vivid manner
how we were failing in our churches to teach our youth the basic
truths of our faith. I tried to be fair and present the teaching
impartially. Thinking that I was ripe for conversion, one of the
pupils spent a great deal of time trying to get me to join the Latter
Day Saints Church. I finally had to tell him that I would not take
the membership training course to become a Mormon. I still have
in my library the instructional manuals that he gave me.
I had another student who was pastor of a non-denominational
storefront group. He had a vivid imagination and some ideas of
religion that came out of the jungle. He had a minister coming to
his service Sunday from some Carribbean island who was
reported to have raised four people from the dead. The visitor
proposed to demonstrate his miraculous power if the local group
could produce a corpse for him to work over. The pastor could
fmd no volunteers in his flock and no undertaker would provide
a body. The student asked me to help him get a corpse. I told him
that I had a busy weekend and couldn't take on any more duties.
The miracle was cancelled. I do not mean to infer that the quality
of students was inferior grade. They responded to my teaching,
many have thanked me for the guidance. This was perhaps the
most satisfying experience in all my ministry. I had absolute
freedom from the administration. They were supportive and I
enjoyed my relationship with the students and the faculty.
Ida became a semi-invalid and needed more care than I could
give her. So we left our home reluctantly in the summer of 1985
and came to Asbury Retirement Home in Maryville, Tennessee
where our daughter Betty was the administrator. We were here
only a short time until I was asked by the authorities of the
Holston Conference to take a church at Friendsville and keep it
until conference. Conference was in June, 1986. This proved a
delightful people to serve. Again, I was retiring at conference for
the ninth time.
Now as my story ends I am at home at Asbury Acres Retirement
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Home. Ida and I are happy and at peace with the world. We are
proud of our grandchildren. Betty's family is nearby. Sterling,
her husband, is associate pastor of First United Methodist
Church. Dee is in Knoxville, Carol is in Tallahassee, Florida, and
our oldest grandchild Ann is in Atlanta celebrating her 10th
wedding anniversary soon. We have one great granddaughter,
Heather Aubrey Swofford born to Lynn and Dolores Swofford.
So the river of which I have been a part flows on. I shall leave it
soon on the other side, but it will flow on until this world becomes
the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ. Even so, Amen.
84
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