All their names belong on the Degree Certificate
AUGUST 25, 2007 (SATURDAY) – For the last three days, I’ve been talking about the jobs I had and the churches I served before seminary graduation in 1959. Most of those years were as a youth in Houston, but the last 6 years of that period were as a married man with a wonderful wife and two children. My blogs have been about my jobs, and little was said about my family’s participation during those years. I want to address that all-important issue today.
I met Wanda when we were both Baylor students. She commuted each week via bus from Groesbeck to Waco. I commuted each weekend via the same bus from Waco to Groesbeck, where I was singing at Sunday services at the First Baptist Church of Groesbeck. Wanda zipped through college in less than three years, with perfect grades. At the last minute, Baylor said that since she had completed her courses (making excellent grades) in only two years and nine months (summers and all), she could not graduate until she had been on campus at least three years. Her father successfully contended that she had taken all the courses required for her degree. She did that by taking extra courses throughout her college career. There is no doubt as to who passed on the “smart” genes to our kids. Her parents also had a house near the church at Oletha, where I became pastor and was ordained in 1951 during my Junior year in college, and the family went to church at Oletha. Wanda played the piano when she was there, and her sister, Ann, would sing. At some point in time through all of this, Wanda and I became acquainted. We finished college (took me four years, like almost everyone else), fell in love and married October 3, 1953.
We lived in Cleburne, south of Fort Worth, where she was in her second year of teaching Public School Music to elementary grades. We moved at mid-term to a mission church in Lampasas, where our first child, David, was born in August (actually born at Allen Clinic in Burnet, south of Lampasas). I commuted to the seminary two days a week for one semester, but it was almost 200 miles away, so in the summer of 1955, we moved to Fort Worth, near the campus, and I went to work in Arlington at the General Motors plant, on the night shift. In October, our second child, Dan, was born at Harris Hospital, Fort Worth. I withdrew from classes about that time, because I couldn’t find time for study. After my trying unsuccessfully to juggle family, work, and seminary, Wanda returned to teaching and I planned to get through with school as soon as possible. So we moved out into the country northwest of Fort Worth, to Briar, north of Azle, and Wanda went to work as a teacher in the Azle school district. For a while, I kept working at GM. Since I had to be on the job, 55 miles away, before 6:30 a.m., we had to get up around 3:30 a.m., get the poor little boys out of bed and feed them breakfast so they could be dropped off at the babysitter’s home, long before daylight. Wanda rode the school bus to work. At the seminary’s mid-term, I resumed classes. Quitting the job at General Motors, I went to work at a granary-feed store on East Lancaster Avenue. I had 30 minutes to get out of class, eat lunch from a sack as I drove on the expressway, get to work, change into work clothes, and be on the job. I worked 5 hours per day, Monday through Friday, and all day Saturday. I got home each day around 7:00 p.m., absolutely covered, head to toe, with grain dust and dirt. So after a bath, supper dutifully prepared by Wanda after her own hard day’s work at school and at home, I retired to the bedroom desk, exhausted, to attend to my seminary studies. No time for family, and no energy for study. A really bad idea. This continued until the Briar Baptist Church asked me to become their pastor. Then I got back in school full-time and finished in the next two years, graduating in 1959. The boys still had to be rousted out of bed very early and taken to the babysitter’s home. We could never have done it without Wanda’s sacrifice and hard work. The children sacrificed a lot, too; they had no choice. All their names belong on the Degree Certificate the seminary awarded me.
A new chapter of our lives began in 1959, as we embarked upon full-time ministry. There isn’t space here to tell the whole story, but here’s the next 48 years in a nutshell. After graduation, we moved to Kosse, Texas, where I pastored the First Baptist Church. David started to school there, and our third child, Debbie, was born in the hospital at nearby Marlin. Two years later, we moved to the Vickery Baptist Church in Dallas, where our fourth child, Dianna, was born at Baylor Hospital in 1963. We moved to Rockport in November, 1964. Our fifth child, Dwight, was born at Spohn in Corpus Christi, in 1966. All five of our children finished school at Rockport. Three of them never attended any other school. They did well in college and have graduate degrees as well.
That’s how we got here, and we’re glad we did. We arrived 43 years ago. It is indeed our home, and, as you know, “there’s no place like home.” (I heard that from a girl wearing red slippers; her name was Dorothy. Or was it Judy?)