December 30, 2015 (Wednesday)
After graduation from high school, and a short stay at East Texas Baptist College, I finally arrived at Baylor University, where my friend from our Houston home church was a student. Herb Zimmerman was a veteran and a preacher. He was pastor of the Prairie Point Baptist Church near Groesbeck, about 35 miles east of Waco. I went with him each weekend, led the singing and sang solos. I also taught a class (I had learned how to do those things as a student at ETBC by going on Sundays with pastor and fellow student Merle Brooks to Morton Baptist Church near Marshall. Merle had founded the church, won 100 people to the Lord and baptized them. We became lifelong friends).
After 4 or 5 months of serving with Herb at Prairie Point, I was asked by Olen Waldrip, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Groesbeck, to be his Associate Pastor, working mainly with music and youth. I rode a bus to Groesbeck each Saturday and it took me back to Waco each Monday morning. I spent the summers working in revival meetings.
After one and one-half years of working with Brother Waldrip, I became pastor of the Oletha Baptist Church, 15 miles southeast of Groesbeck.
During this time I fell in love with Wanda Sadler, who was born in Oletha and was a Baylor student as I was. Her family had a home at Oletha. Both her parents were school teachers and her father was an administrator as well. They spent some of their time at Oletha, where they owned land and raised cattle. Wanda graduated with a music degree, completing a four-year degree program at Baylor after only 2 years and 9 months. She then became a public school music teacher at Cleburne. I still had a year of college ahead of me, so I spent a lot of time on the road between Waco and Cleburne before graduating in June, 1953. I then resigned the church at Oletha and moved to Fort Worth (where I would enroll in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) after spending the summer working at a store in Houston.
Wanda and I married in October and settled in Cleburne. Here is a picture of us at our wedding in 1953 with our friend, J. Howard Smith, who performed the ceremony at his home in Dallas:
I commuted to the seminary and worked at Vandervoort’s Creamery, packaging ice cream specialties. We soon became expectant parents and Wanda resigned as teacher and I accepted a call to pastor in Lampasas, Texas. I became pastor of a mission congregation sponsored by the First Baptist Church.
David was born in August, 1954. We stayed at Lampasas until the summer of 1955. I had the privilege while there of leading the mission to organize into the Northside Baptist Church. We moved to Fort Worth, to a house near the seminary, and I went to work at the General Motors Assembly Plant at Arlington, intending to work at night and go to seminary classes during the day. I found that I was unable to keep up my school work while working at a full-time job and after determined effort, dropped out of school. Danny was born in October, 1955.
Wanda decided to return to teaching so that I could finish school and we could get on with our lives. She found a job as public school music teacher at Azle, Texas, northwest of Fort Worth, and we moved to Briar, 9 miles north of there, in the summer of 1956. The GM plant at Arlington, where I worked, had returned to one shift operation, and I continued to work there, not being enrolled during the fall semester of the seminary. The company expected to return to second shift operations, but it soon became evident that it would not happen anytime soon. At mid-term, therefore, I resigned my job with General Motors and enrolled in the seminary again, working in the afternoons at a feed store and granary near downtown Fort Worth. It was January, 1957. We continued that schedule the rest of the school term.
Wanda rode the school bus to school and back, and our two boys stayed at a private home of friends in our neighborhood. The church at Briar became pastorless and they asked me to become their pastor. I resigned my granary job, pastored the church and went to seminary classes until graduation in May, 1959. Wanda had resigned her teaching job after the fall semester of 1958-1959, because she was expecting Debbie, who was born in August, after we moved to Kosse, Texas in July, 1959.
Finally, we settled down, in Kosse, to a full-time pastorate with a loving congregation and 3 growing children. In April, 1961, we moved to Dallas where I was pastor of the Vickery Baptist Church. Dianna was born in Dallas in May, 1963. In November of 1964 we moved to Rockport. We have lived there ever since. Dwight was born in Corpus Christi in November, 1966. I was pastor of the First Baptist Church and Wanda was the music director until February, 1996, when we retired. Since retirement, we lost our daughter, Debbie, in January, 1997 and we lost Wanda in January, 2002. I have been fortunate in retirement to have been involved in ministry, being pastor or interim pastor at Refugio, Houston, Rockport and Ingleside, where I am Interim Pastor now at the Bethel Baptist Church.
We have lived in Rockport for 51 years. Since retirement we have had a great interim pastor and two wonderful pastors at Rockport’s First Baptist Church, where I am still a member. James Bond, Walter Knight and Scott Jones have blessed my life as they all have become fast friends. James and Walter are with the Lord today. As I said in the blog yesterday, this has been a quick survey of the years gone by, because details would require a book. In the words of the movie title, it has been “A Wonderful Life.”
(Read tomorrow’s blog to bring this story up to date).
(If you liked these last 3 blogs, you might enjoy reading more details. Just click on “About Charles Fake” at the top of this page for links to other information).