June 10, 2022 (Friday)
This the third and last blog about all the jobs I had as I moved toward completion of education and full-time ministry.
I had worked at many jobs, most of them part-time because I was a student. I worked at several grocery stores. I worked in a movie palace downtown, and in a couple of neighborhood theaters. I worked for my parents in their restaurants, as waiter and cashier.
When I became a college freshman, the First Baptist Church of Groesbeck called me to lead singing (title: Associate Pastor), and in my Junior year I became pastor at Oletha Baptist Church, 15 miles SE of Groesbeck, I also worked at “Baby Percy” medicine company in Waco for a while. After graduation from Baylor in 1953, I resigned as pastor and moved to Fort Worth to go to the seminary. I went to work at a creamery (where we made ice cream). About that time Wanda and I married, and around the end of 1953 moved to Lampasas, where I pastored a mission which became the Northside Baptist Church. Looking back, I can see that our move to Lampasas was necessary in God’s plan, which eventually brought us to Rockport.
Moving back to Fort Worth in the summer of 1955, I went to work for General Motors as a clerk, in an exciting factory where we built automobiles: Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs. A recession forced the plant to discontinue the second shift, and in order to get back in school, I had to quit that job. So I went to work at a granary-feed store. In 1957, the church at Briar, where we lived, northwest of Fort Worth, called me as pastor, and I became a full-time student and pastor of the church. After graduation in May, 1959, we moved to Kosse, then to Dallas in 1961, and to Rockport in November, 1964, where we stayed put until retirement in February 1996. After that I kept on preaching, supplying the pulpit at various places, serving as Interim Pastor in Ingleside and Refugio, and becoming pastor of the Timbergrove Baptist Church in Houston. I returned to the Rockport church as Interim Pastor in the summer of 2006 until January, 2008. After that, in 2008, back to the Houston church until 2010, when I returned to Rockport and became Interim pastor at Bethel, Ingleside, two more times, finally retiring for good in January, 2020, at the age of 88.
I’ve had a quite a ride, I guess, as I just tried to follow the leading of the Lord day by day. These articles have been about jobs and pastorates, etc. and I have not talked about my family’s participation in all this. I wrote blogs about them at the time. Here is one of them:
My Family’s Participation
I’ve been writing 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. 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 was born (at nearby Burnet). 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. No time for family, and no energy for study. Then the Briar Baptist Church asked me to become their pastor, and 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 58 years ago, and Rockport became our home.
IT IS NO SECRET
Words and Music, Stuart Hamblen
1950
The chimes of time ring out the news,
Another day is through.
Someone slipped and fell.
Was that someone you?
You may have longed for added strength,
Your courage to renew.
Do not be disheartened,
For I have news for you.
It is no secret what God can do.
What He’s done for others, He’ll do for you.
With arms wide open, He’ll pardon you.
It is no secret what God can do.
There is no night for in His light
You never walk alone.
Always feel at home,
Wherever you may go.
There is no power can conquer you
While God is on your side.
Take Him at His promise,
Don’t run away and hide.
It is no secret what God can do.
What He’s done for others, He’ll do for you.
With arms wide open, He’ll pardon you.
It is no secret what God can do.