and Herb Zimmerman
March 3, 2008 (Monday)
I recently wrote about my first baptism service in 1952, at Oletha, 15 miles Southeast of Groesbeck. It was a special day.
Two years earlier, however, at Prairie Point, just west of Groesbeck, I led a song or two (or several, I don’t recall), before one of the preacher boys from Liberty Road Baptist Church in Houston, Herb Zimmerman, baptized 19 people, one of them a lady around 90 years of age. Herb arranged for a pump organ, and a fellow student at Baylor played it. We all gathered around the stock tank, sang, and heard Herb present a short message, before he baptized the new converts. It was remarkable under any circumstances, but, considering the size of the church there, it was almost unbelievable. We had concluded a revival meeting led by Howard Smith, a Dallas pastor and Prairie Point hometown boy, in the permanent tabernacle next to the church, complete with sawdust chips in the aisles. What a time.
Herb was the oldest of us boys from Liberty Road Baptist Church, one of the first to attend Baylor on the G.I. Bill, an excellent student, and grader for the chairman of the religion department, Dr. Humphries. He was pastor of the Prairie Point Baptist Church. He still pastors today at a church not far from Cleveland, TX, at the age of eighty-something. He became a bi-vocational pastor, teaching school at first and then becoming an administrator. He and Helen, his wife whom he met at Baylor, live in Baytown, where he has served in schools and churches throughout his career.
Herb was a mentor to me in many ways. I will always be thankful for his influence on my life, and the splendid example he set for me.