September 25, 2018 (Tuesday)
I was born in Houston and I grew up in Houston (population 250,000 then, 6 1/2 million today. Ugh!)
I was born in a second story garage apartment on Houston’s North Side. After leaving for college at the age of 18, I never lived in Houston again until 2004-2010 when I pastored the Timbergrove Baptist Church in the Heights, (one and one-half years of that time back in Rockport as interim). During those years back in Houston I made a few attempts to find the 18 houses and apartments where I grew up and I found the garage apartment where I was born. Here is a picture of me, held by my father, on the steps of that dwelling.
On my first visit to the old house, I found it in disrepair, falling down, and nobody was living there. After a few years, I went by and found it had been torn down and the lumber was stacked at the front of the lot.
After moving away from Houston in 1949, I lived in Marshall, Texas for 3 months or so, where I attempted to go to East Texas Baptist College, but illness prevented my attending classes and I withdrew and started over at Baylor, in Waco, where I had no health problems. While in college, I was associate pastor in Groesbeck and then pastor in Oletha. After graduation in 1953, I lived with friends in Fort Worth for about a month, then in Cleburne when Wanda and I married. She was teaching school and I attended the seminary while working part time. We soon moved to Lampasas, where I pastored a mission church before moving back to Fort Worth in 1955 to attend the seminary again. Wanda began teaching school in Azle, and we moved to Briar, north of Azle, and enjoyed country living. I worked at General Motors in Arlington, then part-time in Fort Worth, attending the seminary off and on and pastoring the Briar church. After graduation from the seminary in 1959, we moved to Kosse, Texas in a full-time pastorate, where we served until we moved to Dallas and a suburban church in 1961, and finally to Rockport in 1964, where I was pastor and Wanda was Music Director until “retirement” in 1996. In addition to those years in Houston, I was interim pastor at Refugio twice, at Rockport once, and at Ingleside four times so far. (Click on “About Charles Fake” at top for more).
In 2008, the First Baptist Church of Rockport designated me as “Pastor Emeritus” and later on the Bethel Baptist Church of Ingleside did the same for Dale Pogue and me. Both of us love both congregations.
Wanda and I were 33 when we moved to the coast; she died in 2002 at age 70 and now I’m 87. In 48 years of marriage, we had five children to love (Debbie died in 1997 at age 37), nine beloved grandchildren and one precious great grandchild of whom Wanda would have been very proud.