The Preacher

My dad was born 100 years ago on this day in 1918 in Appo­mat­tox, Vir­ginia, near the McLean house where Lee sur­ren­dered to Grant a half cen­tu­ry earlier.

He had a pret­ty rough child­hood. His par­ents divorced when he was a baby and he grew up bounc­ing back and forth between them.

His moth­er caught tuber­cu­lo­sis when he was in grade school. After his death, we found a tin box in his bed­room with let­ters she sent him from the hos­pi­tal, try­ing to put a bright face on her con­di­tion. She told him how much she missed him and promised they’d be togeth­er soon. She died when he was twelve.

He grad­u­at­ed from high school dur­ing the depres­sion. There were no jobs in Appo­mat­tox, and severe asth­ma dis­qual­i­fied him from mil­i­tary ser­vice. The mil­i­tary instal­la­tions in Virginia’s tide­wa­ter area were hir­ing in the run-up to World War II, so he moved to York­town and got a job in the Navy Mine Depot’s main­te­nance department.

Mom worked there, too, and Dad fell for her. She was sev­en­teen when they eloped, run­ning across the state line to North Car­oli­na, which didn’t require her par­ents’ con­sent to tie the knot.

Mom tele­phoned her father (my Papaw) in the mid­dle of the night and broke the news. At my par­ents’ six­ti­eth wed­ding anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, I asked my uncle, her old­est broth­er, how that call went down. He said Papaw looked like he want­ed to kill someone.

That some­one was Dad, I guess, but I nev­er saw any evi­dence of Papaw’s hard feel­ings. Dad’s tough child­hood left him inse­cure and anx­ious, but Papaw always encour­aged him. “You can do any­thing if you’ve got Willy on your side,” he used to say to Dad. “Willy” was will power.

With Willy on his side, Dad left his job at the Depot and opened his own Hud­son car deal­er­ship, where he found his first great pas­sion, sell­ing cars. He sold so many Hud­sons that the Hud­son Com­pa­ny want­ed to lever­age his tal­ent by mov­ing him to Hager­stown, Mary­land, to man­age a much big­ger dealership.

Mom agreed to the move only if Dad promised to go to church in Hager­stown. He had stead­fast­ly refused to attend Sun­day ser­vices up to that point, but he caved in to her demand and we piled every­thing we had in a mov­ing van and head­ed up there.

At first, Dad groused every step of the way to the Church of the Light­ed Win­dow, but a few months into it, he stopped com­plain­ing. A year lat­er, he became the church lay leader. Soon after­wards, he went on a week­end reli­gious retreat where he found his sec­ond great pas­sion, this one so all-con­sum­ing that it turned our lives upside down.

When Dad came home from the retreat, he dropped his suit­case on the floor, beamed at Mom, and announced, “Hon­ey, I’m going to be a preacher!”

Shocked and not so pleased, Mom said, “But all I want­ed you to do was go to church.”

The keynote speak­er at the retreat was a Methodist bish­op with Parkinson’s dis­ease, who spoke about his life of ser­vice. At the end of his talk, the bish­op raised his hand and called to the altar those who want­ed to com­mit their lives to Christ. On his death bed fifty years after the event, Dad said he could still see the bishop’s pale palsied hand flut­ter­ing in the air like the bro­ken wing of a white dove. That hand grabbed him by the heart and called him to preach the Word.

A car sales­man in his mid-thir­ties with a wife and three sons, no edu­ca­tion beyond high school, and no way to pay for col­lege and sem­i­nary, he was an improb­a­ble can­di­date for the min­istry. The only path to the pul­pit open to him was a long hard slog through a seem­ing­ly end­less swamp of cor­re­spon­dence school cours­es while he worked full-time sell­ing cars.

He spent five years study­ing course mate­ri­als he received in the mail, tak­ing tests and writ­ing essays, and send­ing them back to the course admin­is­tra­tors for eval­u­a­tion. In 1960, the Methodist Church final­ly accept­ed him pro­vi­sion­al­ly as a “sup­ply pas­tor.” That sta­tus enti­tled him to be con­sid­ered for assign­ment to a church only after all the ful­ly qual­i­fied min­is­ters had been giv­en a post.

In 1961, the Methodist hier­ar­chy gave Dad his first appoint­ment, a four-church charge known as the Albe­mar­le Cir­cuit, two church­es with 100 mem­bers and two with less than 50, and we moved to White Hall, Vir­ginia, a rur­al town at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains. 

I thought Dad would almost cer­tain­ly fail. He had no for­mal train­ing in pub­lic speak­ing or coun­sel­ing, and the work­load was crushing. 

The first Sun­day we were there, he met with a young sin­gle moth­er who was sui­ci­dal because her hus­band had been killed in an acci­dent. Dad moved her into the par­son­age, and she lived with us for a week. She was in her six­ties the last time I saw her.

Menin­gi­tis killed the infant of a young cou­ple. He brought them through their grief, and they went on to have four more children.

A man in a posi­tion of trust molest­ed a teenage boy, plung­ing him into chron­ic depres­sion. Dad helped him heal his wounds and move on with his life.

These are the ear­ly sto­ries. Hun­dreds more followed.

After attend­ing night school at UVA and com­plet­ing anoth­er bar­rage of cor­re­spon­dence cours­es, Dad was ordained as a full-fledged min­is­ter. He served six church­es over a twen­ty-five year career. In his late six­ties, he tried to retire, but it didn’t take. He vol­un­teered to pas­tor a church that couldn’t afford a full-time min­is­ter and preached there for almost a decade. In his eight­ies, he asked for an appoint­ment clos­er to his home. They gave him a lit­tle church in its death throes, its con­gre­ga­tion down to about ten stal­warts. He revived it, build­ing it up to 50 reg­u­lar attendees.

He had a stroke when he was 86. One month lat­er, he returned to the lit­tle church’s pul­pit, this time in a wheel chair, and Chris­t­ian-sol­diered on until old age broke him down.

No longer able to preach and bed-rid­den, he told us he was ready to go to heaven.

I sat by his bed, and we talked about old times. “How did you do it?” I asked him. “How did you over­come all the obstacles?”

He paused for a long time. “Deter­mi­na­tion,” he said. Papaw’s Willy, I thought. “And my Faith.”

He slept almost all the time his last few days. The hos­pice lady said he was prepar­ing to die. Mom rolled her wheel­chair up to his bed and took his hand. “It’s okay, Tom­my. You can go on now.” I don’t know if he heard her, but he let go soon after that.

Four Methodist min­is­ters preached at his funer­al. We sang In the Gar­den, his favorite hymn. Its stan­zas are about walk­ing and talk­ing with Jesus in a rose gar­den. One of the many Methodist preach­ers Dad had shep­herd­ed into the min­istry end­ed the funer­al ser­vice by say­ing that Dad had been walk­ing and talk­ing with Jesus those last days when he was asleep. “When they’d walked a long way up the road,” he said, “Jesus told Tom­my, ‘You know, my place is clos­er than yours. Let’s just go on up there together.’”

If heav­en is a place where your dreams are ful­filled, I know what my dad’s doing right now. There’s a lit­tle coun­try church with sun­light com­ing through stained glass win­dows to paint rain­bow col­ors on the pine pews. The sanc­tu­ary is full. Mom’s play­ing a hymn on the piano. When the singing’s done, she moves from the

piano bench to the front pew and sits beside me and my broth­ers, all dressed in our Sun­day best.

Dad stands and takes his place at the pul­pit, back straight, voice strong.

Rest in Peace, Dad.