My friend Larry died recently. I had not seen him in 25 years, but the news still came as a shock.

Larry may have been the most gifted young preacher in the 1960s and 70s any of us will ever meet. At the age of 27, he became pastor of the First Baptist Church of Biloxi, Mississippi. Something happened while he was there that changed his life forever.

A hurricane named Camille hit the Mississippi coast and left much of it as clean as a sidewalk. Within days, gifts of food and clothing from a caring nation were arriving in Biloxi by the truckload. Not knowing what else to do, the mayor ordered it unloaded and stored on the tarmac at the airport. Within a couple of days, it formed a small mountain, yet none of it was being distributed because the city leadership did not have a clue where to begin.

Larry went to the mayor and volunteered to direct the distribution of those supplies. His one condition was that he be put in charge, that he would make the decisions. And that’s how the people of Biloxi and surrounding areas got through those first few weeks after the worst hurricane in U.S. history to that time.

It’s also why the U.S. Jaycees named Larry one of their ten outstanding young men of America a year or two later.

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I’ll just tell you what happened and you can decide what to do with it.

Doctor Jim is my dentist, but he looks like a weight lifter. He married the campus beauty, Celeste, right out of college, and they are the parents of two outstanding children. Their youngest, Eve, will turn four in a couple of days. This story is about her.

A couple of weeks ago, Celeste’s grandmother died at the age of 86. A photo of her on Celeste’s office desk shows a lovely white-haired lady with the two grandchildren adoring and being adored. Prior to her death, Celeste spent a lot of time ministering to her, and Dr. Jim was back and forth across the state with the children. A few days after the funeral, the three-year-old Eve said something that stunned Celeste.

“Mommy, I saw Aunt Barbara.”

“No, honey,” said the mother. “You saw Aunt Wanda, grandmother’s sister.”

“No, I saw Aunt Barbara. Bar-BRA!” As only a small child can emphasize it.

Celeste’s aunt Barbara, one of her favorite people, died when Celeste was twelve. She has never mentioned her to her child. So, this was puzzling.

“When did you see Aunt Barbara, honey?”

“I saw her in Grandmother’s room, standing by the bed.”

“What was she doing?”

“She wasn’t doing anything. Just holding her hand.”

Then Celeste said, “What did Aunt Barbara look like?”

“She had long blonde hair.”

Not only had Celeste never mentioned her aunt to the child, Dr. Jim says she had never even told him the beloved relative had long blonde hair.

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New article posted at the Baptist Press website:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–In most years, messengers to annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention find themselves drawn to exhibit areas by LifeWay Christian Store bargains, opportunities to spot familiar faces from years gone by and information from Baptist entities and church-related vendors.

But the exhibit hall at this year’s SBC meeting June 21-22 in Nashville, Tenn., included yet another kind of draw by Southern Baptist artist Joe McKeever who drew numerous caricatures of messengers and their families as part of the Baptist Press exhibit for the SBC Executive Committee.

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For many years the editor of the Wall Street Journal was a Tarheel by the name of Vermont C. Royster. That “C” in his name stood for “Connecticut.” And yes, all his siblings were likewise named for the states.

My wife and I were dining in a Birmingham restaurant some years back when I happened to notice that our waitress’ name was Auburn. Being the type who likes to jest with the help, I said, “I’ll bet you have a sister named Alabama.”

She said, “I have two sisters–Tulane and Cornell.” I shrank back into my chair, certain that she was putting me in my place.

“I have four brothers,” she said. “Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Duquesne.” For once, I was completely speechless.

“My father’s name is Stanford and my mother is Loyola. They’re from Baton Rouge and were engaged before it occurred to them that they each had colleges as names and decided to do this to their children.”

“When we were little,” she said, “we were on the front of Parade magazine, on Art Linkletter’s House Party, and in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”

When she told me she was married with two children, I said, “Wait a minute–let me guess your husband’s name.” Gardner Webb or Truett McConnell. Something like that.

“My husband is Ron Harris,” she said, “But my children are Agnes Scott and Slippery Rock.” She hastened to add, “I’m kidding about those.”

I once told that story to a professor at Agnes Scott who had a contribution of her own to this tale. “On the first day of class, when teachers don’t have a roll yet and have to circulate a sheet of paper for everyone to sign, and invariably some guy makes up a fictitious name? Well, I’ve learned to read ahead of the name I’m calling so I don’t fall for that. That’s when I spotted the ringer. I said to the class, ‘Who made up the stupid name?’ No answer. Then I said, ‘All right, who is this States Rights Constitution Finley the Third?’ And some guy raised his hand. I said, ‘That’s your name?’ It was. And just think–he’s the third. There’s two more of those running around.”

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Perhaps a dozen people who read our weekly article are going to love what follows. My apologies to the rest of you.

Anyone who knows me is well acquainted with my love for history. As a preacher, I actually own more books on history than theology. At Birmingham-Southern, most of a lifetime ago, I majored in American history and later in seminary, focused on church history. Thirty years ago, I decided to collect all the books on Harry Truman I could find (he was the first president I actually remembered from my childhood). After a decade during which I accumulated over eighty volumes, I gave that pursuit up as too expensive and unnecessary. I still own the books, however, and wonder sometimes what to do with them.

I’ve been to Civil War battlefields, and presidential homes and libraries all over the country. It all fascinates me. In particular these days, the Second World War has become my major historical interest.

For years, I resisted getting into the study of this defining event of the 20th century, probably because there is so much of it and where does one begin. Born in 1940, I recall only smidgens of the war, mainly uncles coming home in their uniforms and my siblings standing out in the yard when a plane would go over, calling to an uncle (“Hey, John L.”) who was undoubtedly riding that particular one. I don’t think my interest in the war could be called nostalgia since I have no actual memories of any significant aspect of it.

I once read a journal which a British lady had kept during the war and that may have hooked me more than anything else. When Stephen Ambrose started the wonderful D-Day Museum here in New Orleans, I became a charter member. I will not bore you with the books I have read or the old, out-of-date and out-of-print books I am now collecting. However, I am leading up to telling you something I find fascinating.

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John Avant is new at our North American Mission Board, a vice-president with broad areas of responsibility, who for years has been pastoring the New Hope Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Georgia. In his book, “The Passion Promise,” Brother John tells a story you need to hear.

During the Desert Storm war, Colonel William Post was charged with receiving the massive amounts of supplies for the ground forces. This included tons of food that arrived daily.

One day, the Pentagon sent Colonel Post a message inquiring about forty cases of grape jelly that were missing. Post dispatched an aide to find the missing jelly. A day or two later, he reported back that the jelly was nowhere to be found. Post sent that information on to the Pentagon and assumed that was the end of it. Wrong.

The higher ups in Washington kept badgering Post about the missing jelly. They would not be able to close the books on that month without locating those cases of jelly. It had to be found.

At this point, Col. Post sent this message to the Pentagon: “Sirs: you must decide. I can dispatch the entire army to find your missing jelly, or I can kick Saddam out of Kuwait. But not both.” He’s still waiting on a reply.

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When Wayne Hunt served on our church staff, he was forever looking for opportunities to pull a practical joke. One day he phoned Deena Boyd, the preschool children’s director, and faking a middle-eastern accent, told her he was an Arabian prince or something in the process of moving to New Orleans. With his three wives and eight children, he would be needing the facilities of our church’s children’s program and she had been highly recommended. About the time Deena got all swimmy-headed thinking of eight new children in the program and a parent who could pay cash, Wayne burst into laughter. Deena took it well, but said, “I’ll get you.”

A few weeks later, Wayne had found a special golf club on the internet, at e-bay or somewhere, and with his wife Anita’s acquiescence, had ordered it. “It’s my birthday present,” he assured us. After a couple of weeks, he began calling the church office from the seminary where he was enrolled to see if the club had come in. “Not yet,” the secretaries would assure him. And then one day, it arrived.

I think he cut class that day to drive across the city just to get that new golf club. He rushed into the office, grabbed up the box, and tore into it. He gently pulled the wrapping paper from around the club and fell back into his chair, unable to believe his eyes. The club was absolutely the sorriest thing he had ever seen–old, battered, dirty, rusty, and bent.

“I’ve been cheated!” You could hear him all over the office area. “Wait til I report this guy to e-bay. I’ll sue him!”

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I haven’t actually seen “Cinderella Man” yet, the movie some are calling the best of the year. This is the saga of prizefighter James Braddock and his struggle to provide for his family during the Great Depression using his fists and a courage that refused to quit. Anyone who sits through the previews several times, as I have now done, pretty much knows the story. And interestingly, it’s all history. Almost all.

Braddock was born in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. He fought his way out of poverty and and eventually challenged for the light heavyweight championship of the world, a fight he lost. Apparently an average boxer–he lost 20 times–he finally took a job on the New Jersey docks to support his wife and three children. Then he got a lucky break.

One night, on a boxing card that featured heavyweight champion Primo Carnera fighting challenger Max Baer, Braddock went against someone named Corn Griffin and knocked him out. Just a year later, after upsetting two more contenders, Braddock was fighting Max Baer, the reigning heavyweight champion of the world.

Peter Finney, New Orleans’ own champion sports columnist for nearly half a century, writes, “Here he was, a hopeless underdog who had lost 20 times on the roller-coaster journey, fighting a guy whose fists had been responsible for the death of two opponents.” Then he adds: “No Hollywood hokum. It was all true.”

“And there they were,” he continues, “on June 13, 1935, Braddock and Baer fighting for the title, as some of Braddock’s faithful, listening to the broadcast, prayed for the Irishman’s safety inside a Jersey church.”

According to the movie, the two boxers went at it tooth and nail for 15 hard rounds. Directed by Ron Howard–how far he has come from Mayberry–the men pummeled each other with so many devastating blows and knockout punches, one wonders how anyone could endure such pain and live to tell it. That’s what columnist Finney wondered. And he wondered how sportswriters of the time had covered such a monumental bout.

So, Finney did something I admire mightily. He dug up the newspapers records of the original fight to see how ringside writers described this vicious pounding that surely must have left both men as invalids.

Ah, what he found out.

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What started this was something I heard on “All Things Considered” the other evening. One of their reporters had attended the funeral of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and buried in Colorado Springs. His was quite a story–raised by his mother along with several younger siblings, a high school dropout who went back and graduated later, a prankster who just wanted to have fun, a kid who loved hunting wild animals in the mountains. In high school, he got in trouble in shop class when a buddy went to the bathroom and he welded the door shut. And there was that time he stole a car and rode around town for a couple of hours. Just having fun. He got his act together, they said, and joined the military where he used his sharpshooting skills to become a sniper with our forces in Iraq. A roadside bomb ended his life a few days ago.

Memorial Day morning some boys were having fun in my neighborhood, and it cost them dearly. The newspaper says at 3:30 am, three sixteen-year-old friends abandoned a car they had stolen in order to take a beautiful new pickup truck from a fellow’s driveway. The owner heard a noise, looked out the window and saw the truck pulling out, and called the police. Within minutes, a cop spotted the bright red expensive pickup and a chase ensued. Up and down Causeway Boulevard they went, jumping medians and doubling back. The boys bursted through a blockade and almost hit an officer. Finally, they ended up two blocks from my house in the New Orleans suburb of River Ridge where they made the worst mistake of a morning filled with them. As a police officer approached the truck, the young driver tried to run him over. Bad decision. Later, the investigators picked up over 100 spent shells from the grass surrounding that bullet-ridden truck. The driver was dead and his two passengers were headed to the hospital and later to jail. “Self-defense,” said the sheriff, and who can argue. A three ton truck qualifies as a deadly weapon by any standard.

What is it about adolescents and their fun?

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My grandchildren still do not understand why I left their church. Since Grant is 10 and the twins, Abby and Erin, are 8, I am the only pastor they have ever known. Yet, a year ago, at the age of 64, I resigned the pastorate of the First Baptist Church of Kenner, Louisiana, to become Director of Missions for all the Southern Baptist churches of metro New Orleans. I still live in the same house and have even retained my church membership at Kenner. But these days I’m preaching all over, in all kinds of churches–big and small, formal and informal, in the city and on the bayou. And that’s what puzzles my grandchildren.

Yesterday Erin asked my wife, “If Grandpa can still preach, why did he leave our church?”

Margaret went for the simple answer: “Because God told him to.”

Erin countered, “Couldn’t he have said ‘no’?”

Good question. Could I have turned God down? Was this one of those “okay if you do, but all right if you don’t” issues?

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