i’ve not asked my son’s permission for what follows.

I wonder whether Neil ever gives thought to the debt he owes to three very special Christian ladies whom God used to do good things in his life.

Neil is my firstborn son.  Joe Neil McKeever, Jr.  Born to a 20-year-old mama (Margaret Ann Henderson McKeever) and me. I was 23.  This newborn son was nine pounds nine ounces.  Big from the first.  He got his size from Margaret’s dad. J. W. Henderson, a career Greyhound bus driver, was six foot three.  Neil ended up close to six five.

I’m going to skip over his upbringing and growing up years.  He was the pastor’s son, raised in a Southern Baptist church. He sang in the youth ensemble, sang in the college ensemble, and took an active role in church life.  At the same time, he also was being drawn into the world. He struggled some in his later high school and college years. (Yes, didn’t we all?)

When he finished college, Neil tried different things.  He lived away from home, worked in various enterprises, was searching. And was not going to church.

A year or so after he finished college, we moved to a church in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Our sons Neil and Marty and daughter Carla came too.  The boys rarely if ever attended church, busy with jobs and who knows what.  Carla, a high schooler, attended but made few friends.

That pastorate did not go well and four years later, Margaret and I relocated to New Orleans to lead a church by the airport. Large church with a huge debt and a troubled past.  I took a cut of over thirty thousand dollars in salary.

The church had a Christian school that went through the eighth grade.  Our principal was Pam Mancuso. She’s the first of the three special ladies.

Pam was a prayer warrior.  Sometimes in the mornings she would tell me what God had told her in her prayer time. At first, my thought was, “Oh boy.  I’ve got one of those!”  Then I began to see that everything she said was on target.

One morning during my first year there, Pam said, “Brother Joe, the Lord told me this morning he wants Neil to teach in our school.”

Bear in mind that Neil was still in Charlotte, was not going to church, and was helping Marty’s father-in-law run a party supply store. Teach in a Christian school? Like that’s going to happen.

When I told Margaret, we both dismissed it as not going to happen.

Months later, Pam brought the subject up again.

I said, “Pam, you don’t even know Neil.”

“True,” she said, “but God knows him.

I said, “He certainly does.  As often as we talk to God about him!”

Pam said, “Aren’t you going up there soon for a revival?”

I said, “Yes, to Roanoke.”

“Mention it to him,” she said.

I said I would. Couldn’t hurt.

I flew into Charlotte, spent the night with Neil at his apartment, mentioned what Pam had said, and left for Roanoke.

A few days later on arrival back in Charlotte, I said to Neil, “You’ve not mentioned teaching school.  I assume you’re not interested.”

“No,” he said.  “I am.”

I was completely surprised.

He soon began talking to Pam by long distance (remember long distance?) and sitting in on classes at Charlotte Christian School.

Late that summer he moved to New Orleans to teach in our school.  Margaret and I were delighted to have him, of course.  Leaving the three children in North Carolina had been particularly hard on Margaret. So, she loved having number one son at home.

Before he moved south, I told him, “If you’re not going to go to church and live for the Lord, don’t come.  My ministry doesn’t need the kind of non-support you gave in North Carolina.”

He joined the church, joined the choir, and began going to singles Bible studies on Thursday night.

And that’s where he met Julie Gatwood. 

A few months before Neil moved south, Julie joined our church.  I remember she that she was thin, rather short, with a ton of curly hair. With the prettiest hand-writing I had ever seen.

After meeting at the singles Bible study, they quickly began dating.

Julie was a rock.  Her home was Slidell, on the northshore above New Orleans.  Raised by godly parents who were strong in church. Her dad was a Bible teacher.  Julie attended a Christian college in Cleveland, TN for a few years. She was working as a legal secretary for a New Orleans law firm.  Then, when President Bill Clinton appointed one of the lawyers to the federal bench, Julie moved with her to the federal building. Bigger salary, more off-days and a better parking spot.

They married one year later, August 1 of 1992.  Margaret and I quickly learned to treasure this precious lady whom God had brought into our lives via our son.

Julie is a woman of prayer, a person of the Book, and a lover of God’s people.  When her girls were growing up she took them to conferences on Christian womanhood ( they weren’t called that, but that’s the point).  She is every person’s dream of what a daughter-in-law should be.

These days Julie is the administrative assistant to the pastor of West Mobile (Alabama) Baptist Church where they now live.  Their children are grown and married, and Neil and Julie are grandparents to two-year-old Emory Erskine of Pensacola and one-and-a-half year old Leah-Ray Clark of Mobile.  This is a godly family, and to me Julie gets the lion’s share of the credit for that.  Neil is chairman of deacons at the church.

How they got to Mobile is where the third woman comes in.

Marty Perkins of Moss Point, Mississippi is her name.

In the mid-1990s Neil and Julie began enlarging their family.  Grant was born in 1994 and twins Abigail and Erin arrived in 1996.  And at this point, they decided in order for Julie to stay home as a full-time mother, Neil should find a better paying job.  He could not support the family on a teacher’s salary in a small Christian school.

One interview he had was at the New Orleans shipyards, across the river at Avondale.  Marty Perkins interviewed him for a position as a teacher for a contract firm that did continuing education for the thousands of shipyard employees.

At one point she asked him, “Do you know Joe McKeever?”

“My Dad.”

She said, “Joe and my mother were on staff together at First Baptist Church of Jackson back in the 1970s.”  Her mother, Frances Smira, headed our women’s ministry.  I can recall meeting her daughter Marty more than once.  A wonderful family.

Before the interview ended, Marty told Neil, “I cannot say you will get this job. But we definitely want you working for this company.”

He got the job.  And for several years, he taught shipyard employees in special classes on their grounds.  And, when they were hiring human resources workers, Neil applied and was hired.  Recently, he celebrated a quarter century with the shipyards.  A dozen years ago, they closed the New Orleans shipyards and channeled all their work to the Ingalls Shipyards in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Neil and Julie moved to Mobile, Alabama, not far east of Pascagoula.

On several occasions I’ve preached in First Baptist Church of Moss Point, MS (next door to Pascagoula) where Marty Perkins belongs.  I have never failed to thank her for blessing my family as she did.

At some point in our lives, all of us can look back and see critical moments when our Heavenly Father sent just the right person to our rescue.  They made all the difference.  I’ve not asked Neil’s permission for this, but because I was close by I was a near observer to what God did.

When my children were at home, I regularly prayed for their teachers.  I recall saying on several occasions, “Whoever blesses my child blesses me.”

Pam Mancuso is in Heaven.  I praise God for her. Julie Gatwood McKeever and Marty Smira Perkins are still with us, and forever occupy places of great honor in my heart.