Memorial Day Weekend

Drove to North Alabama on Friday, attended the every-two-year-cousins-reunion on Saturday, preached at New Prospect Baptist Church in Jasper on Sunday, and drove home on Monday. How did your weekend go?

Our “cousins” reunion never really took off until we decided to bite the bullet on the Saturday before Memorial Day in 1994 and stage the event at the old home place, 5 miles out in the country from Nauvoo, Alabama. Until then, we had moved around–one year at a park in Birmingham, another year at a cousin’s lake place out from Jasper, that sort of thing–but with varying degrees of success. The year we held it at the old home place, it felt so right, everyone agreed this is the way, and here is the place.

Reunions are easy for the family members who live “away,” such as I do. Our family has a rule that out-of-staters don’t have to bring anything but themselves, in appreciation for their long drive and the high cost of gasoline. So, thanks to the hard work of the locals, we distance-cousins walk in and it’s all laid out there: a long table loaded with eats, coolers filled with iced-down-drinks, and the night’s bonfire ready for a match, circled by folding chairs from the church 3 miles down the road.

We call it a “cousins” reunion. One hundred and five years ago John Wesley “Virge” Kilgore and wife Sarah Noles Kilgore moved to this section of land. He laid off the buildings and erected them with his bare hands. The house still stands, where all his nine children were born. Across the yard lies the blacksmith shop. A little further down stands the barn. The newest building, constructed for his 1948 Packard, is the little garage.

Grandpa died in 1949 and Granny passed on in 1963. No one has lived here since. But everything still stands.

“All the buildings are unpainted. Wonder why that is?” someone said. My mother, born inside that house on July 14, 1916, said, “I don’t know. But what color would you call the house now?” After several suggestions, she decided, “Motor oil.” She was right.


I thought of Grandpa Virge and Granny Sarah. They were Christian people. They joined our family’s New Oak Grove Free Will Baptist Church sometime around 1903 and became stalwart members there the rest of their days. They raised all their children in that church. That fateful Saturday night in 1930 when 18-year-old Carl McKeever and his younger brother Gip were looking for company and someone told them the young people at the church were having a singing, they walked into the building just as Lois, age 14, and her sister Ruby, age 18, were singing a duet. Carl whispered to Gip, “I’ll take the one on the left.”

When Dad died last November 3, he and Lois had been married almost 74 years.

We are part of the spiritual legacy of Virge and Sarah. Thankfully, most of us know it and appreciate it. Among the family members at the Saturday event were several worship leaders, deacons, Sunday School teachers, and other Christian leaders.

Sitting around the bonfire Saturday night, family members were all ages: Mom and her only surviving sibling, Uncle Cecil, age 86, a couple of widows/widowers of siblings, and their children–most middle-aged or better by now–along with their offspring and grandchildren. My brother Ron, nearly 73 now, and one of the senior members of the cousins, counted nearly 80 in attendance. We teased him, his being a preacher, that this means we actually had about 40. I suggested he would have more in attendance if he wouldn’t count them. Works for fishermen.

I preached Sunday morning on “Fellowship,” the message posted on this website last Thursday. Fellowship is what this reunion was all about. Sitting around getting caught up on each others’ lives, meeting their beloved grandchildren for the first time, greeting someone’s fiancee’ and making them feel welcome. Eating, laughing, hugging. The kind of stuff of which life is made.

I brought out my sketch pad and drew the children. I recall reunions when I was their age. It gets old real quick and you look for something to do, and there isn’t anything. But kids love to draw, and they mostly enjoy getting drawn. My wife teases that I do this so they will know who “Uncle Joe” is. Guilty. Their parents and grandparents are so dear to me, I wouldn’t mind at all if they always recall their Louisiana “uncle” (distant cousin, actually) who made them feel special.

Ron has taken the lead in these things for the past 14 years or so, but Saturday night he insisted the torch be passed. Cousin Mike Kilgore of Montgomery won the lottery. He says he was railroaded by acclamation. Mike turned right around and asked each division of the family to name a representative to work with him. We are getting organized.

Uncle Cecil Kilgore, age 86 and still strong–retired from a long career as our county forest ranger–got our attention around the bonfire. This man–the father of two ministers of music in Baptist churches (that would be Becky Smith of Jasper and Johnny Kilgore of Birmingham)–had a song to share with the family. Readers who know Gospel music will be familiar with “Suppertime,” an old Jimmie Davis hit. Cecil sang it as only one can who has lived the life it celebrates. The circle exploded in appreciation at the last note.

Before we ended the evening, Saturday around 8:30–it was past Ron’s bedtime–we all joined hands around the fire for prayer. My mom, who had hardly said a word all evening, got our attention. “Before we pray and end this, I want to say something.”

I wish we had it on tape. What followed was a two-minute invitation to the Christian faith that would have made Billy Graham proud. She reminded everyone we’re only here for a short time and that eternity is a long time, and receiving Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior is the way to get to Heaven. “If you haven’t put your trust in Him, do it tonight. We want you there.”

Readers who do not know our family might assume that since Mom is the mother of two preachers with ninety years in the ministry between us, she does this sort of thing all the time. Not so. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever heard her talk this way to any group.

I was some kind of proud of her. She is well aware that at her age and physical condition, the odds are high that she may not make the next reunion. At one point, Ron said to the group, “Look around the circle. If the past is any indication, some of us will not be here two years from now.” He’s right. On the drawing table to my left as I type is a photo taken at the 1996 reunion. At least a dozen family members in the picture are no longer with us.

The thought occurs to me that over on “the other shore,” the family members have gathered around their own bonfire. Someone says, “Our circle is getting bigger and bigger. Carl and Lorene joined us recently. Jacqueline arrived just before them. Wonder who’s next.”

If that’s happening, I guarantee it’s a far happier group than ours was Saturday night.

Old-timers used to sing a song that fits right here. “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

Late Saturday afternoon, in the break between the day’s activities and the evening bonfire, some of us ran by the cemetery adjoining the church. Flowers adorn the various graves, left over from the decoration a couple of weeks ago. My brother Glenn and I stood at Dad’s tombstone and wept. He said, “I miss this man every day of my life!”

Our youngest brother Charlie’s tombstone is twenty feet away, a lovely black stone imported from Italy someone said. It has a drawing of his family on the reverse. Most of our family members have plots reserved. But, while that’s fine, there’s another reservation on my mind.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has begotten us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you….” (I Peter 1)

2 thoughts on “Memorial Day Weekend

  1. I just can’t believe you were preaching that close to Double Springs and I didn’t know it! Promise me the next time you preach in North Alabama you will let my family know. I would have absolutely loved to have come.

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