memoir Archives - Page 8 of 9 - From a Rocky Hillside

May 9, 2023April 8, 2026

Great Grandma McKenzie’s Death and the purpose of a funeral

Cover slide for Great Grandma and the purpose of a funeral

A decade ago, I read Thomas Long and Thomas Lynch’s The Good Funeral: Death, Grief, and the Community of Care. I’d taken a of study leave to read and was staying at my grandma’s house outside of Pinehurst. While there, I did what I have always done when here in Moore County, attend church at Culdee. Afterwards, my daughter and I spent some time walking around the cemetery. Some of the tombstones brought back memories. At this time, I could count at being on being there for at least seven funerals.

Since then, I can add two more, a grandmother and an aunt (of which I officiated as the church was without a pastor at the time). There are also those whom I never knew who are buried there, such as my great-great grandparents and an aunt that died from leukemia when she was three. The cemetery held other memories. As a young teenager, I recalled helping my grandmother clean up the cemetery.

My first memory of the cemetery was from when I was eight years old. We left Moore County when I was six and was living in Petersburg, Virginia at the time. When the call of death came, we headed home… When I die, having lived all over this nation, I have often imagined my cremains coming home to rest on this sandy ridge between the Little River and Nick’s Creek, while awaiting the resurrection.

Memories of my first funeral home visit

My brother, sister and I stood in front of the casket holding the body of my great-grandma, Callie McKenzie. Behind us stood our mom, hovering over like an angel as she wrapped the three of us in her arms. We gazed at the body which everyone said looked so much like her. It didn’t. Bodies never look life-like, and great-grandma’s body was no different. Mom pointed to her hands. Wrinkled, they were covered with brown liver spots. Mom reminded us of all the strawberries she’d picked, the tomatoes she’d raised, the apples she’d peeled, and the corn she’d shucked.

When I was younger, we lived next door and sometimes on Sunday afternoon, after church, we’d gather with our extended family in her backyard, under the pecan trees. The boundaries of her lawn were marked by the back porch, a dirt road over beyond the well, a corncrib in the back, and a smokehouse and woodpile on the far side, just in front of the canebrake. Tables were set out and we’d have lunch, followed by a slice of pie that she’d baked Saturday evening in her wood burning range. She had a gas range but preferred the wood burning one. “We’ll never taste another of those pies,” Mom sadly reminded us.

After a few minutes, Mom shuffled us out on the porch of the funeral home in Carthage, into the warm humid air of a July evening, telling us to behave as she went back in with the adults. Much later, we drove to my Dad’s parent’s home, where we stayed the night.

My grandmother was gone at the time of her mother’s death

It was unnervingly quiet at my grandparent’s home on Juniper Lake Road. No one was home. There were no ice cream and Pepsi floats before bed, as was my granddaddy’s habit. My grandparents and my uncle, Larry, who was just a teenager, were in Florida on vacation and unaware of our presence at their house. Nor did my grandmother know her mother had died.

In this day before cell phones and computers, it was nearly impossible to find someone on short notice. My dad called the highway patrols in Florida and the states in between with a description of their car, in the hopes they could get a message to my grandma. In the heat of July and the tobacco harvest beginning, my great granddaddy decided it was best to go ahead with the funeral on the third day.

My grandparents arrived home a day later. No one was sure when they would be back, and we were visiting with my other grandparents. They pulled back around the house and neighbors, who had been on the lookout, didn’t see them arrive. My grandmother came into her house and saw the newspaper with the obituary open on the dining room table. Well into her well into her nineties, my grandmother spoke of how upsetting it was not to be present, not to be able to see her mother before her body was lowered into the dirt at Culdee’s cemetery.

Great Grandma McKenzie’s death

My great grandma was in her 70s, which now doesn’t seem so old. She was out in the fields, by her son’s pond, picking strawberries, or so I’d remembered. But that must not be right. The harvest of strawberries in this part of the country occurs long before the heat of July. Maybe it was blackberries or some vegetable that she and my great granddaddy were gathering when she had a stroke. Granddaddy, who was five years older, ran back home to call for help. But it was too late.

Her funeral

We lived in Virginia then. My Dad loaded up the car and we drove south, in time to make the visitation at the Frye Funeral Home in Carthage. The next day, I attended the first of many funerals at Culdee. We sat up front with the family, a couple rows behind from my great granddaddy. He sat on the first row, in a bit of shock. The casket, now closed, was up front, just below the pulpit. After the service, three men on each side carried the box containing the lifeless body of one who had dedicated a lifetime to her family and church out to the adjacent cemetery. There, Mr. Fitch, the preacher, quoted a few final verses of scripture, reminding us of our hope in the resurrection. Then they lowered the casket into sandy soil watered with tears. I’m sure we had a big dinner afterwards, but I don’t remember it. My main memories nearly sixty years later are of my great-grandma’s hands, the dinner in the back lawn, and how happy she was to see us whenever we walked through the woods from our house to hers when we lived next door.

The purpose of the funeral

Long and Lynch, in The Good Funeral, reminds us that taking care of the dead is instilled in our humanity. We have to deal with the body whether it is to be buried, burned or disposed at sea. We also must deal with our own grief, for the loss affects not just the deceased and those close (their spouse or children), but the whole community. So the community comes together to remember, to take care of the body in an honorable way, and to offer up the life that is no more to God. We honor the dead for to do anything else would strike a blow at our own humanity.

Similar memoir pieces from this side of my family

A poem written by a distant relative titled “Out at Aunt Callie’s Place“. His aunt was my great grandmother McKenzie.

A memoir piece about her son, my great uncle Dunk.

From left: My great grandma McKenzie, my father, my uncle Larry, me in the hands of my great grandpa Mckenzie, and my grandmother. Photo probably taken in late 1957 or early 1958

February 16, 2023April 8, 2026

Roy, Utah, & Aimee Semple McPherson

View of Cedar City, Utah from Cedar Mountain, looking northwest. Photo by Jeff Garrison — Cedar City, Utah from Cedar Mountain, 2010 (Lund is in the distance, before the far mountains)

“My mother always told me that if she had enough money, she would have stayed on that train and headed back to Minnesota,” Roy confided to me. This was in the late 19^th Century. His mother, who had met his father when he was on a trip back east, had come west to begin her married life. The train stopped in Lund, a small town along the line that would later become the Salt Lake and San Pedro Railroad. After that, it would be part of the Union Pacific line, but all that was in the future. Lund is in the middle of a garden of sagebrush. The country is barren and flat, but in the distance, mountains rise. In 1898, it was the closest rail hub to Cedar City. It’d be another couple of decades before a spur line was established, linking the city and its iron mines to the larger world. On

Roy’s father was there by the small station, with a buckboard, waiting. He loaded her luggage in the wagon. The train continued westward toward Modena and Pioche. Roy’s parents began their life together with a bumpy and dusty thirty-four mile ride to Cedar City. She would live there for the next eight decades. A couple years later, she gave birth to Roy.

View of Community Presbyterian Church of Cedar City, Built in 1926 and used as a church until 1997. Currently, it is used as an office. — Presbyterian Church 1926-1997

Roy’s father was one of three Swedes to come to Cedar City to herd sheep. In time, each began to save money and acquire their own herds and land. They stood out as Gentiles, non-Mormons, in a community dominated by Latter-day Saints. These three families would later form the nucleus of a Presbyterian Church. While they had been Lutheran, the Presbyterians had missionaries in the region. Roy’s mom agreed to help establish the church if the missionary pastor would teach Luther’s catechism. She would continue teaching Sunday School in that church until she was nearly a 100. She died at 104, a decade before my arrival. However, many of the members at that time still had fond memories of her.

Ranching operations the desert near Cedar City, Utah. Photo by Jeff Garrison — Ranching operations near Cedar City

I spent my first Christmas in Cedar City with Roy and Velma and their son’s family, having a large dinner around their dining room table. I had moved to Cedar in October 1993. My wife had stayed behind to finish up her degree at Buffalo State. The day after Christmas, I flew east to meet her. We would visit to our families in North Carolina and Georgia before driving her car across the country. Around their table, I sat as an “adopted orphan” at Christmas,” hearing their story for the first time.

Roy’s first wife was Vera, who’d died in the 40s. Roy had a large sheep operation by then and two young children. He then married Velma, Vera’s identical twin sister. Velma loved telling of the first time the mailman stopped after she had moved to Cedar City. The poor man almost had a heart attack, thinking Vera had come back from the grave. Velma laughed at my suggestion that she should have let the rumor run wild that God was known to raise the Presbyterian dead.

Roy was ninety-two and still active. But he didn’t get out a lot during the winter, with his son running the sheep operation. The exception was to attend church in January, close to his birthday. For the next three years, he stood up during joys and concerns and brag about his age. That first January he bragged that he was going to be 93 and could still ride a horse. The next January, he stood and bragged that he’d be 94 that week, and still his own boss. His wife leaned over to Edith Kirtly, both of whom were in their 80s and hard of hearing. She thought she was whispering, but everyone heard as she said to her friend, “That’s what he thinks.” The congregation erupted in laughter as Roy sat down, his face red with embarrassment.

Over the next few years, I got to know Roy better and we had many discussions on faith. While he supported the church and believed in Jesus, he struggled with doubts that reached back to his youth. He was a high school student when his father, who was at a sheep camp, had a lantern explode in his face. Glass shivers flew into both eyes. From that point on, Roy and his brother alternated between school and running the sheep. In the summer, they were up on the mountain. During winter, the camped in the sagebrush at lower elevations.

Roy’s mom took his father to doctors in the east and San Francisco, searching for someone who could restore his sight. But the damage was too extensive and there was nothing to be done.

Then she heard of Aimee Semple McPherson, a Pentecostal preacher whose worship services from Angelus Temple in Los Angeles was broadcasted across much of the country in the 1920s and 1930s. Known for her healing, she packed her husband up and they headed to Los Angeles, renting a small cabin not far from Angelus Temple. For several weeks they attended worship services and was visited by Sister Aimee. When she thought he was ready, she had him come up on the stage to have his sight restored. She laid her hands on him, prayed over him, and proclaimed him healed. Of course, his father’s eyes were too far gone. He never regained his sight and confided in his son that he never believed Sister Aimee could healed him but attended to satisfy his wife.

The red hills of Navajo sandstone west of Cedar City, UT. Photo by Jeff Garrison — Cedar Canyon, west of the city

It amazed Roy that I knew about Sister Aimee. A new biography of her had been published a few years earlier and, as one interested in American evangelicalism, I had read it shortly before moving to Utah. In our conversations, I shared much of her intriguing and scandalous story with him.

Roy died in 1997, the year after Utah celebrated its centennial, and two months before the Presbyterian Church moved into its new home. He lived all 96 of his years in Utah. He’d become a successful sheep herder. Although a Gentile in a community dominated by Mormons, he was an important business leader within the community. He even helped the Mormons by contributing to the construction of the second Mormon Stake House, which was just down the street from his house in the 1940s.

Roy was excited that the Presbyterian Church was building a new worship center. As the old church was too small and the new church not yet ready, his service in the funeral home. The room was packed with old ranchers and farmers as well as members of the Presbyterian Church. I preached on the 23^rd Psalm, which seemed appropriate for a man who spent his life running 100s of thousands of sheep up the mountains and out across the valleys that surrounded Cedar City.

Another story from my Cedar City days: Doug and Elvira

On Cedar Mountain in the fall with the aspen in yellow. Photo by Jeff Garrison — Up on Cedar Mountain in the fall

November 18, 2022April 8, 2026

Uncle Dunk

I drove to hospital in Pinehurst the first day I had off. It was the thing to do, especially since my dad was living on the other side of the world and my grandmother, a widow for just a few years, had her hands full. There, in a sterile room, was Uncle Dunk. His name was Duncan Calvin McKenzie, but to everyone he was Dunk.

Dunk wasn’t really my uncle; he was my great-uncle, my grandma’s brother. As a man, he seemed to have as many lives as a cat. He was still living in the old place, his parents’ home, on Doubs Chapel Road, next to where we lived before moving from Moore County when I was six. I remember the old house well, the kerosene heater in the parlor where we’d gather in the winter. In the summer, we’d sit on the back porch unless it was Sunday, then everyone sat on the front porch while us kids climbed in the large magnolia trees whose branches reached the ground, making it an easy tree to climb.

Dunk had come home from work one weekend with the intent on doing some grilling. The coals just weren’t turning white fast enough for Dunk. He was ready for that meat to start sizzling. I’m sure his judgment was already somewhat impaired by alcohol. He tossed some gasoline on the grill.

Dunk was in pain when I was saw him, but he’d live another day. In fact, he’d live another twenty-five years. That gasoline saved his life, for afterwards, till he finally went into a nursing home, my grandma kept a close watch over her younger brother, keeping him mostly sober.

Dunk in the 1930s, working tobacco
with his father and two neighbors

My first memory of Dunk came from when I was just a little boy. I was probably four. My parents had brought an old home, a couple hundred yards east of my great grandparents place, and were fixing it up so that we could move in. Every evening, we’d be over there working, or at least Dad would be working. Dunk, who was still living with his parents, my great-grandparents, just up the road, would come down and help the best he could.

During much of this time, he wore a neck brace then, which made him kind of look like the women from the Karen tribe of Burma with long necks and heads pulled high by metal bands. Of course, Dunk’s brace wasn’t a fashion statement; it was the result of having totaled his car on 15-501. I think it was near the Lower Little River Bridge. He almost didn’t make it then. Despite a broken neck, Dunk did what he could. When not able to help, he’d play with us kids. I’m sure, his keeping us our fingers away from the Skil saws, was a big help. Dunk would late help my father build the copper clad steeple for Culdee Presbyterian Church.

After we left Moore County, we’d only see Dunk occasionally. On time, he’d told my Grandma that he wanted to see us. She went and found him drunker than I’d seen a man before. She brought him home with her and ran him through the shower, then sat in one of her hard maple chairs at her dining room table and poured coffee down him. He cried, saying he was ashamed of his condition. By making him sit there, I wasn’t sure if she was trying to punish him or to use him as a lesson for us kids. I was probably ten or eleven years old and just didn’t know what to make of it all. I still don’t.

A few years later, after Dunk’s daddy died and the old place was getting pretty worn down, my Dad took my brother and me over to see if he was home. Knocking on the back door, he yelled for us to come in. Dad opened the door, but wouldn’t let my brother and me go in. I could see there were four men in the sittin’ room, but no were sitting. They were nearly passed out on the sofa and floor. Seeing us, Dunk struggled out to the back porch, where he held tightly to the screen door in order to remain upright. I think he was both ashamed as well as glad to see us. One of the other men yelled out some lurid comment. Dunk told him to shut up. By then my Daddy was herding my brother and me toward the car. I was probably thirteen or fourteen then and even today I not sure what to make of it all.

As the years drifted on, I’d occasionally see Dunk at Culdee Church when I was in Moore County on a Sunday. He’d be out front on the lawn after the preaching was over, smoking cigarettes and talking to the men. Of course, if he’d fallen off the wagon, he’d be missing among the assembled crowd.

Regardless of his condition, Dunk always remember us kids at Christmas and send us something. At first, it was mostly candy, often a box chocolate covered cherries that would leave a little sticky glue on the corners of my mouth. When I got to high school, he went through a phase of giving me bottles of Old Spice Aftershave, even before I was shaving (something I gave up long before I used all those bottles). Then, thankfully, he started giving me packages of handkerchiefs. This kept up till I was in my forties and I’m sure even today half the handkerchiefs in my dresser drawers were gifts from him.

As he got older, his wounds begin to bother him. During War World Two, Dunk was a pharmacy mate in the Navy. He served on a supply ship in the Pacific, and if I remember correctly, it was struck by a torpedo or maybe a kamikaze. I don’t think it sunk, but some of the sailors aboard were lost. He seldom talked about the war, but it must have bothered him. His back and neck, both of which had been broken at various times from automobile accidents, always hurt. He shuffled around; at least he couldn’t get into too much trouble. He started to go to a men’s Bible Study and attended church more regularly. I reckon it was in his blood as his Daddy and Granddaddy and Great-granddaddy had all served as an Elder at Culdee Presbyterian. He never served as an Elder, but for his last quarter century of his life, he attended faithfully. He also took delight in his dogs.

Dunk reached out to my adopted son. When we’d visit in the summer, he’d take him out fishing on his pond, the same pond I’d first fished in when I was just a tot. I liked that they got to share that together. Both went through a lot. As the boy got older, whenever we talked, he’d ask about Dunk. Dunk also adored my daughter. When he learned she was taking violin lessons, he presented her with a violin that had belonged to his granddaddy, the man for whom he was named. His granddaddy traded a barrel of kraut for the violin, back in the 1860s. Dunk was tormented by demons most of his life, yet deep down there was goodness.

August 17, 2022April 8, 2026

Matt, Virginia City, 1988

That’s me, standing before the church built in 1866-7

Recently I have posted memoir pieces of my years in seminary:

I took the school year 1988-89 off in order to be a student pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Virginia City, Nevada. Over the years since, I devoted much time researching and writing the history of that congregation on the Comstock Lode. This is a short memoir piece of my time there.

###

“Matt, why do you want to join this church?” I asked as I slipped tea.

We had just finished eating and were sitting on the floor on mats, like Jesus and the disciples at the last supper. A low table stood between us. On it was a Chinese hot pot, a ceramic teapot, a bowl of rice, plates, cups, and chop sticks. It had been an interesting meal. Matt told me he once had a Chinese girlfriend who taught him how to cook. I wondered if she used frozen vegetables. There was no crunch to the vegetables in the stir fry. The dish was soggy. It wasn’t terrible, just not very appealing. I kept my thoughts to myself. I was curious as to his interest in joining a church that was a 30 minute drive away.

Matt had been waiting for the question. He pulled a Bible off a bookcase behind him. I took the Bible to be a good sign. Then he opened it and read a passage from 24^th Chapter of Matthew’s gospel, about stars falling from the sky. Now I wasn’t so sure the Bible was a good sign. I had no idea where this was going. Setting the Good Book down on the table, Matt began telling me how the earth was going to soon shift on its axis. This would make it appear as if the stars are falling from the heavens.

My mind was spinning. This was not anything I had been taught in seminary. When he paused to catch his breath, I asked, “What does this have to do with you joining our church?”

“I’ll get there,” he assured me.

I poured myself another cup of tea as Matt continued his discourse.

“You know, the Carson Valley used to be under the ocean. There are places you can find shells embedded in rock.” He pulled a fossilized rock from his bookcase to show me.

“Yeah, it may have once been under the sea,” I quipped, “but that was a few years before our time.”

“It’s going to happen again,” he said.

“What’s going to happen?”

“This is going to be the ocean again.”

Matt went on explain how, when the earth shifts 15 degrees on its axis, the sea would rise. The coastlines would be wiped out with tsunamis. The valley would fill with water.

As he continued on with his monologue, I looked out the window. The Sierras were silhouetted by the setting sun. Looking at those magnificent mountains while listening to Matt ramble on, I visualized what he was saying. It could have been a scene from a bad horror movie. A large tidal wave, at least nine thousand feet high, breaking over the top of those peaks. The thought of it was ludicrous. I had to bite my bottom lip to keep from laughing. But then, I understood.

“I get it! You’re telling me that you want to join our church because Virginia City is soon going to be an island amidst a vast inland sea.”

“Yes,” he said, smiling as if he had finally broken through. “Carson City will be under a thousand feet of water.” He started giving me the layout of areas of the country that would be above water or below it. It didn’t seem to make sense that places like Carson City, at an elevation of 4000 feet would be below water and other places a lot lower would remain dry, but none of this made sense.

Yet, in a smug way, I was glad to know I’d be safe in Virginia City. Come summer, I could sun myself out by the mine tailings, as waves lapped at my feet. There might be still a few nice days this fall. Would I have time to pick up some sunscreen on my way home, I thought to myself, in case I don’t make it back to Carson City before the flood. I began to make a mental list of things I’d need: a lounge chair, beer, flip-flops, some more beer…

I had to force myself to focus back on what Matt was telling me.

“Where did you get all these ideas?” I asked.

“The Bible.”

“Really?”

“Mostly, but also Nostradamus and from talking to a friend.”

I didn’t want to meet this friend.

Next, he pulled a book of Nostradamus from the shelf behind him, turned to a marked page and handed it to me to read. Whoever thought Revelation was hard to understand had obviously not read Nostradamus.

Unable to make any sense out of what Matt was saying, my mind began to drift into survival mood. I needed a strategy to escape from this apartment. I wanted to be back in the real world. Into what time warp had I moved? I’ve yet to been in Nevada a month and discovered it to be a state where people think it’s a good idea to put rabid bat in a pitcher of beer and then drink it. And there was the woman at K-Mart who believes Ronald Reagan is the Antichrist. According to the news, the bubonic plague is making a comeback. And now there are those (or at least two of them), who think the earth is going to tilt in a new direction.

Matt had first worshipped with us the previous Sunday. He came into church a little late. My first impression was that he’s middle-aged, a little overweigh, a little disheveled, but a nice guy. After worship, when all were enjoying coffee and catching up with one another, Matt stayed back from the crowd. I went over to introduce myself. He told me his name and said he wanted to join the church. It seemed a little strange, this being a small church, to learn he wanted to join the fellowship in the same breath that I learned his name.

“Great,” I said, “let’s get some coffee and meet some people.” I introduced him to several members. He was polite, but standoffish and appeared uncomfortable. It was when I suggested we get together and talk about the church membership that he invited me to dinner

Matt was a special case. But then, Virginia City had plenty of special cases. He did join the church, although he never moved to town. Nor did the impending flood occur. Everyone in the congregation thought his ideas were a little weird, but welcomed him. For the rest of my time on the Comstock, Matt taught me an important lesson: “there are those who need the church more than the church needs them.”

Combination Mine Shaft overlooking Virginia City, Summer 2008

August 11, 2022April 8, 2026

The Great Seminary Hoax of 1986

Two weeks ago, in a sermon, I told about the “duck parties” held at seminary. Today, I am posting a story about some nonsense that occurred during my first term at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Other recent posts include memories of Professor von Waldow and Dean Mauser and his secretary. Good memories.

My only experience in dorm-living was my first year in seminary. I boarded on the third floor of Fisher Hall. I stayed in the dorm to save expenses as I still had a house and mortgage payments when I left for seminary (I sold the house soon afterwards).

Across from my room was Ken, a student from Japan. A language whiz, Ken spoke several Slavic languages but needed work on his English. We did our best to help, but who among us will forget the day he asked a visiting professor from Prague a question. Unable to get his question across in English, he switched to Russia or Czech or something strange and the professor answered him in an equally strange tongue. The rest of us sat around witnessing a firsthand example of glossolalia.

The view behind the seminary from 3rd Floor Fisher, January 1987

Down the hall, to the north, was Keith. A United Methodist student, Keith also managed the school’s hockey rink. When not in use, the hockey rink served as the hallway for third floor Fisher. Being from the South, hockey was something new to me and I did my best to avoid the games.

In the room next to mine, to the south, was Jim. Unfortunately, he dropped out before the two of us could finish what would have been a best seller: “A Theological Drinking Guide to Pittsburgh.” Having been used to living in a house, and with nightly hockey matches going on outside my door, getting out to the local bars around Pittsburgh (many within walking distance) was an escape and a way to maintain sanity.

There were many others on the floor, but the four of us played a prominent role in the “perfect storm” that just about got me booted back to the piney woods of North Carolina.

The room to my north, between mine and Keith’s, was empty. Keith read an article on Christian sexuality written by Rodney Clapp. Being a careful reader, what caught Keith’s attention was the author’s name. It seemed fitting a man whose last name was slang for a venereal disease would write on sexuality. Keith decided Clapp needed to be a classmate. He made up a nameplate for the empty room. “That’s Clapp’s room,” we’d tell people, he’s an esteemed alumnus from Pittsburgh and maintains a room here. A week or so later, Clapp’s pretend presence on campus took a strange twist.

Ken, who’d just arrived in American, became fascinated with a certain group of American newspapers generally found in the check-out lines at the supermarket. He read these papers religiously, trying to improve his English and learn about this strange country in which he was living. One day, at the local Giant Eagle Supermarket, he picked up a copy of the National Enquirer, or maybe one of the other tabloids. The lead article featured the story of an unnamed hell-fire preacher who spontaneously combusted in the pulpit. After his particularly fiery sermon, all that was left was ashes. It must be true. It was in print. Such an event should have certainly been studied in homiletics, but I don’t recall it being mentioned.

As no one had seen Clapp recently, it was logically assumed he was the unnamed preacher. Ken posted the article on Clapp’s door. Over the next week, letters from all around the world started appearing, in different languages, offering condolences to Rodney’s family and friends. Clapp’s deeds and misdeeds were recalled.

Around this time, for reasons I still don’t understand, had chapel duty. Normally first-year students were exempt, but for some reason I said I’d do it. I thought daily chapel would be the perfect setting for a “Rodney Clapp Memorial Service.” Somehow, word got out to the powers-that-be what was being planning. Dr. Oman, the homiletics professor, called me into his office and informed me there would be no faux funeral in chapel.

Disappointed at being unable to involve the entire community, we planned our own funeral. Although not a Protestant tradition, we included a wake. We could be ecumenical if it meant a good party. On December 2, 1986, after an evening of basketball (after all, we did have our priorities), a crowd of us gathered in the Fisher lounge for Clapp’s wake and funeral. In the center of the room, laid out like a casket, was the door from Clapp’s room. It was covered with letters of condolences and tokens of our love and adoration for him. Sitting on the top of the door was a plastic container holding some ashes someone obtained.

We gathered around Clapp’s remains and said our goodbyes. We read scripture. Chosen passages alluded to fire. Nonsensical tales about our experiences with Clapp were shared. Taking great liberty with the funeral liturgy, we replaced hymns with more appropriate music such as the Doors’ “Light My Fire” and Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.” Afterwards, as Clapp’s ashes floated out the window and across the lawn, we had a final toast.

Mourners paying respect at Clapp’s Memorial Service, Dec. 2, 1986

With the funeral out of my way, I still had to do my duty in chapel. A day or two later I stood before the crowd of students and professors and delivered one of those boring first year seminary student sermons. The best part of it were a few lines of poetry I quoted from John Beecher, whom I felt deserved an introduction.

The service was dreadfully serious until I was about halfway through my message. Before the service, Jim came into the chapel and took two fire extinguishers off the walls by the doors. Unbeknownst to everyone, he placed the extinguishers on the chancel, one on each side of the pulpit. As I was trying to make a serious point which I’m sure expressed some eternal consequence, someone in the row of students from Fisher Hall noticed the fire extinguishers. He began to laugh while pointing it out to the person next to him. Slowly, like a wave moving across the chapel, each student poked the guy next to him and pointed to the fire extinguishers. The laughter spread. Soon, among a crowd of somber Presbyterians, one pew laughed hysterically. I smirked, bit my tongue, and looked down at my notes. I knew if I looked out upon the gathered congregation, all would be lost.

I’m sure most of those in chapel that day, unaware of the joke that had been building for a month, felt those of us from Fisher Hall were downright rude. And they were right.

I’m not sure who I was trying to impress in a suit. I’m on the left with three classmates (Roger, Vivian, and Doug) as we prepared to head back to Pittsburgh from the 1988 General Assembly in St. Louis. The rest were dressed causal for the trip. This may be the last photo of me without a beard. I grew one in the summer of 1987, but shaved it off early in the fall. After this meeting, I headed West for an intern year and grew my beard back. I haven’t been clean shaven since. As for my hair, well, I’m not sure what happen.

June 23, 2022April 8, 2026

The Dean and his secretary

Dean Mauser

*_{From the internet (it appears as if it was from the seminary’s directory)}*

Two weeks ago, I posted a memoir about one of my seminary professors who had been a tank commander in the German army in World War II. I mentioned he wasn’t my only professor who spent time on the other side during that terrible war. The other was Ulrich Mauser, the dean of the seminary. He was a kind and gentle man. I only took one class with him, a New Testament survey class. But when another professor, Dr. Kelly, had medical issues while teaching on the Book of Acts, Mauser took over and finished out the term. I essentially had him as a professor for a term and a half. But I got to know him in other ways, too.

Unlike von Waldow, Mauser didn’t talk about the war, at least not around me. I remember him mentioning his involvement once. We were sitting together in the dining room at lunch. He sat among a group of students and there may have been other professors. Somehow, the topic of the war came up. Mauser recalled being a student in Germany during the war. As Germany needed more and more soldiers, he received a notice every year to report for a physical in preparation for being drafted into the armed forces. But because of health issues and poor eyesight, he always received a deferment and would return to school. However, in late 1944, according to Dr. Mauser, things had gotten so bad they did care that he couldn’t see. With his thick eyeglasses, without which he was nearly blind, they assigned him to an anti-aircraft flack gun on top of a building in Berlin. As most of the air attacks came at night, there wasn’t even a way to aim. They just pointed the guns up into the sky and shot in the general direction of the drone of engines.

While he wasn’t really involved in combat, the war had an affect upon Dr. Mauser. His family home was destroyed by a bomb. He also became very interested in the Biblical understanding of peace. His last book, The Gospel of Peace, focused on this life-long theme.

Mauser’s studied at the University of Tubingen in Germany where he received his doctorate, writing a dissertation on Martin Luther. He also spent time at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he met his wife. After his schooling, as a young pastor in post-war Germany, he served in a congregation that mostly consisted of displaced people.

My best memory of Dr. Mauser came after a disappointing relationship with Debbie, his secretary. Below, I posted a piece I wrote in 2014, after learning of Debbie’s death from cancer. After Debbie became engaged to someone else, Dr. Mauser invited me out to lunch. We went to a restaurant in Shadyside. As if he was my pastor, he was concerned with my emotional state. Ironically, at the time I was on the top of the world, having essentially completed the Appalachian Trail. While he never appeared as an outdoor type of person, Mauser was interested in my experience along the trail. I learned how it tied to his work on the theme of wilderness in scripture.

When I graduated from Pittsburgh in 1990, Dr. Mauser was winding up his tenure at the school. He had moved to America in 1959, to serve as a chaplain at Oregon State University. In 1964, he began teaching at Louisville Theological Seminary. In 1977, he was appointed a professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Seminary and became Dean in 1981. Turning 65 in 1990, and he faced mandatory retirement as was the seminary’s practice at the time. So, Dr. Mauser accepted an appoint at Princeton, where he taught six more years before returning to Pittsburgh for his final years.

I last saw Dr. Mauser at a Presbyterian Coalition meeting in Orlando Florida in the fall of 2001, just a few weeks after 911. I had not seen him since graduation. He appeared delighted to run into me and we later shared a meal together. He died in 2008.

Ulrich W. Mauser’s obituary in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Debbie, the Dean’s secretary

Written in 2014, after learning of Debbie’s death from cancer:

Debbie was beautiful. She turned heads with her broad smile, big eyes, and hardy laugh. She wore flowing dresses with heels that clicked and gave shape to her calves. And she was the Dean’s secretary. In my first year of seminary, I never thought she would have been interested in me. Then, a month or so before school ended for the summer, she invited me to over for Sunday evening’s dinner at her place. Wanting to make a good impression, I brought along a bottle of wine, Pouilly-Fuisse. I learned she seldom drank, but she seemed impressed and suggested we open the bottle and celebrate. Of course, she had no corkscrew. She suggested she might borrow one for a neighbor, but I told her I thought I had a solution. I ran out to my car. Ever the Boy Scout, I had a Swiss-army knife with a corkscrew attachment in my glove compartment.

On Easter Sunday, I was invited to dinner with her family on Pittsburgh’s Southside. When we arrived at her parents’ home, her brothers were watching a documentary on a race car driver, Elliott Forbes-Robinson. Although I had never been a big fan of racing, I knew him. When I was working for the Boy Scouts, he was an assistant Scoutmaster on a troop on Lake Norman. I recalled the story of meeting him, at a scout camp. When he told me he was a race car driver, I asked if he raced at Hickory speedway. Hickory was a step up from the dirt tracks of the South, but most of the drivers were still amateurs. “No,” he said, “I have not raced there.” “Where do you race?” I asked. He started listing off an impressive list of cities with Cam-Am and such races. I stood there thinking, “Yeah, right, and I’m Daniel Boone.” I later learned he really was a race car driver, although at the time he didn’t drive NASCAR. He did drive those fancy cars and was one of the top drivers in the world. He had a boy in scouts and as he wasn’t racing that week, had come to camp with his son’s troop. Telling the story, Debbie’s brothers learned that I really wasn’t a racing fan, but they were impressed that I had personally met one of the greats.

Over the next few weeks, we began having lunch together in the dining hall and went out every weekend. I suggested a Saturday afternoon baseball game and she was up for it. When I arrived to pick her up, she handed me two tickets! I didn’t know what to say, but as a poor student was thankful. Then I looked at the seats and was humbled. Her brother worked for one of the high-end hotels in Pittsburgh and they had tickets that no one had claimed so he gave them to Debbie for us to enjoy. We sat directly behind home plate, five rows up. I never had such good seats for a major league game. It’s easy to love a girl whose brother arranges to cover the expenses of a date.

Later that evening, Debbie and I walked up a hill and held hands as we watched the sun set. I felt as if I was the luckiest man in the world.

Debbie was close to her family and on another weekend, she and her brothers had given their mother an evening ride in a balloon across Southwestern Pennsylvania. When the mother got in the basket with a few other sightseers and a pilot, we raced along the countryside following the balloon until they finally set down in a cow pasture and we retrieved her mother. This would be a lot easier today, with cell phones, but this was 1987.

The day I left school at the end of the semester, we had breakfast together at a local King’s Restaurant. I wanted to do something special and had purchased some of her favorite perfume, hoping that as she used it, she would remember me. She seemed pleased and we even talked about her meeting up with me in Delaware Water Gap as I hiked the Appalachian Trail. Although we were not in a committed relationship, we talked about picking up where we were at in September.

After breakfast, I drove to my parents in North Carolina and a week later, started my summer hike from Virginia to Maine. At first, she wrote and seemed excited when I called, but as I continued to hike, I heard less and less from her. I knew something was up. Even though I had started hiking with the thoughts of coming back to her arms, I realized this was not going to be the case. When I arrived back at school, I was on cloud nine, having just finished my summer hike, essentially completing the Appalachian Trail completed (I still had a 25-mile section down south to complete). That first day back everyone seemed concerned about how I was going to take being dropped, but I had given up on her mid-way through the summer. I learned she had connected with someone at a wedding (they may had known each other before) and was engaged. One of the kindness things that happened was the Dean inviting me out to lunch. He, too, was concerned with how I was handling things, but we mostly talked about my hike as my head was still in the mountains. After a summer of hiking, our short romance seemed light-years away.

A few years ago, Debbie sent me a message and a friendship request via Facebook. A quarter century had passed as she left her position as the Dean’s secretary shortly after I’d returned from hiking the trail. We chatted a few times and I learned her marriage had been horrible and she had spent most of her life on her own, but that she was blessed with a couple of boys who are now adults. She apologized for having treated me horribly. I thanked her for the apology but told her my life had continued and was going well. Then she told me about the breast cancer. Over the years since that chat, I would occasionally learn through Facebook about how each new treatment was less effective. But she was strong in her faith and always maintained a positive outlook, but at times she’d ask for prayers, and I would pray. In early May, the disease finally took her, and I found myself shedding tears. She was a beautiful woman who was so proud of her boys (her sons and her brothers). I felt a small piece of their pain.

June 7, 2022April 8, 2026

Remembering Professor von Waldow

“You have a great opportunity here,” Professor Eberhard von Waldow said on the opening day of class. “You get to learn the language of God in a German accent.” And then, pointing the stick he always brought into class at me, he continued, “And you even get to learn it with a Southern accent.”

“Was that how they spoke in Judea?” I asked sarcastically. He grinned and continued telling us about the richness of the Hebrew language and how the New Testament was just an appendix to the Old.

This was in the fall of 1987. There were seven of us in the class and we sat around a long oak table in a conference room at Pittsburgh Seminary. All of us were nervous. With his Prussian roots, von Waldow had a reputation for being verbally abusive to the unprepared. But I signed up for his class because I knew it would be small. I would receive individual attention. In addition, the fear of having him humiliate you was enough to make sure I would do the required work. Throughout the academic year, until May, we met in that classroom. Sadly, today, I remember more of his stories than I do about the language.

As a young man, “Waldo,” as some of us called him behind his back (in person you always addressed him as either Professor or Doctor) had been a tank commander in the German army. Most of the time he spent on the Eastern Front, fighting the Russians. Wounded in 1944, he returned to Germany to recuperate. He ended the war on the Western front. With a rag-tag army of kids and old men, his orders were to to help stop the advance of the Allies. Realizing the absurdity of this, he surrendered to the British.

After the war, he became a pacifist and finished his university studies. Like his father before him, he became a Lutheran pastor and scholar. He would teach at Pittsburgh for over thirty years. Living in a neighbor that had many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, he had to confront his past. He made friends among the Jewish people. In November 1988, on the 50^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, an event in which violence against the Jews broke out across Germany, he spoke in a local synagogue.

I couldn’t attend his Kristallnacht talk because I was serving First Presbyterian Church of Virginia City, Nevada as a student pastor at the time. However, we occasionally corresponded and he sent me his manuscript (which, over the years, I’ve lost). In it, he describes being in the school at the time when fire fighters stood back and let Jewish synagogues and businesses burn. His father became upset about what was happening. His father would be twice arrested by the Gestapo, but it was a Russian soldier killed him at the end of the war. In his later years, Von Waldow wanted it known that there were Germans who hated all that the Third Reich stood for. Sadly, as a young man out of high school, he had no choice but to report to duty when drafted.

Eberhard von Waldow occasionally told stories about the war. As an academic, his methodology was steeped in German higher criticism, which many condemn for discounting miracles and divine providence. When asked about his position on miracles, von Waldow told about riding in a tank that had a 500 bomb detonate on the top of the tank’s turret. “I said, “ah, shit” and then couldn’t hear for a few weeks. “But I survived,” he continued. “Some might say it was Krupp armor that saved me, but I know better. Had that bomb landed elsewhere except on the very top of the turret, I wouldn’t be here.”

One day, I wore a pink shirt to class. We were learning about Hebrew vowel points and how certain ones would soften a letter. As a teacher, Von Waldow was quick to come up with illustrations. He pointed to my shirt and said, “Look, Jeff put this white shirt in the wash with a red one and now he has a pink shirt.” I’m sure his conservative Prussian background meant he couldn’t understand a man wearing pink.

Another time, I made some kind of quip about the German composer Wagner. I knew von Waldow was a classical music lover and a big supporter of public radio, but this didn’t get me any extra points. He went off on a tangent about Wagner. The Third Reich had adopted the music of Wagner and he’d heard enough of this music during the war that he never wanted to hear it again. Now, I wonder if the music might have caused him post-traumatic stress.

The room in which we met had a life-sized portrait of a faculty member from either late in the 19^th or early 20^th century. Oddly, because this wasn’t really a Presbyterian thing, the guy in the portrait wore a clergy collar. One day, out of the blue, von Waldow came into class and began to berate this portrait for wearing a collar. At this time, several of the Lutheran students at the seminary were wearing collars when they preached or worked in church positions. But von Waldow was too conservative for collars. As a Southerner, I sympathized with von Waldow. Collars were too formal for me. I’ve never worn one.

Around campus, everyone knew that von Waldow was working on his magus opus, a commentary on the prophet Jeremiah. I took a survey class of Hebrew prophets, taught by Dr. Donald Gowan, another Old Testament professor and prolific author. At the opening of each lecture on a different prophet, Gowan provided a list of commentaries he recommended. The day he lectured on Jeremiah, he confessed he had problems with every commentary available at the time. Then, this man whom I had never heard say anything bad about anyone, said, “When my colleague Eberhard publishes his commentary, I’ll have one to recommend.” He paused and then in almost a whisper continued, “Of course, we’ll all be dead by then.” Sadly, von Waldow never finished his commentary and most of his published writings available today are in German.

In my second year of seminary, at the time I was studying Hebrew, there was campus debate over how frequently to have communion in chapel. Things became comically heated. As a semi-Calvinist, who leaned toward Zwingli, I found this debate to be fodder for satire. But the seminary President became concern and decided it should be discussed. He called for a community townhall. Faculty were ordered to attend. While von Waldow wasn’t happy about it, he followed orders.

The day after the long campus meeting, von Waldow marched into Hebrew class, dropped his books on the table, and launched into a tirade about the spectacle.

“That meeting yesterday was the damnest thing I’ve seen.” Then, contradicting himself, he continued, drawing on his war experiences. “I haven’t seen anything like that since the war. Imagine having a 25-ton tank stuck? We had one buried in mud up to the top of the tracks. You’ve never seen such a mess. But we had the Russians shooting at us and had to do something pretty damn fast. The was the only difference between that meeting yesterday and the war was the shooting. We needed someone shooting to have forced a decision so we could all go home.”

Eberhard von Waldow would continue to teach at the seminary for a few years after I graduated. He died in 2007 at the age of 83. I’m glad to have known him and while I moved theologically away from his higher Biblical criticism as the only way to approach scripture, I am indebted to his teaching. I probably learned as much about preaching in his Hebrew exegesis class as I did in homiletics. I am also in debt to his story, for it could have gone another way. A man of war became a man of peace. I wish he was here to discuss what’s going on in Ukraine, for there was a time in the 1940s, when he commanded 12 tanks across that terrain.

Looking back, it’s interesting that von Waldow wasn’t the only faculty member to have served in the German army. Dr. Mauser, our dean, served for a brief period in the German army and I should at some point write about my experiences with him.

Professor von Walton from clips.substack.com

While the memories above are from me, I found these articles on the internet to be useful and insightful:

Bill Steigerward, “The Nazi Take Commander who became an American Peacenik” (this article originally appeared in Pittsburgh newspaper in June, 1994).

Mark J. Englund-Kriger, “In Memory of Professor Eberhard von Waldow”. A blog post from January 8, 2008.

A letter in Horizons in Biblical Theology. January 1993, this letter was written at the time of von Waldow’s retirement.

Obituary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 19, 2007

March 3, 2022April 8, 2026

Joe’s Fork

“Were you able to dig us some worms?” Granddaddy asked as he got out of his truck.

“Yes sir,” I said, “some nice ones.”

He smiled. We head into the house. Dinner is ready. He stops in the bathroom to wash his hands and removes his cap as he sits at the table. Grandma is across from him, and I sit between them. We bow our heads. Granddaddy prays:

“We thank thee for the food we’re about to receive. Bless it to the nourishment of our bodies and us to thy service. Amen.

Grandma passes around the food. Fried chicken, field peas, corn on the cob, squash, and biscuits. The vegetables all come from her garden. We eat in a hurry. When finished, I run back into my room and change into long pants. I strap my knife to the belt. Granddaddy collects the rods and placed them in the back of the truck along with tackle boxes and the can of my recently dug worms. As we climb into the cab, Grandma berates us to use plenty of bug spray. Granddaddy turns the ignition, then pops the clutch. The truck springs forward. He pulls out onto the highway, heading east. About a mile later, the road snakes down into a hardwood swamp. We cross Joe’s Fork on a small bridge. Looking down, I realize we could wade across without getting our knees wet. As we begin the climb on the other side of the bridge, granddaddy turns right, onto a two-track dirt road that leads back into the woods.

“Where are we going?” I ask as we bounced in the truck and bushes swished along the sides of the truck.

“To McKenzie Mill Pond.”

“What kind of fish will we catch?”

“There should be some nice bream, maybe a jack or a bass.”

“Is the mill still there?”

“No, it burned.”

“How? When was that?” I ask.

“I’m not sure.”

“But the pond is still there?”

“Yeah, the beavers damned the stream back up.”

“When you were a boy, did you ever go to the mill?

“No, it was before my time.”

Realizing I not going to learn anything about the mill, I think I’ll see if there was anything to know about the current residents. “When did the beavers dam the stream up?”

“In the late forties, I think. Your dad was a boy when they reintroduced beavers to this area.” He slows down, then turns hard, pushing the pickup into brush by the side of the two-track road. I realize he didn’t want to block the road, but it didn’t seem to matter. The road with this much overgrowth didn’t appear to be well traveled.

“You sure ask a lot of questions,” my granddad says as he turned the engine off. Getting out, we spray ourselves with bug juice. Granddad puts a wad of Beechnut chewing tobacco in his mouth, then we grab our rods and stuff and walk toward the dam which the beavers had restored.

On the edge of the dam, we drop our gear. The vegetation is thick around the pond. Granddaddy wouldn’t be using his Browning fly rod here, I realize. We’ll both be fishing with worms. I tie a hook to the line on my rod, placed a small weight just above the hook, and attached a bobber about 2 feet up the line. The pond is shallow. Once my rod is rigged and baited, I step out on the edge of the dam and cast into the middle of the pond, just shy of a water moccasin bathing on a log in the waning sun. Granddaddy heads around the pond and finds a place where he could cast his line out and be freed of more questions.

My bobber floats undisturbed, as I swatted mosquitoes and deer flies which swarmed around my head, pausing occasionally to wipe the sweat from my brow. It’s a hot and steaming. No air moves along the creek bottom. After a few minutes with no action, boredom sets in. I slowly reel in the line, and cast it again, right beside that big snake. My cork doesn’t faze it, but neither did anything nibble on my worm. I pull my line in again.

“If you don’t leave your hook in water, you won’t catch any fish.” Granddaddy yells over at me. He normally didn’t say much when fishing. He doesn’t want the fish to be spooked with our talk.

I cast again, this time dropping the hook just inches in front of that big old moccasin’s head. I wait: ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds, a minute. Nothing bites. I didn’t come out here to wait. I reel my line in again and made another cast and then another. The whole time that water moccasin sits on his log position. I wonder if it is dead, but I know better. Is it mocking me? The snake just lies on the log. It is getting on my nerves. I retrieve my line again. Looking in my tackle box, I pull out a large jitterbug, a top floating lure that works wonders on the bass right around dark. Taking off the hook and bobber, I tie the jitterbug on my line, and cast it toward the snake. It fell just short of the moccasin. I reel it in, the lure jittering back and forth across the water.

“What are you doing fishing with that?” my granddad ask.

“Nothing’s taking the worms,” I answer as I make another cast. This one sails across the moccasin and lands in the water, a few feet beyond the snake. It doesn’t move, even with the line lying across its back. I slowly reel, bringing the lure up beside the log upon which the snake has perched itself. I pause. Then I jerk the rod back hard and snag the snake in the back with the lure’s treble hook. The snake snaps around at its unseen assailant, its cottonmouth angrily exposed. It slides off the log with and starts swimming away with my lure, its head high above the water. I let it have some line while tightening the drag.

“What did you do that for?” My grandfather yell, as he beats a path over to me. “That snake wasn’t bothering you.”

The snake turned. Instead of fighting the line, it started swimming toward us, its head propped up like the Loch Ness monster. I stopped reeling as I could see no reason to hasten the encounter.

“What are you going to do now?” Granddaddy asked.

I pulled out my knife and hold it in the same hand as my rod.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“I’ll stick him,”

“Put that knife away,” he yells as he picked up a stick that was maybe five feet long. “Use this.” He hands the stick to me. “You hooked him, take care of him.”

It seemed like a good idea, but now I’m not so sure as this is one large angry and deadly poisonous snake. But then, thankfully, when about twenty feet away, the snake shakes free of the lure. It then turns, and swims in another direction, disappearing in the brush. I reel my lure in. I’d been saved from an angry snake, but now had to contend with an angry grandfather.

“We’re done fishing,” he says, packing up his gear.

As we walk back to the truck on the trail that was near the brush where I last saw the snake, I keep my eyes peeled for a moccasin out for revenge. It was not to be seen. I hear distant thunder. A cloud is building that might bring relief to this hot day. I step into the passenger side of granddaddy’s truck. I know better than to ask any more questions. We drive in silence.

There are no ice cream and Pepsi floats before bed this night. It takes me a while to fall asleep as I worry if hell ever take me fishing again. Grandma has turned off the air conditioning and opened the windows. The curtains fly like ghosts in the cooling wind of the approaching storm. Lightning bolts quickly followed by thunder and each strike fill the room with light. Then the rain comes. Finally, the rain stops, and the lightning and thunder became further apart as the storm moves east. I fall asleep to the drip of water off the roof.

The air smells fresh the next morning. As I come out for breakfast, Granddaddy looks up from the News and Observer he’d been reading and asks if I want to go fishing again.

A copy of a photo of my grandfather’s company. He is second to the right. This photo was taken sometime in the early 70s. He died in January 1977.

###

June 23, 2021April 8, 2026

Mark Brown: Another Williston Memory

I still have Mark’s photo and my “Sugar Bear Ecology Club” card.

The Christmas break from school was just beginning. My church youth group celebrated with a progressive dinner. We travelled around to different homes, one for appetizers, another for a salad, another for the main dish, then the last home for dessert. If we were adults, there might have been a stop for drinks, but being a 10^th grader, I knew little of such a world.

We were at the manse, where the preacher and his family lived, for dinner. In the kitchen, the television aired the local news. Although we could hear it, we pay no attention, as Mrs. Jennings, the pastor’s wife prepared the main dish. Suddenly she came into the room. She was quite upset and shaking as she asked if any of us knew a Mark Brown, a student at Hoggard High School, where most of us attended. Everyone turned to me as she told us he’d been killed that afternoon. While Mark and I no longer shared classes and had gone in different directions at Hoggard, everyone knew we had hung out a lot at Williston, the year before.

Mark reminded me of John Lennon with his long stringy brown hair. He wore tinted wire glasses and often an army fatigue jacket upon which he’d drawn pictures in ink. He looked like a hippie. Mark was a year older than me, having lost a year in elementary school. A car had hit him one day, leaving him with weeks in the hospital and even more time in recovery. By the time he returned to school, he was so far behind that he had to repeat the grade.

Although Mark was old enough to drive, I don’t remember Mark doing so. Instead, he rode his ten-speed everywhere. Once he received a warning ticket on his bike. If I recall, he was riding on Arlie Road. With no other cars in sight, Mark wove in and out of the dotted center lane. A police officer, sitting in a parked car in a driveway, observed this. He pulled Mark, in his bike, over and issued the ticket. Mark didn’t make a big deal out of it, but it was funny to hear him tell the story.

Mark was quiet and mostly a loner. We’d become good friends the year before at Williston’s Ninth Grade Center. Every day before school, Mark could be found at the top of the north stairwell. He would squat between the two bars of the railing, his feet on the bottom bar and his thighs pressed up against the top. He’d then lean forward and hug his knees, perched over the stairs like a gargoyle. Sometimes he’d read; mostly he’d stare. He was often alone. The north stairwell, along with the adjacent boy’s bathroom and breezeway was the domain of those of us who had attended Roland Grice the year before. Although Mark had recently moved to Wilmington from up north (New Jersey, I think) and never really ran around with the pack, his presence in the stairwell provided me the opportunity to get to know him.

Mark’s philosophy was to bother no one. If someone taunted him, he’d ignore them and walk away. He was the gentlest guy I knew, and I respected him for it. At a time when everyone was running around in gangs and the school and city were in turmoil, Mark refused to join in. Instead, he began his own little counter-cultural gang, inviting folks to join his Sugar Bear Ecology Club. Those accepting his offer received membership cards harvested from cereal boxes. We had to pledge to the “Clean Code.”

–Clean up our world
–Liter hurts everyone
–Each member must do his share
–Animals are our friends
–Nature belongs to all of us

As far as I know, there were only three members of the club: Mark, a guy named Joe, and me.

Later in our ninth-grade year, after watching a man climb and hang in slings on the flagpole while painting it, Mark had an idea. His lunch was 4th period, the same time I was in Ms. Gooden’s class. He told me to keep an eye on the flag that day when he was at lunch. I did. Looking out the window wasn’t anything unusual for me, although probably less so in Ms. Gooden’s class as I, along with most of the other boys in the class, had a crush on her. Our class was on the second floor, over the offices with the flagpole right out in front.

Sure enough, Mark climbed the pole that day. On the top, he was eye level with me. He held onto the top like a monkey and swung around the pole, the flag flapping around him. Students flocked to the windows and to the front of the school to witness the spectacle. Mr. Howie and Mr. Barrett, the principal and one of the assistants, ran to the scene. They demanded him to come down immediately. I thought for sure he’d be suspended, but they let him off with a stern warning. At a time of turmoil, climbing a flagpole seemed to be a relatively minor offense.

My dad took me to Mark’s funeral. It was a day or two before Christmas 1972 and held at the Catholic Church on Wrightsville Beach. It was stormy and the tide high. When we crossed the causeway, the waves lapped at the few boats still in the water that late in December. This was my first time in a Catholic Church. Much of what happened seemed strange, except for the crying. Everyone cried. Even my father, who’d only met Mark once or maybe twice, seemed visibly moved.

Mark’s death didn’t seem fair. Mark had been riding on the back of his brother’s motorcycle. Someone ran a red light at the intersection of Oleander Drive and Independence Boulevard, hitting the bike. His brother was able to hold onto the bike and ride it down. Mark was thrown off the back and across two lanes of traffic. He’d beat death once before, but not this time.

May 29, 2021April 8, 2026

Frank and Roosevelt and the making of bread

I am currently taking a week off and spending it at my dads. It’s hot here, but we have been out paddling kayaks in the morning. The wind has been too strong for us to go out into the ocean fishing, so we’ve been paddling kayaks over to Masonboro Island in the morning before the wind rises. There will be no sermon this week as someone is preaching for me. Below is another of my bakery memories:

Former Bakery Stories:

Linda and my beginning at the Bakery

A College Boy in the Bakery

Harvey and Ernest (Oven Operator and Pan Stacker)

Frank and Roosevelt (Bakery, Part 4)

Like Ernest and Harvey, I also inherited Frank and Roosevelt when I began my stint as the night shift supervisor at the bakery. For nearly a year, I came in first at night. I had about thirty minutes to review the day’s orders and set the schedule. Then Roosevelt reported. He took my schedule, we discussed it a few minutes, then he headed back to the mixing room.

Roosevelt’s work

Roosevelt’s first task was to weigh up buckets of ingredients for the various breads we would make in the morning. As the mixer held nearly 3000 pounds of dough, the ingredients he measured were small in quantity and generally fit into a five-gallon pail. This included salt, whey (a milk substitute), enrichment, and preservatives. Sometimes another bucket contained alternative sweetener such as brown sugar, honey, or molasses. After shifting, white flour blew into hopper on top of the mixer, which had a scale to weigh the flour. Gravity then fed the flour to the mixer. Whole wheat, cracked wheat, and rye flour came in 100-pound sacks. Corn syrup, shortening, and fermentation brew (the yeast) were also added mechanically.

Huge 65 horsepower motors turned the mixer. Water cooling sleeves formed a metal jacket around the bowl which kept the dough cool From what I remember, it took about 10 minutes to mix a batch of dough. Time varied slightly basked on the the strength of the flour and the ingredients used. When ready, Roosevelt tilted the giant bowl, dumping the dough into a trough.

Frank’s work

From the bottom of the trough in front of the mixer, a pump pulled the dough to the make-up area. There, Frank oversaw the operation. A divider cut the dough into six portions of the proper weight. Then it dropped into the rounder, a spinning pot that formed the dough into a ball. After that, the dough balls rose a bit before running through the sheeter that flatted them (like a pizza dough). A machine rolled these flat portions into the shape of the bread. At the end of the process, they dropped into a pan. When things ran smoothly, it was a marvel to watch. For things to smoothly operate, the machines had to be properly set and the dough the right consistency.

Roosevelt’s background

A seaman earlier in his life, Roosevelt had served as a cook on an oil tanker. He once talked about working on a ship hauling oil from North Sea to Philadelphia. In a storm, the ship’s hull split. The ship was in danger of sinking. Two ocean going tugs reached the ship and helped it limp into Jacksonville, Florida. This took eight weeks instead of their normal week-long crossing. During this time, Roosevelt slept with his life vest. Reaching port, the captain told Roosevelt the ship would be ready to sail in about ten weeks, but he decided that his days on the sea were over. Although he still had his seaman papers, he came back home and took a job at the bakery. Roosevelt proclaimed himself to be a Black Muslim, but he wasn’t a radical. He certainly didn’t appear to mind having a white supervisor. Since he also smoked pot and drank alcohol, I wondered how devoted he was to his proclaimed faith.

Frank’s problems

A dependable worker, Roosevelt made my job easier. Frank wasn’t so dependable and sometimes made my job a living hell. He often came in late. Several times he reported in a condition in which he wasn’t capable of working. This became a problem as it’s hard to find a last-minute replacement at 2 AM. I often had to do his job, too. One night he didn’t show up. When Bobby, who ran the slicers and wrappers, reported three hours later, he found Frank passed out in his car. I sent him home. He cried to the personal manager later that day, who reinstated him. I could only place another written warning in his personal file.

A few months later, the personal manager regretted his actions. Frank, while on break one morning, had gone over to the slicing and wrapping area. When the bread entered the slicing area, the outside was firm and crust. This allowed it to be sliced easier. It also allowed the loaf to be carved upon. Joking around, Frank scratched with a knife on the bottom of a loaf, “Fuck You.” After showing it around as if it was a joke, he placed the loaf back onto the conveyor. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Our regular bags were red on the bottom. Unfortunately, at the time, we were bagging the bread in a special “private label” bag that had a clear bottom. This bag found itself on a shelf of a store in South Carolina and then in a family’s home. The family didn’t appreciate Frank’s handiwork. A day later, our General Manager received an angry call from the head of the grocery chain. They dropped their contract with us. We lost several thousand dollars a day in sales. The chain reaction began. The personnel manger and I were informed to find out who did it and to fire them on the spot. As Frank had shown this loaf to several employees, it only took a few questions to pin it on him. We called Frank into the office. When confronted by the General Manager, the Plant Manager, the Personal Manager and me, he admitted he had done done the “deed” as “a joke.” Frank was fired. I had the task of walking him to his locker to see that it was cleaned out and to escort him to the door.

Sad endings

I ran into Frank a few years later. Bitter, he complained that we “couldn’t take a joke.” I shook my head and said “whatever,” realizing he hadn’t learned anything from the consequences of his actions.

I never saw Roosevelt after I left the bakery, but a decade later, I ran into another supervisor from the plant told me the sobering news. Roosevelt had returned to the sea. Sometime later, Roosevelt’s body was found floating next to his ship. He had been stabbed, The assumption was that a drug deal went bad. My heart grieved over his demise. I had enjoyed working with Roosevelt. I can still see him laugh, with a prominent gold tooth in the front of his mouth.