I recently had the opportunity to worship in a church in Sumter, South Carolina, that I had attended faithfully as a single man in my twenties more than 35 years ago. In the mid-1980s, stationed at nearby Shaw Air Force Base, I attended a local Bible church where many of the congregation clearly loved Jesus Christ and His Word. In my several years there, I connected with an older couple in the church, Herman and Rachel.

I recently had the opportunity to worship in a church in Sumter, South Carolina, that I had attended faithfully as a single man in my twenties more than 35 years ago. In the mid-1980s, stationed at nearby Shaw Air Force Base, I attended a local Bible church where many of the congregation clearly loved Jesus Christ and His Word. In my several years there, I connected with an older couple in the church, Herman and Rachel. Herman was born before 1920, was reared in Marion, South Carolina, and, like many young men during the Great Depression era served for a time in the 1930s in the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). When the United States entered the Second World War, Herman wanted to serve in the military but was married and with a child on the way. His wife, Rachel, was also from the town of Marion. (I recall one of them sharing with me that their family’s first telephone number, a party line – was either 9 or 1J – that was all.) Their first child, I’ll call her “Patsy,” was born early in 1942.[1]

Expecting that he could serve without moving far from home, Herman enlisted in the Army Air Forces late in ’42 or early ’43, becoming a crew chief on the B-17 bombers that famously were carrying the fight to Hitler’s Germany from the skies. (Contrary to his expectations, he ended up moving around and was stationed for a time at Kingman, Arizona.) After the war, Herman returned to South Carolina, and residing in Sumter he worked for a cleaner’s, a bank, and, later, as a traveling salesman first with an auto parts company, then a hardware store. With the hardware store, his territory extended from Sumter to the east and south, down to Georgetown, S.C. He dealt with a lot of people in his career, and Herman didn’t know a stranger, as the saying goes. He loved people and loved to talk about the Lord Jesus and the Bible with them. Rachel liked to say that Herman never went anywhere without seeing someone he knew. Once on a family trip to Indiana, it was only on the way home, somewhere in Tennessee, where that record remained intact. Patsy recalled her daddy always said to the children growing up, “If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours, because they need it more than you do.” Herman lived that saying. He also read the Bible at home with his family. Patsy felt he lived before the Lord in a way that she could see – not perfectly, of course – what Christ was like.

By the time I met him, he had retired. He and Rachel became my surrogate grandparents in those days. I well remember going to the Shoney’s in town with them, and it was difficult for us to finish a meal. That was because Herman knew everyone there, or so it seemed, and wanted to talk with them and they with him. (On my recent visit to our old church, I drove right past that Shoney’s as I followed Patsy to her home for lunch.) Patsy’s son, whom I met on my recent visit, shared that he still runs into strangers around the state who knew his granddad, who went home to his Lord in 2000. Patsy says the same about folks all over Sumter. Herman’s lifelong companion, Rachel, followed him to her Lord about five years later.

In his latter years, Herman developed Alzheimer’s and eventually moved into a Methodist home in Orangeburg, S.C., for the care and convenience it afforded. Patsy shared that in her dad’s time there, he had a roommate, a former pastor. On occasion, as Patsy visited from Sumter, she would find Herman and his roommate sitting literally “knee to knee” in their room, their Bibles open on their laps. Herman’s roommate also suffered from Alzheimer’s. Neither man could read his Bible any longer, but they had them open anyway, talking about God’s Word together, which both of them knew very well. The fact that one was white and the other was black mattered not at all. They both loved Jesus and His Word – and that was all that mattered.

Forrest Marion is a ruling elder in Eastwood Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Montgomery, Ala.

[1] To protect her identity, I chose to call her “Patsy” because she has been enjoying a book on George Washington’s family life. George called his wife, Martha, by the nickname, Patsy.