A tribute to my Grandmother

Last week we went to Dallas to visit my grandmother who is now 99 years old and whose health is failing. Recently she had a bout with pneumonia and was hospitalized. During that visit they discovered that her aorta was 75% blocked and her time left on this earth was limited. We had not seen her in 2 years, so we felt it was a good time to go see her for what may be the last time.

Lillian was born in 1910 in Ewing, Lee County, Virginia, near the Cumberland Gap. She was the oldest of three children, and had two grandmothers who were Cherokee Indian. Lillian went to gradeschool in the two room Elydale school house, which today is no longer standing. Grades 1-3 were in the first room, and and 4-7 were in an upper room. She had to walk about 2 miles to school. Lillian became a Christian at the age of 12, and was baptized in Indian Creek near her home, the same place where my dad would one day be baptized.

She went to Ewing High School about 6 miles away by car. She graduated in 1930.When she was 21 in 1930, Lillian went to Hiwassee college in Madisonville, Tennessee, training to be a teacher. She lived on the third floor of the college dorm. After one year of college, she got her first teaching job in Virginia, a little way down the country road from where she grew up. She taught there for one year, the Fall of 1931 and Spring of 1932.

She only had around 20 students in a one room school house, which she enjoyed. Many of the children were relatives. The beginners would sit on the front row. Her oldest student was 17 years old. This older boy helped with janitorial duties and building the fire in the wood burning stove. The school had outdoor toilets, and from time to time students would be caught out in the toilets smoking. She would teach school all day, and walk there and back from her home.

It was during this year that she met my grandfather, Dale. One day after she returned home from teaching, her mother was ready to go to church at Bethany church one evening for a revival, and asked Lillian to go. She told her mother, "Oh, I'm so tired, I've walked all the way home after teaching school all day. I don't think I want to go." Her mother said, "Oh, yes you do. There's a young man preaching there." So she told her mother, "I'll go just like I am if you let me sit in the back seat of the church so nobody will see me." They always had large crowds at these revivals. The church had an old pump organ. When Dale wanted to sing a special number, "I Choose Jesus", the boy who usually played the organ couldn't play it, and so the preacher's wife began motioning with her hand for Lillian to come up and play. The preacher's wife and Lillian were good friends. So Lillian went up and played the song for Dale, and that is how they met. She once commented that "he sang very well."

Dale soon became the regular preacher at the Bethany church, and began making house calls at the home of Lillian's parents where Lillian was living. Lillian's brothers, Morrison and Joe (who was sixteen at the time) would play baseball in the yard, and Dale would play ball with them and stay to have a meal with them. Dale would hold baptismal services in the creek behind Lillian's home. One day the sister of one of Lillian's students was going to be baptized, so Lillian let the class out early and they walked down to the creek to witness the baptism. Dale and Lillian began courting by writing letters back and forth.

In the summer of 1932, she went to Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, to take college algebra, public speaking, and music. In the Fall of 1932 she returned to Hiwassee and graduated in the Spring of 1933 receiving a life time teaching certificate. Dale and Lillian were married on early 1933 in Athens, Tennessee, not far from Johnson Bible College where Dale was then in his junior year.

Dale still had a year to complete at Johnson Bible College. But Lillian still wanted to teach school. Because jobs for men were scarce during the depression, a law had been passed in which no married woman could teach. After they were married, Lillian stayed at home with her family while Dale lived at Johnson Bible College.

They then moved a lot, following one preaching job after another. They moved to Rural Hall, North Caralinia, near Winston-Salem, where their first son, James was born in 1935. From there they moved to Champain-Urbana, where they ministered at the Weber Street Church for one year. Next they lived in Ogden Illinois, about 20 miles away, where their second child, Janice was born in 1937. Then they moved on to West Lebanon, Indiana. While there they were approached by a committee from the Second Christian Church in Danville, IL, to take a preaching position in Danville, Illinois After moving there, their third child, Charles Tracy, my father, was born 1939. Sixteen months later, Ernie, their fourth child, was born when Lillian was 29 years old.

They then moved to Mountain City, TN around 1940. From there they moved to Jacksonville, Florida in 1941, but only stayed about 7 months because Dale began having asthma problems. Then they moved to Woburn, Illinois, near Greenville. While there, they were asked to take a position at Belleville, Illinois, so they moved to Belleville and ministered there for five years.

After this, Dale began a church planting ministry out of Collinsville; he started 7 new churches, with the help of the Mississippi Men's Fellowship. They lived in the housing project behind the First Christian Church in Collinsville, which he helped to start. He started two churches in Iowa, three in Missouri (Owensville, Columbia, O'Fallon). Part of the time he lived out of trailer and worked the fields. He taught "singing school" at Mulberry Grove while the lived there when Tracy was in first grade.

In the late 50's Dale settled in Collinsville, and stopped travelling as much, as he was getting older. Lillian started teaching again when Tracy and Ernie were in highschool while living in Collinsville. Dale also enrolled himself in McKendree College, Lebanon, Illinois, and was certified as a teacher, teaching 18 years. Lillian finished her A.B. degree.

Dale did preach for a while at Beardstown after his son, Tracy, and his wife, Cathi, left there to serve in Barbados for a year. After Beardstown, he began teaching in East Saint Louis, while Lillian continued to teach in Collinsville. During this time Dale preached at his last church, the Holly Oaks church near Collinsville.

After he stopped preaching, Dale and Lillian attended the Collinsville church part of the time, the Chapel Hill church and the Holly Oaks church.

After Dale died in 1987, Lillian contined to live in Collinsville. She later sold their home and moved to an apartment.

Lillian was a school teacher for a total of 20 years. Lillian taught bible study classes at various churches for 19 years, including Edwardsville and Collinsville.

In her later years Lillian has enjoyed reciting poetry at public gathering, and even at her 99th birthday was able to recite them with clarity.

She and her husband, Dale, leave behind a great legacy, having planted dozens of churches, having mentored many Christians in their faith and having been a positive Christian role model to their 4 children, 11 grand-children and 22 great grandchildren and 2 great-great-grandchildren as well as many others whose lives they have touched.