My senior year in high school had almost as many disappointments as it had joys. First, in September Tommy left to enter Ouachita Baptist College (now University) and immediately began dating a girl there. They were engaged in few months and were married the next summer. Then Bro. Bledsoe resigned to become pastor of a church in Missouri Without him, ben, Tommy, Gerald and Harold our youth grout at the church was not very active.
I was again elected football cheerleader and began to date Wayne Jones who was on the football team. Wayne didn’t share all my convictions, but he respected them. We stopped dating after Christmas but were good friends through the remainder of the year.
In January of 1955 Daddy suffered a series of heart attacks and was hospitalized near death for more than a month. He never fully recovered although he was able to return home and lived for a year. I think this was Daddy’s year of rededication. During this year he became more and more concerned about spiritual things. He suffered a stroke in his sleep on a March afternoon in 1956 and slipped quietly into death twelve hours later.
The joy of graduation was mingled with disappointment of not receiving a college scholarship which I had been promised. I was told later that the committee had reversed its decision because the scholarship was not enough to cover all my expenses and my family could not provide the balance.
I started working full time in the store where I had been working. Had it not been for my pastor and his wife, Rev. and Mrs. William Smith, I might have forgotten the church completely. I spent a great deal of time with them and in the activities of the church. The remainder of my time was spent with Rudolph Whiteside, a Methodist ministerial student who was also very interested in missions.
My church activities included singing in a girl’s trio organize by Mrs. Ed Williams, our choir director Our moment of glory cane when we were asked to sing “End of a Perfect Day” at the wedding of a girl in our church.
Some months before Daddy died, he had asked me to consider joining the local Order of Eastern Star. I really was not interested since I had seen how many of the women who were active in it were not as active in church as they should have been. However, I also knew some who found time for both, so I agreed to do it. I found it to be a rather empty experience when compared with those I had had service Christ in my church. I was fairly active until I left for college in the Fall. I never attended a meeting after that, but some well-meaning friend paid my dues for several years thinking that I would eventually find time for it again.
I had to help with some expenses at home and was unable to save much money for college. My high school principal arranged for me to secure a student loan enabling me to enroll in Ouachita in September of 1956. A few months after I left for college Mother sold most of our household furnishings and moved to Little Rock to live with my sister and her family.