Reclaimed Memories

e made our usual visit to Bradenton in March of this year. We stayed with Bill and Norma Phillips. Troy and Bill grew up in the little town of Junior, West Virginia, but Bill was several years younger than Troy. They always enjoyed being together because of their background and knowing the same people over the years. They owned the nicest restaurant in Elkins while we were there and often invited us for their Sunday smorgasbord. They both accepted Christ under Troy's preaching. Their two sons were small boys at that time.

Billy was quite an extrovert, but Leonard was more retiring. One Sunday Billy, who was about four at that time, marched to the front of the church with his hymnal and stood beside our choir director to help him with directing the congregational hymn. They were both in the beginner’s class one year in Vacation Bible School. One day the teacher finished with the lesson before it was time for the next activity. She suggested that they sing and asked if they knew any songs. Billy spoke up and said, "I know 'Stepping In the Light' and 'Rum and Coca-Cola." I don't believe we have ever sung "Stepping In the Light" at church since, without my thinking of Billy.

On our way back to Sharpes an out of state couple made a left turn right in front of us in Ellenton and their bumper damaged our front right fender and light. The couple was lost and had stopped to study their map. They admitted their fault and took us back to Phillips. We drove a car their insurance company furnished and came on home leaving our car to be repaired. A young man whom I had as a fourth grader in Orange Ridge School did the repair. The date of the accident was 3-8-1982.

Elma had an emergency gall-bladder operation while visiting in West Virginia and landed in a Parkersburg hospital. We went to see her on April 26th. Her health improved after she got over the operation. We stayed that night with Jim and Opal Reed. We visited with Miles and other friends between visits to the hospital and on the way home spent the night of the 28th with the Rexroads. The next day we visited with Bland and Helen. We went on to Elkins and stayed with Rolan McQuain and Troy preached the next morning in Elkins.

Kathy and Paul Pitt, winter visitors (as we were then) to our Sunday School Class in Cocoa, stopped June 10 and stayed three days on their way to their home in New York. We took them sight seeing.

Our good friend, Nell Simpson, went to join her husband on September 16, 1982. I wrote of this couple earlier.

On our way back to Florida we stopped again with my niece, Annis Ruth and her family at Smyrna, Georgia. They are such a close and loving family. I'm sure my sister, Opal, would be very proud of them. I wish her grandchildren could have known her. Smyrna is on the outskirts of Atlanta and the traffic is so bad or we would have stopped more often. Sister Ruth and Harry were there, as were Beulah and Buddy, also on their way to Florida. We almost had a family reunion.

The Brady Trilogy  I  Reclaimed Memories - (1991)  I  Pop Troy's Anthology - ( 1992)  I  Kinfolk - (1994)