Reclaimed Memories
ca. 1928 - 1931

hen Troy reached Parkersburg he stayed with friends by the name of Harless. Mrs. Harless' son, Holly Newell, was Troy's best man at our wedding. Troy stayed with them and felt very welcome until he went to work for the Baldwin Tool Works, on March 20, 1928. He worked there and boarded with a family in the vicinity, until he was called back to the Vitrolite Company in Vienna, on June 18th. This was the plant where he had worked before we made the move to Akron. Elma had married and also lived in Akron by that time, but her widowed mother-in-law lived with her youngest son in Vienna. Troy made arrangements for us to board with her and sent for me.

We stayed with Mrs. Mills for several months. I immediately went to work at the Viscose Plant in South Parkersburg. This was a rayon manufacturing factory, and recent new source of income for hundreds in this area. My very dependable mode of transportation was the interurban streetcar which I boarded going and coming from work. We could not have found a more dependable and loving baby sitter for Marion. He was beginning to talk but did not acquire many new words. Mrs. Mills was such a quiet person. I doubt if she talked much to him during the day.

We were financially able to buy furniture and rent a small house by November, and a closer neighbor kept Marion during the day. She had two or three children and Marion was chattering like a magpie by Christmas. We lived here for a few months and decided that we were prosperous enough to pursue the "Great American Dream." We contracted to buy an attractive five room bungalow, with a bath, two porches and a full basement. This was to be ours after the payment of $3,000.00, plus interest. We were able to furnish it nicely with new furniture, and were very proud to have our friends and relatives see what we had accomplished, after our vagabond months of moving around and near hopelessness.

(Marion drove us around to see that house again while we were on vacation in '91. It looks much the same on the outside as it did when we gave it up to enter the ministry.)


As we sat looking at the house I told of finding him sound asleep on the bottom step of the porch, with his head on the second step and his small hand grasping the tongue of his little red wagon. As I told the story I felt again such a wave of emotion, as I had felt when I gathered the warm, plump little body in my arms that day sixty-two years ago. Marion took a picture of the house (above) in 1991.

("Buddy" Clinton & Beulah (Thrash) were married in the living room of this house)

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After we moved to Vienna and the family had gone to Akron, we joined and attended regularly the United Brethren Church, the closest one to where we first lived when we settled there. We continued to be faithful in our church attendance, before and after Marion's birth, until we went with Ruby to Akron. We did not attend church in Akron and really lost spiritually during the hectic months which followed. While we were with Mrs. Mills Troy joined a dance band. They always played on Saturday evenings at a place called "Wildwood Inn," a few miles from Parkersburg and quite often had "jigs" at other places. Depending on the type of dance or gathering Troy alternated between the violin, guitar and clarinet. The members of the musical group divided equally between them what was given for the services, which usually amounted to about five dollars each.

The church at that time did not look kindly on its members dancing, much less helping to supply the music! Harry Miller, our pastor was very vocal from the pulpit about this. We had not renewed our church attendance after the "Akron experience," but were still members of the church. When Rev. Miller heard that Troy was playing for dances he visited us at Mills's to try to get us to turn from "the error of our ways." Had he been more diplomatic and kinder in his approach I think we might have renewed our allegiance. But when he "laid down the law" Troy became angry and said if he and his church were that narrow he could take his church and go to hell. Rev. Miller's departing statement was, "Well, Brady, you will find that the church can get along a lot better without you, than you can get along without the church."

This was not a good approach in dealing with a twenty-three year old "low down sinner," whose worst faults were dancing, playing music for others to dance and smoking. But we both knew that he was right. We did miss the church more than it missed us. Our milkman, Mr. Hudson, who was also a member of our church, had a more Christian and loving approach. One morning he handed Troy a quart of milk and said "Brother Brady, I am praying for you. We miss you in the church."



Stark Shomo, a school teacher and a member of the Baptist church in town, had always been Troy's best boyhood friend. A revival was going on in his church and Stark asked Troy to sing as a member of a quartet, for revival services. The message of the visiting evangelist really put Troy under conviction and he resolved to get things straightened up between him and the Lord and to do this he felt he had to apologize to Rev. Miller. He very reluctantly dragged his heavy feet up the steps of the parsonage, on his way home from the Baptist Church. It was a very cold night and he timidly knocked on the door of the parsonage. Rev. Miller came to the door and after the greetings were exchanged he exclaimed "Come on in Brady, or you will freeze us to death!" They talked and prayed until three o'clock in the morning.

Troy still felt that all was not yet right as he started on across the intervening space between our house and the parsonage. The way that he expressed it later was that the Devil said to him, "You are not going to tell your wife about this are you? You will be playing for another dance on Saturday night!" I answered the Devil, "I am not only going to tell my wife, I am going to tell the whole world! With that declaration such a feeling of joy filled my heart that I felt I was floating on air the rest of the way home."

Blossom was staying with us at that time. As one would expect we were all asleep at that hour, but certainly not allowed to remain so after Troy hit the door. His conversion was an emotional one and he had to share it that very night! The next Sunday at the service he told what had happened to him and from that time on we both were active in the work and responsibilities of the church. Soon we were both teaching Sunday School classes and Troy was made Class Leader the year before we left for school in Dayton, Ohio. That was a very responsible position, for it meant that he planned and conducted the mid-week services on Wednesday night. This was before many people had radios, so those services were well attended as were the two worship services on Sunday.

You, my grandchildren, cannot imagine the difference in the way people dressed in the late twenties and the way they dress today. All the women wore their good clothes, including hats and gloves when they went shopping. Sometimes, it seems to me now, they must look in the mirror and say to themselves, "Isn't there some added "garb" I could put on to make me look worse?" I guess a lot of people think they are making a statement about their individuality.

Well! That is a long opening statement to get to what I wanted to write!

It was just about the first really warm, spring day of 1929. Marion had just passed his second birthday. I had dressed him for town and he was playing with my pearl handled finger nail file. I put on my spring hat and my white gloves and he came from the kitchen into the dining room where I was standing. He looked at me and said, "Muver, you look pretty." I replied, "You look pretty, too, Marion." He said, "I want to hug you." I stooped and he put his arms around my neck and said, "I sorry I broke your finger nail file." He had slipped the file under the brace on a kitchen chair. Instead of slipping it out from under the brace, he had tried to get it out by raising it up, and the pearl handle broke from the file. Such flattery from a little fellow to soften me up for the bad news!

During the revival services at our church I did not always try to attend. Marion was too small to be kept up that late. Those services sometimes lasted for two or three hours. One evening Troy came home from the evening service depressed even though he reported that the sermon was inspiring and there had been decisions at the altar. He said, "There is something wrong with me. I don't seem to be enjoying the revival as I should." I replied, "Troy, I think I know what is wrong with you. You are feeling a call to the ministry and you are not willing to answer it."

His face lit up and he said, "Would you be willing to go with me into the ministry?" I responded, "If you really feel that is where the Lord wants you, of course, I would be willing to go." Troy made the announcement to the church during that revival service and we began at once, with the backing of the church, to prepare to enter the Seminary in the fall of 1931.

I do not remember the date, but sometime during the late twenties, probably 1929, there was a chimney fire at my parent's home at 395 Conmore Court, in Akron, which did some roof damage. Mother had a light stroke and my dad brought her to Vienna to stay with me until the repairs could be made on the house. She was with me three weeks and while there, made a comfort for Marion's baby bed. This is still among my "treasures." The stroke had affected only one leg, causing her to limp when she came, but had entirely cleared up by the time Dad came for her.

Dad had a nervous breakdown and was taken to the hospital on March 18, 1931. The next day Ruby and I drove home. I had made arrangements for Mrs. Miller, the pastor's wife, to keep Marion for me for we only expected to be gone a few days. Of course Marion cried when we left and Mrs. Miller told me later that he sat on the front steps and cried as loudly as he could. Finally she said, "Marion, we do not allow little boys to cry in front of the house and if you are going to cry you will have to go around back." Marion looked at her a few seconds; stopped crying and replied indignantly, "I'll just not cry then!" He was not going to be banished to the back yard where he would not have an audience.

Ruby and I arrived in Akron in the afternoon. We had stopped to see Dad before reaching home. He was so worried about Mother. She had been having a lot of angina pain and was bedfast much of the time, but she was able to come downstairs and be with the family that evening. She planned the sleeping arrangements for the night, saying that I could sleep with her. Buddy and Beulah were dating and Buddy was there that evening. Mother and I went on upstairs to bed where we talked for a short time. One of the things she said was that she wished I could stay for awhile. I promised that I would go home with Ruby and get Marion and come right back. After we stopped talking I dozed off. She woke me up when she said, "I think I will sit up for awhile. My heart is hurting." I got up and helped her on with a robe and she sat down on a chair at the foot of the bed and rested her head on the bed footboard. In about fifteen minutes she said "I feel better now," and came back and sat down on the edge of the bed. I sat up and removed the robe from her shoulders and was waiting for her to get into bed. She fell back across me, dead. (Why do I cry as hard as I did when this happened more than 60 years ago?)

Mother was less than a month past her 58th birthday when she passed away. Just thirteen days later we received word that Dad had had a massive heart attack and had died in the hospital. After her death we were afraid to tell him the truth and he died not knowing that she had gone. He always asked about her and we would just say, "She is fine," which was the truth, but in a different realm than we led him to believe at the time. It was almost a relief to learn that he had joined her. They were so close that we did not see how he could deal with her death.







Troy's decision to enter the ministry occurred during the next revival in our church, after his conversion experience of March 30, 1930. Revivals were always held during the winter season, so it was now sometime between November of 1930 and the beginning of March in 1931.

I had written my parents that he felt called to the ministry. Mother had written back that it was a wonderful calling but she would be so sorry to see us give up our little home and try to get the schooling we needed; that ministers always seemed to have such a hard time financially. Troy had had two good promotions since returning to the Vitrolite Company. At that time he had a good, secure job in the main office of the plant. It was such a short time after those letters were written that both my parents died.

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