Today in Taft at First Baptist was senior recognition day. We had two. One I will mention, but not by name.
The young woman was born when I was pastor there eighteen years ago. I went to the hospital to visit she and her mom when she was two days old. Amazingly, I am around eighteen years later to be a part of honoring her at church on high school graduation week.
There is more: Her grandfather and grandmother on her mother's side were both town doctors in Taft. Dr. Rose was stricken with Alzheimer's and spent her last years not knowing any of her family and many friends. Her husband, Dr. John, took good care of her through it all. He became mostly deaf. His favorite pastime was working in a woodworking shop behind his house. Bob was a good friend and worked there also. Bob had been the town police chief in earlier years. It was
there in that little workshop that Bob built a giant cradle for our first grandchild, Courtney. It was big and beautiful. We had it shipped to them in Chicago. It cost over a hundred dollars to mail!
This week-end that little girl also graduated from high school in Miami, Oklahoma. It was simply too far a trip for any of us to make. Two little girls, now grown, but who never met.
That's the story. Not too exciting to you perhaps, but kinda' touching for these two aging grandparents down here in Rockport, Texas. This story will never be repeated. Cradles have been replaced by folding beds of all kinds from China. A doctor couple would no longer think of giving their lives in a little cotton-picking town in South Texas. Such is life and it's endless stories of births and deaths and change.
