Fund Raising Trip (4)

Disappointments and Pleasant Surprises

Things smoothed out after we got to Texas.  Ann spent most of the time in Waco, and I spent most of the time on the road.   We were gone for six weeks and I visited church in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.  I only struck out at one place – Shreveport, Louisiana.  I went to Shreveport and hosted a breakfast for church leaders in that area.  I probably had the largest turnout that I experienced in any of my visits, and I didn’t get a single positive response.  I never went back to Louisiana until I moved to Minden in 1992, and even ended up living in Shreveport for 11 years.  Isn’t it strange how things worked out?

Fund raising is an interesting experience.  I’m not very good at it, but if you do it, you learn a lot about the way people think.  Some are excited about your proposal.  Some are skeptical.  Some are hostile, and some are downright greedy.

I remember two experiences in that trip that great impressed me.  I was making calls in Austin.   I had made several contacts one day, and nothing turned up positive.  I finally just decided to go to the Firm Foundation and shop for books.. I’m a little bit like an alcoholic in this respect.  I’m drawn to bookstore like flies are drawn to flypaper.  Ann tries to keep me out of them.  I knew the lady who managed the bookstore.  She was part owner of the Firm Foundation, which at that time was one of the most influential journals published among Churches of Christ.  While I looking at the books, she walked over to me and handed me a check.  I folded up the check without looking at it, thanked her, and I thought “That was nice.”   It would have made my day if I received a $25, $50, or $100 check.  After she walked away I opened it up.  The check was for $1000.

One Sunday evening I visited a church in the Houston area, and I was invited to the home of the preacher after the service.  As we were eating, a lady entered the room and handed me a $100.00 check.  She explained to me that her three sons were impressed with my presentation, and they had decided they wanted to give up their school lunches for the rest of the year to help with our building project.  They figured $100 would be about the cost of the lunches.  After she left the preacher explained to me that the woman’s husband had been killed in an accident about a month prior to that.  I was overwhelmed.

I spoke somewhere every Sunday, made presentations at breakfast meetings, took elders out to lunch, and did everything I could to make contact.  In Lubbock, a friend took me to a barbershop.   The man who owned the shop was the elder in charge of US Missions at the Broadway church.  I made my pitch between haircuts.   Broadway gave us a thousand dollars.  Right now I don’t recall the exact amount of money we raised on the trip, but we ended up with enough for the down payment, and we would then be able to proceed with the building project.   It was a significant amount of money for the sixties.

It was late March when we finally returned to Jamestown.  When we left Texas, spring had just burst out into magnificent color.  As we drove north we watched spring slowly die.   As we turned off the Interstate at Erie, Pennsylvania, it started snowing.  That was our welcome home.