The reunion took place in the early nineties, but I have to
go back to 1953 to tell the story. In that year I came off the farm in Clyde,
Texas and enrolled as a college student at Abilene Christian. The Korean veterans were returning to
school, and we had a record enrollment that fall. I was among the last of the freshmen to
enroll, and they didn’t have enough teachers for the mandatory freshman English
class. Della Pack, wife of Frank Pack,
one of the Bible professors, was pressed
into service and I was assigned to her class.
For some reason that I still don’t understand, she thought I
had the potential to write, and provided the first encouragement I ever
received to pursue that discipline. She
was filled with warmth, kindness, understanding and patience. She taught be the basics of English
composition. When I wrote A Sense of Belonging, she was one of the
two persons to whom the book was dedicated.
When I entered my junior year, I enrolled in one of her
husband’s classes, and subsequently took every class under him that I could
get. Frank Pack was raised in
Tennessee, and became a preacher. Later
he received a PhD from Southern Cal. He
was one of those rare individuals with high academic credentials, who had an
equally powerful pulpit presence and was able to communicate with the common
man. He was the kind of man who could hold
his own in a group of scholars discussing complex philosophical and theological
issues and talk to a farmer about his crops.
While he was in California he met Della, who was from
Kansas. I consider both of them among
the most significant mentors in my life for different reasons. It was always a pure joy to be in their
presence. Brother Pack (I never could
bring myself to call him Frank, although he was known by his first name by most
of the people in the churches he served) taught in Abilene for several years
until he was made chairman of the religion department at Pepperdine, and was
also selected as the pulpit minister of the Culver Palms church in Los Angeles.
Now fast forward to the nineties. A Sense
of Belonging had just been published, and I was invited to present some of
that material at the Pepperdine lectures.
Just before that time I happened to see Brother Pack at the lectureship
in Abilene. He told me that he was
teaching from my book in his Sunday School class, and asked if I would come to
Culver Palms and teach a lesson from the book on the upcoming trip to Malibu. In the first place I was absolutely stunned
to learn that he was teaching from my book, and I was overwhelmed that he
wanted me to come to his Bible class and share some of the material. I was
honored and intimidated at the same time.
I spent the first five minutes or so in class singing the
praises of Frank and Della Pack. After
the class a lady came up to me and said, “You have no idea how much damage you
have done to this church.” I was
horrified. I was trying to think what
kind of slip of the tongue had gotten me into so much hot water. Then she said, “We’ve been trying to teach
Frank Pack humility for thirty years, and you destroyed it all in five
minutes.” I was able to breathe again
when I realized she was kidding. She
said, “I had you going there for a minute didn’t I?” She most certainly did. Obviously she her relationship to the Packs
was a little different from mine.
The Packs invited us
to a brunch at the Los Angeles Yacht Club. I couldn’t imagine being so
generously treated, but they acted like we were doing them a favor. Sad to say, their health declined soon after
that and they both died. We never saw
them again, but we have remarkable memories.
On my last trip to California, the Culver Palms church
invited me to preach for them on the Sunday after the close of the Pepperdine
lectures. Everyone seemed to be anxious
to share Frank and Della Pack stories with us.
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