My Co-Workers - Charles and Jim (1)

It Wasn't All Serious Business

 

Our mission team in Jamestown consisted of Charles Williams and Jim Sheerer.  Jim and Charles had been roommates at ACC.  They later joined the Navy together and have been close friend throughout their adult lives.  Charles married Joyce Sheerer, Jim’s sister.   We shared a close relationship with them and still enjoy spending time together although that doesn’t happen very often.  They both now live in Oklahoma

In the Navy Charles and Jim had been yeoman, which is the name the Navy gives to office workers.  They set up our offices in similar fashion to that of the Navy. One day in frustration, I said, “Everything’s so Navy around here that I feel like I need to ask permission to leave the ship when I go home.” Charles never missed a beat.  He simply said, “Permission granted.”  

They were not above practical jokes.   One day I walked down to the barbershop at the other end of the plaza from our offices.  When I came back, the lights were turned out. My office was in complete disarray.  Things had been turned over it. My first thought was that somebody had broken in and vandalized the place.  I didn’t know what had happened to Charles and Jim.  Often when I’m alone I talk out loud to myself.  I don’t remember what I said, but I was flabbergasted by the whole situation and expressed my frustration verbally.  I said things like “What’s going on here?”  I’m pretty sure I didn’t use any profanity.  In a few minutes I heard laughing.  The two of them couldn’t contain themselves any longer. Charles and Jim were hiding in the restroom.  They had set up the whole deal just to see what my reaction would be.  I think I provided their entertainment for the day.

You have to realize that these two guys are normally quite serious, so when  they broke out of their usual mode and did something funny, it was hilarious.   On another occasion, Charles had an appointment with some people of questionable character.  He went alone, but Jim and I were somewhat concerned about him.  When he came back he had a white rag wrapped his head, and was limping.  He has been through a bizarre experience although he hadn’t suffered a physical attack.  He just thought he might gain some momentary sympathy from us.

On another occasion Charles went with me to what was supposed to be a Bible study.   When we got there, we discovered that the man we were planning to study with was in a state of inebriation.  He said to me, “Norman, I know what I’ve got to do.  I’ve got to kill a man.”  Of course I tried to talk him out of it.  Then he produced an enormous hunting knife.  In the calmest voice I could manage, I asked him to give me the knife.  I promised him that I would give it back the next day if he still wanted it.   To my surprise he surrendered the knife.  He never asked for it back.  I kept it for several years, until the handle finally fell off, and then I threw it away.  I was sure glad to have Charles as a backup on that one.

Our Last Visit with Ann's Father

During the summer of 1964, Ann’s mother, father, sister, and brother came to visit us in Jamestown.  We had a wonderful time together. Mother (as I always called my mother-in-law), Dottie, Robert, Ann and I drove to New York City to see the World’s Fair, which was held in the Queens.  Ann’s father would not go with us.  He wasn’t about to set foot in New York City.  He said if we could arrange to get a helicopter to let him down in the middle of Yankee Stadium, and pick him up as soon as the game was over, he would go.  Otherwise, Jamestown was as close as he would get.  He stayed home and kept Elliott, and that turned out to be the highlight of his visit.  In my mind, I can still see him walking down the stairs of our apartment.  It was the last time I ever saw him alive.

Before they came we began construction on a  home or our own.  It was a pre-fab job, and you could get a loan without a down payment if you would do the interior painting yourself, and put in the yard.  The payments were about same as rent, so we went for it.  We moved in sometime in the early fall. We had barely moved in when we got the message that Ann’s father had suffered a  heart attack and died. We got the call about 10 o’clock in the evening.   We figured we wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, so we got in the car and left about midnight.  I drove all night and into the next afternoon, when I gave the wheel over to Ann somewhere in Illinois. We had purchased another Rambler following the wreck, and one of the blessings of the Rambler was the ability to let down the right side of the front seat and make a bed.  I reclined on the bed and crashed, and Elliott sat beside me.  When I woke up we were in the middle of St. Louis at rush hour.  The lights were apparently timed at 50 miles per hour.  I looked up and saw the speedometer and realized we were driving bumper to bumper.  Ann said, “Lay back down; cover your  head and close your eyes.  I’m going to get us through here.”  That was before there were very many interstate highways..

It has been about 16 months since we left Texas.  Our time there was bittersweet because of the loss in the family, but we did have opportunity to visit friends and loved ones in Waco, Houston, and Clyde.   We stayed nearly a month before returning to New York.

Jeff Robert Williams was a good man.  I liked him from the day I first met him.  I’ll never forget standing under a tree on the back side of their place at Tater Hill and asking him if I could marry his daughter.  I remember him telling me that he had not approved of many of her suitors but he did approve of me.  We enjoyed fishing together, sports, and many other interests.   It was a special joy to be around him when he watched sports on television.  The officials never got their calls right, and he was quite vocal in expressing his opinions.  He did not attend church on a regular basis, but he was a believer.  He knew the Bible quite well. I’m not sure what all his reasons were for leaving the church out of his life.  He did a good job of raising his family, and I still miss him until this day.  He is buried in a cemetery just south of Waco.

The Challenge of Becoming New Yorkers

See, They’re Not Freaks

Our storefront church experience was interesting to say the least. We attracted some people who were disillusioned with other religious experiences, some who had personality disorders, and others who made short term commitments before deciding they weren’t looking for what we offered. We sought to engage ourselves in the life of the community, and made friends with people from all walks of life and religious affiliations.  

Shortly after we arrived, Ann, Joyce and Nona Sue joined up with the newcomers organization.  They were invited to a special program at the Chautauqua Institution.  The Chautauqua Institution is located on Lake Chautauqua a few miles from Jamestown. It was started in the 19^th century to encourage the arts, music, literature, public issues and religion among other things.  Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his famous, “I hate war” speech at Chautauqua. The programs take place in July and August.  If you go during July and August, you’ll pay a stiff admission fee unless you get in for some kind of special program.   Ann got to go during the sessions a couple of times.  Once she got to hear the pianists – Ferrente and Teicher. On another occasion she heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  That gives you an idea of the quality of the programming.   During the off season you can visit the grounds without paying a gate fee.  The newcomers group decided to plan an excursion to Chautauqua.  Ann, Joyce, and Nona Sue managed to get us guys to do the baby sitting, and they went to Chautauqua.   On one side of the grounds, they’ve built a scale model of the Holy Land. All the Biblical sites are identified and you can walk right up to them.  Chautauqua Lake becomes the Mediterranean Sea. The model is that large. 

A young lady, who came on her own, was desperately looking for someone with whom she could share the time.  These three Texas ladies sounded like fun, so she tagged along with them.  At one point they discovered the Holy Land model.  These three preacher’s wives were ecstatic.  As they identified various geographical locations, Joyce announced, “I’m standing where Moses stood.”   I’m sure their new young friend was probably thinking she’s joined up with a pretty bizarre bunch.

Of course when we moved to New York, we all spoke (and still speak) with a Texas drawl.   When I was in speech class at ACC, I was told that I had the worst case of a West Texas drawl they had ever seen.  I’ve still got the Texas drawl, but it’s a bit more sophisticated.  I probably sound like I’m from Dallas.  Because of that, and because we were meeting in a renovated pool hall, and because the people of the area were wondering why Jamestown would need another church, we were looked on with some degree of suspicion during the early years.  Store front churches have a bad reputation in the minds of some people.  They often think of them as fly-by-night, visionaries, who lack stability.  They’re afraid you’ll come in with some kind of hair brained fund raising scheme, con gullible people of out their money, and skip town.   We had to live with that stigma in the beginning.

One day, Jim and I went to call on one of our members.  She had found the Church of Christ somewhere in the South, and wanted to cast her lot with us when she found out we were there.  When we got to her house, we met her grown daughter, who proved to be a likeable person and seemed to enjoy our conversation.   We socialized for awhile, and the daughter seemed to warm up to us.  Right in the middle of the conversation, the woman we had gone to visit turned to her daughter and said, “See.  They’re not freaks.”  Obviously her daughter opinion of us had been somewhat negative until she actually met us.

Getting the Church Started in Jamestown

We also needed to find a place for the new church to meet. There was a little shopping center on the West Side of town that had a building which was about  20 feet wide and 80 feet long.  I began to see the possibilities or our being able to meet there.  By the time Jim and Charles arrived, I was able to begin negotiations for renting that property.   The property was adequate for our purposes, and the shopping center solved the parking problem.  When they arrived Charles and Jim agreed that this was the place, and so we rented it.  We did some remodeling so we could have offices and classrooms.  We even had a kitchen.

One or our problems was trying to find a way to baptize.  I think it was Jim, who negotiated with a tinsmith about building us a metal tank that we could use for baptizing.  But there was the problem of how to assure that we would have hot water in the winter time.  I heard that farm stores carried water heaters to warm stock troughs, and I thought that would be just the ticket.  I soon found out however, that those heaters only breach the ice.  I asked the man at the farm store, if he knew of anyway to maintain room temperature with that kind of heater.   I’ll never forget his response he said, “Sir, what kind of animals are you watering?”   We finally settled for running a hose from the cold water tap to the tanks.  We would then add buckets of hot water, and it proved to be a fairly viable solution to the problem. 

In July we started meeting in the converted pool hall.  Fourteen people indicated they wanted to be members of the new church.   That included seven of us from the missionary families.  Within a few weeks we grew to 28, but growth was much slower after that.

We did something of an advertising blitz.  We had raised money for a “working fund.”  All of this money was used to advertise and promote the new church.   Charles brought an offset press with him from Texas.  We bought time on the radio.  We published large ads in the newspaper, and we printed a teaching magazine.  A lot of people came to look us over, and within a few months, we were actually bringing people to Christ.  It was an exciting time, and we faced challenges that had never confronted us before, but that was part of what made Jamestown special.

On to Jamestown

In May of 1964, we headed for Jamestown.  Churches of Christ did not have a congregation meeting in that city when we moved there.  We knew of two families who were driving to Bradford, Pennsylvania on Sundays.  It was about a 120 mile round trip for them.  A couple who lived in that area wrote to us and invited us to stay with them until we could find living quarters.  Our plans were to stay there two or three days and then find a house.  They had not told us they lived in mobile home.  Actually, they had added a couple of rooms on the side, so it was bigger than the one we live in now.  Within a couple of days we realized we had a sizeable task on our hands in finding living quarters.  We went from wanting a house to a downstairs apartment to anything that was livable.

Within a few days, our friend, Jerry Cox, drove a truck over from Schenectady to deliver our goods.  Trouble was we had no place to put them.  We had to put our stuff in storage. Jerry was a young man from California, who was working for GE in Schenectady.  We began a lifelong friendship with him which I was driving over to Schenectady to preach on Sundays during that time we were in Albany.  Last year, Jerry and his wife, Lois came to see us.  They live in Wisconsin, and we spent an incredibly enjoyable weekend renewing our acquaintance with Jerry and getting to know Lois.

We spent several days searching for housing and struck out on every lead.  Ann became greatly discouraged.  We had launched out on faith, but our faith was being severely challenged.  One night Elliott said to her, “Mama, I want to go home.”  She said, “Elliott, we don’t have a home,” and started crying.  We all knelt by the couch and asked God to help us find a home.  The next day I had absolutely no success in following leads from the paper.  In desperation, I just started driving up and down streets.  Eventually I came to 129 Fulton Street where I saw a sign that read, “Apartment for Rent.”   It was an upstairs apartment, but I went in and looked at it.  It was a huge two bedroom apartment.   I hurried home, and picked up Ann and Elliott.  We looked it over and quickly rented the apartment.

We had already spent several days in our house hunting and we were expected to find housing for the other two families when they arrived from Texas in June.   To our amazement we found housing for them somewhat easily.