Pilgrimage of Joy . . .

"HE BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH"
W. Carl Ketcherside

I am writing this chapter on the forty-eighth anniversary of our wedding. I am doing so because it is also the thirty-ninth anniversary of our arrival in Saint Louis. Nell and I had come to the city a few weeks before and rented a modest cottage on Page Avenue, and then returned to Nevada to go through the traumatic experience of closing out one phase of our earthly sojourn. By the afternoon of June 23, 1937, the moving van backed out of our graveled driveway and started the journey across the state. Soon after, we followed in our automobile, and after staying all night at a motel enroute, arrived at our new home the next morning to find the movers there awaiting our coming.

Almost immediately we were caught up in the work of the congregations. I use the word in the plural because the brethren had decided not to await our arrival to plant another community of believers. About fifty of them banded together and purchased a modest meetinghouse at 5344 Lillian Avenue, in the northern part of the city. A great many of the most talented brethren were associated with the new effort, but there were men of promise remaining with the original congregation, some of them still quite young. The older congregation held its mid-week meeting on Wednesday night and the new one on Thursday night. On each of those nights brethren from both places were together exploring the Word. On Sunday nights there was an exchange of speakers and it was as if one large family, living in two houses, met together for visitation and sharing.

The Thompson and Bilyeu families bought a sizeable acreage in the beautiful and fertile Florissant Valley, and Brother Leonard Bilyeu developed five acres as a kind of playground for the brethren. Every Fourth of July, all of the brethren from congregations on both sides of the Mississippi River gathered for a day of physical relaxation and spiritual uplift, and in late autumn all returned again for a wiener roast and a time of rejoicing in the presence of one another. There was a closeness among the families such as is seldom seen, and although rigid discipline was maintained in the congregations, it was not heavy-handed and authoritarian.

I began at once a door-to-door visitation in the area adjacent to the Manchester site, and soon a number of brethren joined together to place an invitation in every home in a carefully mapped-out territory. Meanwhile the brethren in the northern part of the city were knocking on fifteen-hundred doors, and when I was free I went to work with them, helping to take a religious census which became a valuable aid in our future endeavors. Both congregations began to grow numerically and the fruit of hard work and fervent prayers could be seen. I do not recall ever seeing a more makeshift baptistry than the one at Manchester Avenue. It consisted of a steel stock tank installed beneath the floor of the speaker's platform, but scores of people were immersed into Christ and no one ever made a complaint about the inconvenience.

Before the first year was ended it became apparent that we were ready for the second phase of our plan. We had two congregations functioning without a special minister and with a leadership which knew how to involve the membership in active participation. A different speaker delivered a message of edification and exhortation each Sunday morning and evening, and the classes at midweek meetings were taught by various brethren who made diligent preparation. Open expression of different views was encouraged in the studies, and although firm opinions were set forth, I do not recall any rudeness or imposition. I took my turn in speaking, but most of the time I listened and learned from clothing salesmen, production line workers, bookkeepers, night watchmen, bakers and others. All of them drew upon incidents in their own lives to illustrate the message for the rest of us and we were thus permitted to hear a great many modern parables.

It was now time for us to share our life in the Lord on a wider basis. The brethren met for several lengthy sessions to talk about and plan the approach we should take in helping to develop the talents and abilities of those who were eager to prepare themselves for greater service. At the outset it was agreed that we would not organize anything. I would simply teach the Word of God with the Bible as our only textbook. The studies would be made available to any person, regardless of age, who wanted to come. There would be no tuition or charges of any kind. We would have a six-weeks course in the winter, on the same schedule as the public schools, starting at 9:00 a.m. and closing at 4:00 p.m. Each week there would be two night sessions of two hours each. One of these would be held at 7121 Manchester Avenue, the other at 5344 Lillian Avenue. All day classes would be at the Manchester Avenue address because of the accessibility to modestly priced eating places in the area.

Members who wished to do so would open up their homes and rent sleeping quarters to students. Other students would find such facilities in private homes near the place of study. This was never a problem and as time went on many of the students made a profound spiritual impact upon the homes where they rented rooms. One day each week the sisters from each congregation would bring home-cooked food at noon and serve it in the basement to all who wished to partake. It was expected that on these two days there would be sufficient food remaining so the out-of-town students could eat again that evening. So many persons were directly involved that the congregations were alive and active and all were sharing in a great learning experience.

A good many preaching brethren attended, and a number of young men and women who had just graduated from high school came to study before entering college or university. From the outset it was agreed we would not try to develop a certain class of brethren. We were afraid this would lead to a clerical caste. We decided to abide by the dictum of Benjamin Franklin, the gospel preacher, who said, "Teach the whole Bible to the whole church, and the leadership will rise to the top as cream rises on the milk." Ten congregations in the area opened their pulpits every Sunday to men who were attending, and thus heard a different speaker every Sunday morning and night. Some of these never intended to become evangelists, but many of them did become elders at a later date.

It soon became apparent that we could extend the period of intensive study and we doubled the time to three months. We did a great many interesting things together although the class grew to approximately one-hundred. Every Thanksgiving Day we studied until noon and then went to a nearby Masonic Temple where we had rented a huge dining-hall for the occasion. We had a basket dinner followed by a program of edification in the afternoon at which anyone could speak briefly about what was upon his heart.

When we studied about the death of Joseph and the embalming of his body, I took the whole class for an afternoon at the beautiful art museum. I had been accorded the privilege of lecturing on Egyptology in the "mummy room" and frequently the talk on the technique of embalming, made especially vivid by the sarcophagus on display, attracted a number of tourists and visitors who thought it was a regular feature presented by museum personnel. When we reached Exodus and Leviticus, we went on Friday night at sunset to Temple Israel where we occasionally out-numbered the Jewish worshipers at this first sabbath service. I became so well acquainted with the senior rabbi, Dr. Ferdinand M. Isserman, that he frequently announced, "We have Dr. Ketcherside and numerous of his disciples with us tonight, and after the blessing of the Torah I am going to request that he come forward and bring us a greeting." I never failed to express our gratitude to the Jews present because their fathers had guarded the sacred oracles and given us the Messiah to sit upon David's throne.

Every passing month in Saint Louis brought new triumphs of the Spirit, but there was an air of foreboding over the country which aroused fear and unrest in the hearts of the people. The name of Adolf Hitler began to appear on the front page of the newspaper every day. In March 1938 the German regime annexed Austria. In September goose-stepping troops occupied the Sudentenland in Czechoslovakia. In the same month Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Great Britain, sought to halt further inroads by signing the Munich Pact, representing a policy of abject appeasement. Hitler continued his ruthless acts of aggression and Chamberlain was forced to declare war on Germany on September 3, 1939.

Meanwhile we continued with "business as usual" in Saint Louis, although most of us realized that the United States would become actively involved. As President Roosevelt began to step up the preparedness program people began to move to the city, attracted by jobs and higher wages. The meetinghouses were filled on Sunday. The contributions grew perceptibly. Meanwhile, when Germany invaded Norway and the British forces were defeated, Chamberlain gave way to Winston Churchill, who told the British people, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

All over our country, factories began to hum with intensified acceleration. Munitions manufacturing plants worked around the clock. Bombing planes were turned out with the precision of clockwork. Great army camps began to spring up in strategic locations, and it was at one of these posts my father became the first civilian casualty of World War Two, losing his life on October 25, 1941. He had hired on as a carpenter supervisor at the largest wage he had ever drawn in his life. He had dreams of paying off his debts in a very few weeks. For the first time in his life he would be free of the burden of owing money to others. He told my mother that as soon as he made enough the two of them would take a vacation and return to the place where she was born and lived as a girl.

He was sent to Neosho, Missouri to do construction work on Camp Crowder, but he was able to work but three days. The heavy autumn rains had fallen for days on end and the field was a quagmire. On the third day after his arrival, my father was working on a high scaffold bolting sections of a huge prefabricated dining-hall together near the roof. A shudder went through the structure and those who could leaped from it as it began to collapse. It drove the body of my father four feet into the earth and almost every hone was broken. He survived long enough to whisper his name and that of my mother through the bloody froth bubbling from his lips, and then the spirit fled from the crushed and broken tabernacle.

I went to Neosho to meet my mother and claim the body and we rode back to Topeka together. I think we were numbed by our loss. When the mortuary closed the night before the memorial service was to be held, I asked permission from the mortician to stay for a few minutes. He allowed me to do so, and we were alone for the last time on earth — a boy and his dad. As I looked at him it seemed that he moved. It appeared that his chest raised and lowered as if he were breathing in gently the precious oxygen which we all inhale without thinking about it. But I knew it was fantasy. I would never be able to speak to him again in the flesh. He would never hear me preach again, and I would never hear the good news from his lips. I made him a promise that l would keep the faith until we met. I closed the door softly and walked out into the night.

When we arrived back in Saint Louis and I examined the mail there was a postcard from my father. It was written the night before he was killed. He told me how pleased he was to be in a place where there was a congregation which he could help without taking any financial aid. He also told me that he was sorry to have to be away from home and then added a phrase which seemed almost prophetic: "Sometimes we have to be absent from each other so our joy will be greater when we meet again." I still have the card. At the time when I first saw the old familiar handwriting, I thought, "He being dead, yet speaketh!"

A short time later I wrote an article for a special issue of Macedonian Call which was devoted largely to the life and death of my father. I am taking the liberty of sharing with you the first rather lengthy paragraph:

I stood with bowed head beside an open grave a few weeks ago. The sun had hidden her face, and a gray sky wept tears, as the chill of the autumn afternoon crept into the blood of those who stood to look down upon the mountain of flowers surrounding a simple casket. I stood with my hand upon the shoulder of one of the dearest women on earth to me — my mother, for there before us cold and rigid in death lay her husband and my father. The last song had been sung at the mortuary a short time before, and now a faithful brother in Christ was speaking his final words. Many of those who stood near were wiping away the tears which stole silently and unashamedly down their cheeks. But I could not weep for him who had gone on before. One does not weep for the hero who dies in his struggle for principle, who surrenders his armor to the only enemy strong enough to conquer him — death! I have often wondered as I stood beside other graves as the speaker, just how I would feel when I stood beside one as a mourner. I knew now, and somehow the emotion was different than I had imagined. For mingled with the indescribable pang of regret that I would never hear my dad speak again, there was an almost glorious feeling, an uplifting thought bordering on happiness, that he died triumphant, uncompromising. I knew now what Paul meant when he said, "We sorrow not as others which have no hope.

The world is emptier today than it has ever been for me, and heaven seems strangely closer than I ever conceived it. But overcoming that feeling of personal loss is the joyful thought that the grave cannot always be victorious over our beloved dead."

My father was doing personal work in Riverside, California, going from door to door, soon after Daniel Sommer died. He knocked on the door of one of the elders of a congregation composed chiefly of members from Texas. This man said, a little contemptuously, to my father, "I see where your leader died." Without a moment's hesitation, Dad replied, "Yes, and if you will read a little further on in the same book, you will see that he rose again!"