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It was quite natural for Beth and me to spend time together as two friends who shared a loss, or, at least, what we each perceived to be a loss. We often talked after church. Sometimes our conversations were about the two people who had broken our foursome. But sometimes we just enjoyed talking together, often about spiritual things, and lessons the Lord was teaching us. We were very comfortable with each other. It was easy for us to talk about serious things and to pray together. And I am not completely stupid. The thought occurred to me that Beth would make some Christian young man a good wife. Bob’s loss might certainly be some other guy’s gain. Something else began to happen in 1961, even before Beth and I started talking. The Lord was working on me about how He wanted me to spend my life. One of my friends from youth group had commented one day that I should consider being a pastor. A pastor! Me? Hardly! But one afternoon at the Pharmacy stockroom, when Mrs. Norris was attending a class and I was alone, and no labs were scheduled so no students were coming to get supplies, I talked it over with the Lord. At first I thought He might just want me to go to a Christian college, like Bob had done. But where would I get the money for that? As I prayed about it and tried to listen to what the Lord was saying, it was becoming clear that the Lord wanted me to enter the ministry. Me? Ministering to people? Preaching? Why, I had for so long wanted to write and work on a newspaper. How could I give that up? I had always been much better at writing than at confronting people verbally face to face. And, if I were to go into the ministry, how could I get the training I needed at Wayne State? WSU offered majors in just about everything. But it was not a seminary. Christian ministry was not its forte. It was not even on the menu. Later that day, after work, I sat in a student lounge in one of the buildings on campus and looked out the window at a construction site. The university was building again — it seemed it was always building — and the site was barren and bleak as the cold winter wind blew loose construction materials around the site. I began to think my life was something like that, barren and bleak. I had lost my girlfriend, and now it seemed the Lord was asking me to give up the career I had always dreamed about to do something I knew nothing about and didn’t think I was cut out for. I shared that experience and that feeling with Dr. Mac in his study a few days later. I had asked him to meet with me. He said, “Tom, your life is not barren. God’s hand is on you. And if God wants you in the ministry, He will enable you to do what He wants you to do.” Then he said something that was really an encouragement to me, something I still remember him saying even today, over forty years later. “Tom,” he said, “ever since you came to our church I have felt the Lord had something special for you. I have often thought that you were our church’s gain, and your previous church’s loss.” “And maybe Janet’s loss, too,” I thought to myself. Somehow I had begun to think that Janet did not have the depth of mind, or heart or spirit to take on the things that God might want to put in my life. I began to think she might smother in my life. There was that old sin of pride again. Janet was God’s child, too, and He had a plan for her life as well. If it did not involve me, that was not necessarily a loss for either of us. But that is what I thought, sinner that I am. So I continued to pray. And that is when Beth and I started spending some time together, not romantically, but just as friends. We prayed together frequently. And soon the Lord had convinced me. He did not create me to work on a newspaper. He created me to serve Him. I saw my advisor at college later that spring and discussed my major, which had to be declared before I could begin my junior year. I chose communications with an emphasis on speech. This had always been a challenging area for me, and it was certainly a skill I could put to good use in any kind of ministry to which the Lord might lead me. So, with speech as my major and Beth as my friend, I began the next year of college at Wayne State University. In spite of our protestations, it was obvious in our conversations together that Beth was not completely over Bob, and I was not completely over Janet. However, Beth and I spent several interesting dates together. On July 5, 1963 (the date is from the journal I kept that year), I took Beth to see the Cinerama movie How The West Was Won, which was shown at Detroit's Music Hall. Older readers may remember the Cinerama process. It involved a three-part camera that shot three side-by-side pictures on standard 35mm film. The projector also had three film paths and three lenses. The resultant picture on the screen was huge. And the seven-track sound system heightened the effect of being in the picture, not just an observer of it. Of course IMAX today is more spectacular, but in 1963 when HTWWW played in Detroit, Cinerama was big stuff. We watched the unfolding story of a family from the east who crossed the Ohio River into the west to make a new home for themselves in the golden land of California. But on the way, during a stretch of wild river in which the family’s raft was battered and torn apart, the father of the family, played by Karl Malden, and his wife, played by Agnes Moorehead, lost their lives to the river. I heard sniffling next to me. The scene that followed, in which the family stood at the place where they buried the parents and paid their last respects, brought tears to Beth’s eyes. As strains of "Rock of Ages" emanated from the seven-channel sound track, I looked at her and smiled weakly. I didn’t know what to say to her to comfort her. Some pastor I would be. I had no words of comfort for the girl I was such close friends with, and could have easily fallen for if the circumstances were different. Two months later, on Labor Day, we went to the Detroit Zoo. It is one of those interesting facts that the Detroit Zoological Gardens are actually located in the suburb of Royal Oak. And that day in Royal Oak, at the Detroit Zoo, I learned some things about Beth and her family. Beth’s mother did not attend church with her, like my parents did not attend church with me. I had suspected that Beth’s mother and father were divorced. However, that day at the zoo, I learned the truth about Beth’s dad. The image from How The West Was Won c. MGM and Turner Entertainment, shows Jimmy Stewart in his role as Linus Rawlings. If you look closely, you can see the two frame lines that separate the three pictures that are projected side-by-side. The photo of The Music Hall on Madison Street in downtown Detroit, Michigan as it is today is from Flickr. The photo of the Music Hall as it appeared in the 1950's and 60's when it showed Cinerama movies is from Cinerama. |
NEXT CHAPTER As we walked around the zoo, sometimes Beth would grow quiet and pensive as she remembered something about her dad that the zoo brought to her mind. Apparently, one of the last things he had done with his wife and daughter (or daughters) was bring them to the zoo. I believe he was in a wheelchair at the time, but I am not certain of this. He had been ill for some time, and shortly after the visit to the zoo, he died. It was then I understood Beth's reaction to the scene in HTWWW. Twice that summer, I had taken Beth somewhere that reminded her of her father. We also saw the film Mary Poppins together. That film was released in 1964, so it must have been that summer we saw it. It was a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious evening. I felt like going out and flying a kite! Beth was becoming the spoonful of sugar that helped the medicine of life go down. 
But time changes everything. Today, the Cinerama Corporation exists but has not made any new films for years. MGM, which made How The West Was Won jointly with the Cinerama Corporation is now owned by the Sony Corporation and is a kitten compared to the lion it used to be. In Detroit, the Music Hall where Cinerama movies once played now provides a stage for jazz musicians and fans to congregate. The rights to the film are now in the hands of the Turner Entertainment Company, and although it has been shown in special theaters in London, England, Seattle, Washington, Dayton, Ohio and Hollywood, California, until recently the only way to see the film was by viewing the DVD put out by Turner Entertainment. However, recently Warner Brothers has issued a new DVD and Blueray with a greatly enhanced picture quality. On a wide screen television set, the picture gives an approximation of what it was like to view the film in its original format. But it can't match the original for breathtaking beauty and tremendous sound. Watching the film on any TV tends to make the holes in the plot far more apparent than they were when watching on that huge Cinerama screen. 
And the young man and young woman who, according to the journal kept by the young man in 1963, sat in the eighth row of the middle section in the Music Hall and watched American history pass before them in super-wide vision and stunning seven-channel sound parted and went their separate ways. Beth and her mother had survived a terrible crisis in their lives, the death of a husband and a father. Death is such a terrible and unkind enemy. Death doesn’t wait for an appropriate time to visit; he comes calling whenever he feels like it. He doesn’t care whether a person is old or young, sick or healthy. He just comes. I have already written of my brother, Ron, whose life tragically ended before his twenty-second birthday. Death took him. His body lies in a grave in Windsor, Ontario where my parents laid him to rest on a cold March day in 1947. Death came calling, and because my brother could not stop for death, death kindly stopped for him. Death overthrew him, mighty and dreadful death. Death stalked my brother for three long, hard years on the U. S. Dunlap in the south Pacific ocean during World War II only to take him on a bright winter day just twenty-five miles from home. Death had taken Beth’s dad while she was still a young girl who needed her father, who loved her father. Death took the man Beth’s mother depended on. Death took the man away from his work, his family, his friends, his life. And proud death would be back. He has kept up his all-to-frequent invasions of my circle of friends and family. But the Bible declares that the last enemy that will be destroyed is death. Praise the Lord the victory over death obtained by Jesus Christ will be shared by all who trust Him. Could I minister to people who had lost a precious life to proud death? Could I comfort them, encourage them, and help them? I would soon find out. |
Forty-Eight Years Later
This is "Beth" as she appeared in her high school graduation picture. Only her name is not Beth. That is a name I made up when I wrote this section of This Little Life of Mine because I had not yet located the real Beth and did not have her permission to use her real name. Now I do.
In Lincoln Park she was Barbara Jean Gurney. For the past forty plus years she has been Barbara Jean Forsyth. She and her husband met at Taylor, married, and shortly after moved to southern California where they have lived ever since. Barb is now a retired elementary school teacher. The couple has two daughters and five grandchildren.
In 2010 Barb went to Detroit with a group from her church to minister to homeless people there. Linda and I had planned a vacation trip to Michigan's Upper Peninsula at the same time. Barb said in her email that she had written a book and wanted to know if I would be interested in editing it. We decided to meet, and so on a hot July Monday, Linda and I met Barb at an Olive Garden Restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan to discuss the project.
This is the way Barb looks today. I agreed to edit her book, and after a year of hard work and burning up the email line between Columbus, Ohio and Ontario, California, the book was ready for publication. Barb published Joy Comes in the Mourning in July of 2011, just one year after we met in Dearborn.
Barb's book is about mourning and grieving, and how God wants to use those things in our lives. It is a compilation of poems and articles Barb has written over the lifetime since she left Lincoln Park four decades ago. Barb is no stranger to grieving herself. In the article here on this page, you learned of the early death of her father, which is shared in more detail in her book. Also, Barb and her husband's first child was born with a congenital heart problem and only lived a day and a half. Scott Daniel's story is also told in Barb's book.
In 1999, Barb was involved in a very serious auto accident while on her way to Mt. Baldy in the San Angeles Mountains just north of Los Angeles. She was pinned in her car for some time before she could be rescued. Her account of that accident appears in her book, and is also on this website under the title He Will Be Here
Barb also asked me to write some pieces for her book. One of the main articles I wrote for her is about our mutual friend, Ronald Lee Beckett, who died in Vietnam in 1967. That piece has the same title here on the website as it does in the book - The Scattering.
it was a lifetime from the day in 1963 Barb and I watched How The West Was Won on the huge Cinerama screen to the day Linda and I had lunch with her in Dearborn. But God has a way of bringing people together for a variety of purposes to fit His plan. It was a privilege and a blessing from God to help Barb get her book in print.
Joy Comes in the Mourning is available at The Master's Place Bookstore. It is also available from Amazon's Create Space, and from Barb (bjoy4site@earthlink.net).
I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow, and my people will be filled with my bounty. - Jeremiah 31:13, 14
BE ORDERED DIRECTLY FROM AMAZON'S CREATE SPACE Clicking on the book takes you to Create Space. 
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| Copyright © 2010, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 147 |
