The last two years in Williston were times of joy and sorrow for our family. Spreading through the town was this new Charismatic craze and my father in his ministry was affected as well. A tent revival took place in Williston at the top to the hill with the evangelist Jimmy Strickland. It affected many families in the area, some for the worse sadly.
When my father started saying it is OK to raise your hands in praise, you would have thought he had gone into a full-blown tongues speaking diatribe. The chairman of the board, a local judge, would have none of this new found zeal. Thus, the cord or strife was struck and it was only a matter of time before it was time to move on. The beauty and the beast of the Methodist appointment system is the congregation if enough are dissatisfied can have a pastor removed. If those protesting are prominent enough, you do no even need a majority.
But by the time in June of 1977 it was learned we would be transferred to Lake City, my ties with Williston had already been severed.
Following two years from my high school graduation in 1973 to two years spent at Santa Fe Community College receiving my AA degree, my time in Williston was coming to an end.
Those final years for me were some of the best though, for in 1975, at the age of twenty, Dr ZT Johnson arrived for a revival. I was deep in a relationship with an older girl and my conviction of sin was great. As a pastor son I always thought I had immunity or an inside route to heaven. That clearly came crashing upon me while listening to Dr Johnson from the back of the church in the Sunday school room section. As Mrs Catherine Wilson one evening was singing Healing Love, I could no longer restrain my burden and as was the custom, mustered the courage to walk down the aisle and repent of my sin. My father I recall saying over me, It gives a father no greater pleasure than to see his own son come to the Lord.
Following the service I did the most difficult thing I ever had to do at the time and broke off the relationship with the older girl.
It was then that Dr Johnson, then the President of Asbury College offered me a way of escape, or a distance from the source of temptation. He said that I could come and live with him in his house at Asbury in Wilmore, Kentucky and attend Asbury.
It was an exciting prospect to return to Wilmore, the town we had lived in before arriving in Williston.
I had fond memories of Wilmore and looked forward greatly to my Junior year. After resigning from my loved job at Williston Memorial Hospital as a maintenance worker under Warner Morgan, I packed the yellow VW station wagon with 8 track and headed for Atlanta to spend the first night of the journey with my Uncle Curtis and Aunt Grace Stokes.
The next day afternoon I arrived in Wilmore to Dr Johnson's two story home on North Lexington Avenue. I was given the upstairs bedroom facing the campus. Across the hall was Keith Kempton, also staying with Dr Johnson. Behind Dr Johnson's was our old duplex apartment on Bethel Street where we had lived when my father was the Alumni Director and Director of Student Affairs in my 4th and 5th grade years. It was like returning home.
While I did not connect with my old twin brother friends Stuart and Steven Smith, also in the Junior Class, I did connect with many new found friends. It was somewhat more difficult to feel a part of campus happenings, not living in a dorm, but the time with Dr Johnson, having lost his wife earlier that same year, was invaluable.
I continued the study in Art and had two of the best professor's, Rudy Medlock and Edward Knippers.
My friends Keith, John Liddle, Richard Parker, Amy, Cathy and others had many grand days hiking Jessamine Creek, the fields around the college, Cumberland Gap and more.
It was a Spanish class that kept me from graduating from Asbury. Having never taken a foreign language, the class was too advanced and I received an F. I just did not see how I could recover from an F, having to take the class over. It was in this determination of what to do that Dr Johnson said sadly Keith and I would not be able to stay with him the following year as his grand daughter Cindy and a friend were going to stay with him. I then determined to return to Williston and resume my job as a maintenance worker at Williston Memorial.
It was a long, sad ride home, driving straight through with three other students I was taking as far as Ocala, the yellow VW stuffed to the roof with luggage. I fortunately was able to return to the hospital where I took up mowing and painting, spending time with George Amica, Jeanette Faulk, my future father-in-law Gerald Hethcoat and Dick in the Lab.
It was my father who offered the answer this time, saying I could attend Florida Southern in Lakeland and receive a discount as a United Methodist minister's son. I applied to the summer term to re-take Spanish and set off again in the yellow VW for Lakeland. That summer while taking Spanish I stayed in a dorm and worked on the yard crew, mowing and pulling weeds around the Frank Lloyd Wright architecture campus. This time, the Spanish teacher, Dr Cologne was patient and at a pace I could comprehend well enough to muster a C. I was on my way to repeating my Junior and Senior years at Florida Southern.
Next....the Florida Southern Years....
