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Written by Jean Steel Venrick,
wife of The Wordwright
I have repeated this story several times and doubtless need to give some details about my plans to acquire a husband. My goals (requirements) in a husband were to marry one of three men – a farmer, a preacher or an undertaker. I was a young church organist and early on I had decided the man I would marry had to meet some stringent qualities. First of all, as these plans went, he had to be a Christian and would have to be from among the men in our church. Not just our church (as a fellowship which might eventually mean wherever our churches might be) but the congregation where our family worshipped every Sunday. A rather narrow resource, but that was my plan and I had faith God could work within such a framework.
Perhaps I was limiting my possibilities for finding a husband; but I had never been the "popular girl" who had endless male companions – in other words I never had a date!
Then the Lord brought a young man onto the scene through my church girlfriend. He really attracted my attention but as long as she was going with him I did not interfere. Then she dumped him because she didn’t like the Army clothes he wore which were handed down from his brother who was in the Army.
I will never forget when I saw him walking down the church aisle and I said to myself, "That’s the man I want to marry."
Back to my prospective choice for a husband and his occupation. A preacher, a farmer or an undertaker. What a wide variety of occupations! The farm life which I would live interested me because I could be a farm-wife and I would not have to work at an "in-town" job – something I never was interested in doing. I wanted to stay at home. Having grown up on a farm I enjoyed the freedom of being your own boss. I doubt I realized the hard work involved in farming for a living but the "at home" part really interested me.
Then there was the funeral director. Why would I ever be interested in that occupation? There would be an organ I could play most any time I wanted – even play for the funerals! I had a piano at home to play but I had to go to our church (Fifth Avenue Church of Christ in Lancaster, Ohio) to play the organ. So my plan was to have one handy. I guess I might have been more interested in the instrument than the man – but there were steps or stages in my plan.
As it turned out I got the preacher because that young man that so attracted me made a decision to go to Bible college to become a preacher! Now the problems began. If he went to Bible college I knew he’d find someone else to date and possibly marry! I desperately had to do something about that so I decided I would go to Bible college too! He checked out a college in Kentucky and one in Cincinnati, Ohio and I went along on both visits. Cincinnati was the choice – not too far from home!
In January 1951, six months after graduating from high school, we headed for classes at the Cincinnati Bible Seminary. That first night away from home in that big city was a scary ordeal. Loud strange noises from the street were later identified as the large streetcars going up and down Warsaw hill through the night. No such noises occurred on our quiet country roads. With $200 in savings I had put in the bank from working I started down a new road from my quiet country life. I had never been away from home before and my parents did not take too kindly to my leaving so I knew I had to make a go of it! Eventually the $200 ran out and I had to find a job. I went to work in downtown Cincinnati – easily within reach by streetcar and later by bus from the girls’ dormitory in Price Hill.
Bill and I continued to date and stay close together—as close as we could, being in separate dorms far apart. By June 1951 we knew we wanted to marry so June 3rd we took the big step. I had gotten my preacher! We’ve been married now for nearly 55 years! My plan was no problem for God to work out the details.
Details did change somewhat because my husband only preached for about six years when he decided his "church work" was more appropriately to be done as a "layman"—not a professional preacher. Although through the years he did a lot of supply preaching and taught Bible classes for many years.
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This version of Jean’s story was written November 2005. My only postscript to this account written by my wife is that during those initial days of our meeting I had no inklings whatsoever about the background events going on . This country girl, chasing a man? Yes and no – she was just trying to work within a very strict arrangement she had made with her God and whatever that involved (including a move to a big city to attend a Bible college) she had to keep her part of the bargain! I was playing the part of a very naïve young city boy. It’s been a great experience -- fifty-plus years living with this wonderful lady. The Wordwright
(A tribute to Bill Thorne, The Tomato Man)
by Jean Steel Venrick
He was a soft-spoken, gentle man, tall and thin with no outstanding features. I met him only once, Bill had talked with him and Gertrude, his lady friend, numerous times at McDonald’s. He was getting up in years but still had enough drive, even though suffering with arthritis, to be able to start, plant and nurture 180 tomato plants this season. Bill had been following this schedule for years and all his neighbors and friends relished his tomato crop.
He lovingly cared for those plants each season until he had huge tomatoes, some two and three pounds! He was so proud of his crop. We visited him and Gertrude, who lived nearby, this summer when he showed us his plantings, all different kinds he knew by name (some actual names and some he named after some characteristic details). Some he paid dearly for from a catalog while others he carefully saved seed to start more plants.
He helped Gertrude Hayes, his friend, prepare the soil, plant and nurture her row of tomatoes, but he would never pick hers. He was quick to say, "we don’t live together, we’re just friends". They lived within walking distance of each other’s house on Hopewell Church Road, south of Hamburg Road—a familiar territory to me because my childhood home was just a few miles away.
Together they gave us big boxes of those delicious tomatoes three or four times this summer, starting August 8th when we first visited them. The last box, we thought, arrived as a surprise because a cold spell killed the growing season for tomatoes. Later, Bill and Gertrude brought another surprise box of green tomatoes around the first of October. He taught us to enjoy fried green tomatoes. I learned to cook them, even preparing them for us and our kids Labor Day, September 4th—all ten of us—when we were at our country place near Somerset, Ohio.
From the box of green ones we did not have fried green tomatoes—instead we ate them as they ripened. When they started getting red all at once I took most of them and made chili sauce, a total of ten pints. I still have some left that we will savor as something special served at our dinner table. Bill Thorne’s tomatoes outlived him. The news of Bill’s death came during a casual Sunday morning chat at church with Gertrude’s son when he asked if my husband had heard Bill Thorne died. He had died two weeks ago. Not taking the daily paper regularly, we did not know this so consequently we didn’t get to the funeral.
The interesting story about this "Tomato Man", Bill Thorne, is that Bill and Gertrude did not sell their tomatoes but gave them away, getting much pleasure from giving. When my husband spoke by phone with Gertrude, she said Bill had requested in lieu of flowers at his funeral, people could bring canned goods to be given away to the needy. She said a room set aside at the funeral home showed that his request was taken to heart by his friends who had brought many canned goods. Even in death he was still giving. Apparently Bill had viewed death was near when he made such a providential request about canned goods instead of flowers.
We will never eat tomatoes, especially fried green ones unless we think of Bill Thorne. It was simply a summer friendship which meant a lot to my husband and me.
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Post notes: Gertrude, when not getting a response to her phone calls to Bill Thorne, went to check on him and found him lying on the floor, still in his pajamas. His departure was evidently quick. Gertrude would prepare breakfast for Bill sometimes, other times they would drive to Lancaster for breakfast at McDonald’s, something Gertrude says she will not be doing soon again. Just too many memories. Bill had taken her to Niagara Falls for a few days this summer. Also they took a trip to Lake Erie. The day before he died they had taken a day’s drive to New Straitsville and West Virginia. They enjoyed each other’s company.
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Jean Steel Venrick is the wife of Bill Venrick, The Wordwright
Jean originally wrote this story Oct 29, 2000
Michael E. Coughlin, printer and publisher, now in Cornucopia, Wisconsin, published a small 12 page booklet in 1988 by the title of GROWING, As a fellow member of the American Amateur Press Association (*), Mike and I have traded thoughts back and forth through the years and now I would like to extend that trading by presenting this booklet in this web site. Publishing booklets has become a signature work by Michael E. Coughlin. His booklets can be easily held in one hand to read as you wait for an appointment to materialize or parked in the car, again waiting. They are easily slipped into a pocket and retrieved for more entertainment later. Once you read this booklet you may see why it has been selected to be in the section called Personality Profiles. This appears here with Mike’s permission, of course.
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"How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?"
Leroy "Satchel" Paige
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THE HANG OF IT
Robert R. Updegraff
At about the age when many men begin to consider themselves crossing over to the shady side of life – the half-century mark, Sir Christopher Wren, who built magnificent St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the seventeenth century, was entering enthusiastically upon a career in a new profession. After serving as professor of astronomy at Gresham College and Oxford, he turned architect.
In the forty-one years after his forty-eighth birthday this amazing man executed fifty-three churches and cathedrals, most of which still stand as monuments to his greatness. Like the man James Whitcomb Riley wrote of who had "lived to three-score and ten and had the hang of it now and could do it again." Sir Christopher discovered the secret of living a second life and doing another life’s work.
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SHEDDING SHELLS
by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Following quoted from a Gift From The Sea, published by Pantheon Books in 1955.
Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach-living; one’s pride, one’s false ambitions, one’s mask, one’s armor. Was that armor not put on to protect one from the competitive world? If one ceases to compete, does one need it? Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!
It is true that the adventures of youth are less open to us. Most of us cannot, at this point, start a new career or raise a new family. Many of the physical, material and worldly ambitions are less attainable than they were twenty years ago. But is this not often a relief? "I no longer worry about being the belle of Newport," a beautiful woman, who had become a talented artist, once said to me. And I always liked that Virginia Woolf hero who meets middle age admitting: "Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires…I am not so gifted as at one time seemed likely. Certain things lie beyond my scope. I shall never understand the harder problems of philosophy. Rome is the limit of my traveling…I shall never see savages in Tahiti spearing fish by the light of a blazing cresset or a lion spring in the jungle or a naked man eating raw flesh…"
The primitive, physical, functional pattern of the morning of life, the active years before forty or fifty, is outlived. But there is still the afternoon opening up, which one can spend not in the feverish pace of the morning but in having time at last for those intellectual, cultural and spiritual activities that were pushed aside in the heat of the race. We Americans, with our terrific emphasis on youth, action, and material success, certainly tend to belittle the afternoon of life and even to pretend it never comes. We push the clock back and try to prolong the morning, overreaching and overstraining ourselves in the unnatural effort. We cannot compete with our sons and daughters. And what a struggle it is to race with these over-active and under-wise adults! In our breathless attempts we often miss the flowering that waits for afternoon.
For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life. And therefore this period of expanding is often tragically misunderstood. Many people never climb above the plateau of forty-to-fifty. The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. One is afraid. Naturally. Who is not afraid of pure space – that breath-taking empty space of an open door? But despite fear, one goes through to the room beyond.
But in middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death. Instead of facing them, one runs away; one escapes – into depression, nervous breakdowns, drink, love affairs or frantic, thoughtless, fruitless over-work. Anything, rather than face them. Anything, rather than stand still and learn from them. One tries to cure the signs of growth, to exorcise them, as if they were devils, when really they might be angels of annunciation.
Angels of annunciation of what? Of a new stage in living when, having shed many of the physical struggles, the worldly ambitions, the material encumbrances of active life, one might be free to fulfill the neglected side of one’s self. One might be free for growth of mind, heart and talent; free at last for spiritual growth…
*The American Amateur Press – if you have a yen for writing or publishing, take a few minutes and look over their website. The Wordwright has been a member of the AAPA for about twenty years.
"We received this as an e-mail from Ann Halford, a friend of ours and of our multiply-handicapped son Tim. We do not know who the author is, but thought it might be helpful to others, as it was to us. Our son Tim who is blind and retarded is now 43 years old, and we certainly can relate to the words of this writer.
Do yourself a favor; don't start reading this until you've got more than 3 or 4 minutes. It deserves some time for reflection.
My brother Kevin thinks God lives under his bed.. At least that's what I heard him say one night. He was praying out loud in his dark bedroom, and I stopped outside his closed door to listen. "Are you there, God?" he said. "Where are you? Oh, I see.under the bed." I giggled softly and tiptoed off to my own room. Kevin's unique perspectives are often a source of amusement. But that night, something else lingered long after the humor. I realized for the first time the very different world Kevin lives in.
He was born 30 years ago, mentally disabled as a result of difficulties during labor. Apart from his size (6'2"), there are few ways in which he is an adult. He reasons and communicates with the capabilities of a 7 year old, and he always will. He will probably always believe that God lives under his bed, that Santa Claus is the one who fills the space under our tree every Christmas, and that airplanes stay up in the sky because angels carry them. I remember wondering if Kevin realizes that he is different.
Is he ever dissatisfied with his monotonous life? Up before dawn each day, off to work at a workshop for the disabled, home to walk our cocker spaniel, return to eat his favorite macaroni-and-cheese for dinner, and later to bed. The only variation in the entire scheme is laundry, when he hovers excitedly over the washing machine like a mother with her newborn child.
He does not seem dissatisfied. He lopes out to the bus every morning at 7:05, eager for a day of simple work. He wrings his hands excitedly while the water boils on the stove before dinner, and he stays up late twice a week to gather our dirty laundry for his next day's laundry chores. And Saturdays--oh, the bliss of Saturdays! That's the day my Dad takes Kevin to the airport to have a soft drink, watch the planes land, and speculate loudly on the destination of each passenger inside. "That one's going to Chi-car-go!" Kevin shouts as he claps his hands. His anticipation is so great he can hardly sleep on Friday nights.
And so goes his world of daily rituals and weekend field trips. He doesn't know what it means to be discontented. His life is simple. He will never know the entanglements of wealth or power, and he does not care what brand of clothing he wears or what kind of food he eats. His needs have always been met, and he never worries that one day they may not be. His hands are diligent. Kevin is never so happy as when he is working. When he unloads the dishwasher or vacuums the carpet, his heart is completely in it. He does not shrink from a job when it is begun, and he does not leave a job until it is finished. But when his tasks are done, Kevin knows how to relax.
He is not obsessed with his work or the work of others. His heart is pure. He still believes everyone tells the truth, promises must be kept, and when you are wrong, you apologize instead of argue. Free from pride and unconcerned with appearances, Kevin is not afraid to cry when he is hurt, angry, or sorry.
He is always transparent, always sincere. And he trusts God. Not confined by intellectual reasoning, when he comes to Christ, he comes as a child. Kevin seems to know God--to really be friends with Him in a way that is difficult for an "educated" person to grasp. God seems like his closest companion.
In my moments of doubt and frustration with my Christianity, I envy the security Kevin has in his simple faith. It is then that I am most willing to admit that he has some divine knowledge that rises above my mortal questions. It is then I realize that perhaps he is not the one with the handicap--I am.
My obligations, my fear, my pride, my circumstances--they all become disabilities when I do not trust them to God's care. Who knows if Kevin comprehends things that I can never learn? After all, he has spent his whole life in that kind of innocence, praying after dark and soaking up the goodness and love of God. And one day, when the mysteries of heaven are opened, and we are all amazed at how close God really is to our hearts, I'll realize that God heard the simple prayers of a boy who believed that God lived under his bed. Kevin won't be surprised at all."
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Another GOOD article from DOES GOD EXIST? - Jan-Feb 2005 issue
Copied with permission from John Clayton's bi-monthly magazine, DOES GOD EXIST?.
"Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out."
--John Wooden, UCLA basketball coach
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Albert Einstein - (1875-1955) --Physicist, born in Germany, spent later years in the U.S.; won 1921 Nobel Prize for Photoelectric Effect, best known for Theories of Relativity; initiated U.S. nuclear program in WW II.
Profiles of men can be seen in the glimpses we find in their quotes as well as words written by others about them. The Wordwright
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
"Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen."
"The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." (Monthly Review, 1949)
"The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown."
"Do not worry about your problems in mathematics. I assure you, my problems with mathematics are much greater than yours."
"The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. "
"God may be subtle, but He isn't mean. "
"Gravitation can not be held resposible for people falling in love."
"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice."
"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker. The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistably invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Ghandi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?" (On Wealth, 1954)
"I am convinced that He [God] does not play dice. "
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
"I don't know how man will fight World War III, but I do know how they will fight World War IV; with sticks and stones."
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. "
I must voice some disagreement here with Einstein (in principle and fact) -- Surely "tomorrow" often comes soon enough but one must be prepared for tomorrow physically and spiritually, and that does take a lot of thought and diligence as well. The Wordwright
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
"It is not the fruits of scientific research that elevate man and enrich his nature. but the urge to understand, the intellectual work, creative or receptive." - from Ideas and Opinions (1954)
"The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life. "
"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
---- The above thoughts gives one a little different slant on Albert Einstein than just a picture of a man with tossled hair, doesn't it? The Wordwright
Some of Gandhi's famous quotations:
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
"I will not be a traitor to God to please the whole world."
This is one worth reading twice!
"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress."
"Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love."
"In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness."
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, ALWAYS."
"Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action."
"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition."
"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
"The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice."
This is worth reading again!
"I am in the world feeling my way to light 'amid the encircling gloom'. I often err and miscalculate… My trust is solely in God. And I trust men only because I trust God. If I had no God to rely upon, I should be like Timon, a hater of my species."
"Whatever striking things I have done in life, I have not done prompted by reason but prompted by instinct, I would say, God."
"I am a man of faith. My reliance is solely on God. One step is enough for me. The next step He will make clear to me when the time for it comes."
The above quotes were selected over a period of time from the Internet, and before putting it in place here, I checked and the reference (html link) was no longer in service. The above certainly mirror the virtues and qualities that made Gandhi more famous after he was gone, although certainly his life was not exactly easy to ignore either.
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Unfortunately, for me, and I suppose this could be true for any number of people I once thought I knew or criticized because I what I thought I knew about them – it is sad that I never knew of these quotes earlier. One instance I read of that really prompted me to change some thoughts about Gandhi was when he was boarding a train, one of his shoes slipped off his foot. To the utter consternation of his fellow travelers, he reached down and TOOK OFF his other shoe and threw it towards where the other shoe was! Knowing what must have been in the on-lookers mind, Gandhi said, "Now when the poor soul finds one shoe, the other will not be far from his view." (my paraphrase of his words) I wonder how many "loyal church-going Christian or Jewish people" would have entertained that thought? I am not pleased to know my thoughts would have been more like jumping off the train to get my lost shoe! The Wordwright
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