All posts by David Todd

home improvements, Writing

Here it is Monday Morning

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Yes, it’s Monday morning, and I have no topic to write on. I’m supposed to make my post by 7:30 a.m.; it’s now 6:51 a.m. I have a sheet of paper with blog post ideas. It’s up in the sunroom and I’m in The Dungeon. But I looked at that list yesterday and nothing stood out at me as something I want to write right now.

The fact is I’m weary. I have a to-do list around here that is growing, nothing seeming to be getting done. Four items I hope I will complete today.

  • Mail some old, old family cards to a cousin’s daughter in Florida. These are cards sent by her grandparents, her parents, and her aunt to my parents or grandparents. They date from the 1950s, 60s, and a few from 70s. Dad kept all these. I got them from his house after his death in 1997. I stored them, then sorted them, began looking to see what I wanted to do with them. I decided to send them back to families of original senders. So far I’ve sent back those of the Hills and the Reeds and the Fashjians and the Vicks. No one in the Brannon family wanted them so I trashed them. This cousin I contacted her via Facebook and she said yes, she’d take them. Since her grandfather, my uncle, moved the family cross-country in the 1950s and she grew up far away from any close family, she doesn’t feel a strong connection to her family and is looking forward to getting these and learning more.
  • Call the vegetation management man for the electric cooperative and try to talk them into finishing their work on my lot. They took three trees out that were in their easement. That was in January 2020. I agreed, and they said a different crew would be by to grind out the stumps. No one ever came. I kept putting off calling him, lost his business card, found it, lost it again, etc. Yesterday I found the card again, and today I will call him.
  • Interview two people for the church 100th anniversary book. This is an older couple in the church whose families have been involved with it since the 1930s. The told me more than a month ago that they were happy to talk with me, but I’ve not been ready. Now I am. I spoke with them at church yesterday and we set this afternoon for the interview. That will make it five people I’ve interviewed to put their family histories into the book. Only about eight more to go after that.
  • Mail used books to a buyer in Springfield MO. She responded to a Facebook Marketplace listing I had for 40 paperback romances. Through messaging with her I told her about all the others I had and she wanted them. When Lynda and I gathered them together on Saturday, and Lynda pulled a few more she was willing to part with from the shelf, it came to 203 books. The buyer wants them all. This morning I will box them for shipping, take them to the PO for a shipping estimate, communicate that to the buyer, receive her payment via PayPal, and take the books back for mailing. It’s possible this may not be finished until tomorrow.

That latter item is huge. I had begun to despair of ever selling these romances. People who dropped by to look at books in general seemed uninterested in the romances. My Marketplace listings received few views and no inquiries. Then this came out of the blue. I’m happy about it, but for the moment the books have been brought back into the house for packaging and weighing. Until they are paid for and mailed they are making life more difficult.

What else is on the to-do list? Our bathroom scale is going crazy and probably needs to be replaced. The remote control for the kitchen TV is dying and needs to be replaced. The lower burner of the oven no longer works. I replaced that about 10 years ago and don’t really feel like replacing it. I should just replace the 34-year-old oven, but it’s a built in. Will anything made now fit the opening in the woodwork? But then, Lynda said she would be willing to replace the separate range top as well. I agree with her that I don’t like that, so maybe we will do that replacement. But that’s a big task and I’m not looking forward to it. For now we are getting by with the top heating element only. As the one that does the cooking, I’m going to wait a little while before tackling this.

What else? A small item is: I took Lynda’s sewing machine in for repairs last week, but they said they needed a dobbin from the machine and there was none in it. They might have mentioned that fact on their website. I left the machine with them. So now I either need to make the 18 mile drive to get them the dobbin or mail them one, hoping the plastic gadget doesn’t get crushed in mailing. I’ll try to decide that today.

What else? Doctor appointments for me tomorrow and the next day, one for Lynda next week. Groceries to get today. Possibly replacing the lancet device for taking my blood sugars. A full round of stock and options trades to watch. Two other books in the works, trying to decide which to do next.

That’s enough. I’m starting to get depressed just thinking about it. The clock shows it is now just after 7:30, as I’ve been reading various morning newsletters and messing with a spreadsheet while writing this. Time to post. Maybe by Friday my to-do list will look better. Oh, wait, I haven’t even put any of my own yardwork on it. Rats. Or the cover for the print version of my latest book. Rats again.

Christianity, The Teachings, Writing

What to Write Next?

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Dateline 15 April 2021

Now that I have four consecutive books in my Church History novels series, the cover designer I’m working with has come up with a theme for the series. I like what she’s done.

The Teachings is done! The e-book is published; the print book is formatted; I await only the cover (which is being produced) in order to upload the print book. Once I have both up, I will make a formal announcement here, on Facebook, and to my small e-mail list.

So, the question to ask is “What do I write next?”

The answer is sort of easy. I have the church 100th Anniversary book to write. I’ve been working on it, with good progress. I’m at 12,306 words. I had thought it would be around a 14,000 word book, but I’m no where near the end. Now it looks like 20,000 to 25,000 words. I’m at the point with this book where I am starting to interview people about family members in the church long ago. My goal is to put a couple of paragraphs about perhaps two-dozen families.  I’ve only done two of those families so far, so I’ve got a lot of work yet to do. In fact, today I hope to contact two of those families and perhaps do the interviews. Yes, this book will be my primary focus for a while.

Research for the church anniversary book is almost like doing genealogy. I’ve been amazed at the footprints I’ve found for the founding families of the church.

But what next? What of my own writing? As I wrote before, I have several paths I could go down.

  • The next volume in the Documenting America series. This will be Run-up to Revolution, and will cover the 15 years or so before the Revolutionary War. I’m reading for research now but finding it hard going.
  • The next short story in the Sharon Williams Fonseca series. This will be about Carter Burns investigating Sharon’s role—if any—in the Qatif uprisings in Saudi Arabia in 1979. Not a well known incident, but I heard about it when I was in Saudi in 1981-83.
  • A totally new work, a new series, a new genre (oh, no, not Genre Focus Disorder coming up again). Tentatively titled the Forest Throne series, it is a sort of time travel book for young boys. My oldest grandson and I have been talking about this ever since, maybe four years ago, we found a land feature in the hollow behind our house that looks like a seat indented into the hillside. It’s probable the root hole from a tree that fell over, but the tree is long gone and only the root hole remains. This is what my grandson wants me to work on next.
  • While I’ve been proofreading The Teachings and getting it ready for publication, I’ve also been working on a Bible study. It’s a little different from the one I did before, almost more of a commentary/devotional type book. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I’ll keep poking away at it as the Spirit moves me, but, in truth, I don’t know if it’s a viable project or not.
  • And, I could actually go on to the next book in my Church History Novels series. I have the basic outline of the plot, the characters, and what I want to accomplish with it. This is not likely to be next, as I think I need a break from this series.

So, that’s five possibilities, or six including the anniversary book.  That’s not by any means exhaustive of what has been on my writing mind of late.  Somehow I have to narrow that down and begin writing something. I’ll let you all know what that is once I decide.

The Teachings

Figures for “The Teachings” e-book

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Amazon KDP won’t allow the maps and figure in the e-book version, so I will post them here, and put a link to this page in the e-book. At the end of Chapter 36, Adam draws this symbol:

What Adam drew at the end of Chapter 36

 

 

 

 

The land of Israel during the events of The Teachings

 

The eastern Mediterranean world during the events of The Teaching.

 

book reviews, Writing

Book Review: “Essays of E.B. White”

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I really enjoyed this books and am glad I invested the reading time and the whole 50¢ purchase price in it.

About a month ago I finished whatever book I was reading and searched my shelves for what to read next. Should be easy, right? I make it a little complicated, however, in that I want to read books that interest me but which I don’t want to keep permanently. I want to be able to get rid of them when done. The book I had just finished was a keeper, so for sure I wanted to go on to a non-keeper. As I say, should be easy, but with thousands of books in the house it isn’t. The volume makes it harder and, alas, I don’t have a prepared non-keeper pile.

But I searched and found this in the Essays of E.B. White. While he isn’t a household name, White wrote Charlotte’s Web. Of interest to writers and perhaps English majors, he collaborated on later editions of Strunk’s book The Elements of Style, a short book about improving English composition. Some time ago, measured in years, I picked up White’s Essays from a used book or thrift store. It has sat on my literature shelf in the basement, waiting for me to notice it again. The perfect book to read now, I thought. ‘T’will be interesting to me but not one I want to keep.

And so it is. I actually know fairly little about White but learned much through his essays. First, he’s a New Englander, like me, having spent much of his life in Maine (though with sojourns in New York City and Florida). He was a newspaper columnist. Some of his essays were culled from his columns. I didn’t get a feel for who he wrote for (a particular paper or syndication), nor what type of column it must have been. In his writing I found: satire, though I wouldn’t call him a satirist; humor, though he’s not a humorist; irony, though he’s pretty down to earth; concern for the planet, though he doesn’t seem to have been an environmental writer; politics, though he was not really a political writer or pundit.

So what kind of writer was he in these essays? Interesting. Sorry, Mrs. Abrams, my 12th grade English teacher. I know that’s an unacceptable response, but I have to say it. The essays were a mix of all of those things in the last paragraph, and the variety held my interest. He wrote about the life in rural Maine and of farm chores and events. It gave authenticity to Charlotte’s Web. He wrote about apartments in New York City. He wrote about harm being done to the planet by different human activities. He wrote about Democrats and Republicans not getting along and, except for the names of the individuals involved, those essays could have been written today.

Reading these essays tickled me into a case of Sidelines Syndrome, and I felt the urge to write essays. I came to my senses pretty quickly, however, as I have too many writing projects going on right now. I suppose if a writer spurs another writer to emulate him, that writers has done well.

Now, two questions remain: Should you run out and try to find a copy of this and read it (published 1977, my paperback published 1979)? And, is it a keeper after all? The answer is no to both. First, it will be hard to find. Second, it will be somewhat boring, I think, to anyone who doesn’t currently read essays. Third, as far as keeping it, for me it’s a I’m-glad-I-read-it book, no regrets at investing some time in it, but I don’t see myself ever reading it again.

So, into the sale pile it will go. The binding is partly broken, the cover has a fold in it. I don’t see it ever selling, either in my yard sales or in a thrift store, but I can’t bear the thought of throwing it out. So to the garage sale shelf it goes.

home improvements, miscellaneous

The View From The Sunroom

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Dateline March 31, 2021

Or you read in sunroom and watch the Christmas cacti  still bloom rather late in the season.

I went out to pull weeds this morning, but I came inside because it was too cold, so I decided to come inside and spend more time in the sunroom, reading. I’m working my way through the essays of E.B. White, an old paperback that I will dispose of when I finish with it. The essays are interesting, but I’ve been making slow progress on them, mainly due to other events.

The downy woodpecker seems to be here in all seasons.

After reading an essay, I grabbed the book of poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay and read a few pages. I’m making slow progress on it too. I then picked up an old edition of a diabetes magazine, intending to zip through it and then dispose of it. Before reading in it I looked up and saw a downy woodpecker come to our empty bird feeders on the deck. I saw that three or four days ago but didn’t fill them right away. So I laid the magazine aside, took five minutes (maybe less) to fill them, then came back to the sunroom to read.

Now, from my reading chair in the sunroom when positioned in its winter orientation, I look right out a window at the bird feeders. As soon as I sat, I saw a tufted titmouse at the railing, where I scattered some old thistle seed. That didn’t please him, apparently, for he went right up to the feeder with the sunflower chips. But he didn’t take any, instead going to the feeder with the black oil sunflower seeds. There he ate. He took one and flew away. In less than a minute he was back, took another, and left again. This repeated for more than five minutes with no other birds coming.

I’m not sure what type of plants these were. They were big, and my wife said they took a lot of care. I balked at first when she wanted to sell them, as they’ve been companions in the sunroom. But then I thought, I don’t want to dampen her notion of getting rid of stuff. So off they went, hopefully to a good home.

Obviously, I don’t know that it was the same bird. Five or six tufted titmouses could have come to the feeder. It took almost ten minutes before a chickadee showed up, then a second. I tried to get back to my magazine, but first had to look around the room. In the spirit of decluttering/disaccumulation, the room is less crowded than it used to be. Last September, when we started de/dis, my wife said she wanted to sell three large plants in the room. I balked at this at first, as the plants in the sunroom are my friends, giving me oxygen as I sit and read there. Then I thought, there are about fifteen other plans in the room, I guess we could do without those three. They sold right away when I listed them on FB Marketplace.

Last month I decided to list the four antique chairs that came from my grandmother’s house. They were in rough shape, the sort of thing you keep with the idea of refurbishing it at some point. I thought, will I or the wife ever get around to refurbishing these? Two are cane-bottom chairs with the cane needing work, something you would have to pay for. So I listed them and they sold right away.

The bluebirds have been around, but I haven’t seen another bunting like this one.

The sad thing is, with these things gone, you can’t tell that the room is in any sense empty. Two older easy chairs, a table, a patio furniture set, two old microwave tables, a tall plant stand, a couple of small tables, an old three-tier table, a magazine rack, some folding chairs, and plants sitting on every flat surface made the room seem nicely furnished, almost crowded even. It doesn’t look like a room that is being cleaned out by someone who is thinking of downsizing. I guess that tells you how much work we still have.

I got back to the magazine and went through about 25 pages. Half of those were ads for medicines or medical devices or food companies. But I read four good articles, one that included information I didn’t know before.

My quiet reading time ended all too soon as my lunch time arrived. I got up and went into the house. I didn’t say goodbye to the plants as I left. I shot a glance at the bird feeder and saw a chickadee and a titmouse fly away. The downy woodpecker must not have received the memo about the feeders being restocked. I’m sure I’ll see him again before too many days pass. E.B. White will still speak to me for another five or seven sitting to finish the 71 pages left, and Edna will see me again before long. For now, it’s on to other responsibilities and passions in other venues.

Documenting America, self-publishing, The Teachings, Writing

March Writing Progress; April Goals

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I accomplished less writing tasks in March than I hoped for. That’s because of making two trips to West Texas, one to pick up the grandkids, bringing them here for a week, and one to bring them back.

  1. Make one more editing pass through The Teachings, and decide if it is ready for publishing. Get my ideas for the cover to the designer and get things rolling on that. This is done! I make another full pass through the book, reading it aloud to my wife. The edits are done. I also got my ideas to the designer, Sophie, and she has made the cover, made into a theme for the series as a whole. That is no longer a hold-up.
  2. Make major progress in the church 100th anniversary book. I’d like to be close to 15,000 words by the end of the month. That depends, however, on getting into the library for research, or having a librarian help me. I definitely made progress, though I fell short of my word goal. I’m sitting a little under 9,000 words. I did hear back from the librarian, though she didn’t have much to tell me due to the poor quality of the microfilms she had to work with.
  3. Read for research in the next Documenting America book, including taking notes. Begin to sketch an outline of the Table Of Contents. I read for this research only one day. Too many other things to work on.
  4. Continue with my current Bible study project and see if it’s something I should turn into a writing project with the intent on publishing. Again, I think I only worked on this one day. My goals were much larger than my capacity.
  5. Get my personal bibliography up to date for current works. This should be doable. In fact, I may go work on it as soon as I finish this blog post. I didn’t work on this much before the mid-month time crunch came, but I think I got this done. I will have to pull up the bibliography and see. If needed, I’ll come back and edit this.
  6. Blog twice a week. That may be interrupted if we bring the grandkids back here for spring break. I missed three regular blogging days, as I said in a post this month, due to grandparent responsibility.

So, March was a mixed bag. Time to now set some goals for April.

  1. Publish The Teachings. All that are left are various publishing tasks, including: e-book TOC; adding two maps, one of which needs modification; writing the back cover copy; writing the Amazon page text; formatting the print book (well, the e-book too, which is far easier); and uploading to Amazon. I think this is very doable.
  2. Republish the three earlier church history novels with new covers and list of my works. One of the covers is ready. Hopefully the other two will be soon.
  3. Expand the church anniversary book to at least 15,000 words and hopefully 20,000 words.
  4. Blog twice a week. It’s doable. No travel planned this month.
  5. Do some research on the next Documenting America volume. I won’t commit to how much, but I have to get going on it.
  6. Look again at the Bible study I was working on in February and early March, and decide if that is going to be my next book or if something else is.

That’s all I can see to add right now. I’ll check back in on April 30 or May 3 and let you know how I did.

miscellaneous, The Teachings, Writing

The View From The Dungeon

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Clouds have obscured the bright sun disk of early morning.

The windows in The Dungeon face east, and that’s the direction I face when sitting and working at my computer. On sunny days like today I will be greeted by the sun. Since we are not far from solstice, the sun, as it frees itself from the horizon, comes blazing through the windows into my eyes. I have to adjust myself in the chair, lean a little to the left, so that the sun is blocked. Otherwise, I’m sure my eyes would become painful and eventually I’d go blind. Oh, the windows have blinds, long vertical slats that go to the floor (well below the window bottoms), but the tangle of computer cords causes the slats to separate and allow the bright rays to come in.

This condition lasts only a few minutes. The sun rises above the cut-out at the back of the upper unit of my computer desk, and the sun no longer torments me. I can shift my torso back to upright. At some point this spring/summer the sun will rise early enough that perhaps it will already be above the critical point when I arrive in The Dungeon to start my workday. But, by then other conditions will have changed as well.

Right now, the woods behind our house are at or just past their barest point. The Bradford pears have bloomed and just leafed out. The wild dogwoods are blooming. The oaks are a couple of weeks away from their initial budding. But, the pin oak trees among them have finally lost their leaves. Yes, those pin oak leaves hold on through the winter, dropping in the early spring just before everything else starts to bud. Once the oaks do bud then leaf out, the sun will be totally blocked until it is well up above that desk cut-out. I will come to The Dungeon when it is lighter and not be bothered by the sun.

With the solar disk so bright, and with the windows so dirty, and with the slats blocking much of what would otherwise be visible, what do I see? Bare oak branches show from the nearest trees, and behind them the mass of trees on the other side of the hollow. They are, perhaps, seven hundred feet away. If I would stand up and find a good viewport through the windows I might just barely see thy walking/hiking/biking trail, in the hollow. I walk that trail a fair amount and, until the oak forest leafs out, can see our house from it.

You wonder what the point of this post is. I’m not sure I have one. Just thought I’d take a post now and then to record something of interest. The hollow behind our house is unplatted land, belonging to the POA. It is considered unbuildable due to the steep slopes. However, if hard times would come, I’m sure the POA would figure out a way to build on it and homes would spring up. Given the nature of the geology, it would have to be very hard times indeed. So, we are destined to have a wooded valley behind us for as long as we stay here.

It is now just after 10 a.m. The sun has moved higher and way around to the right. It no longer bothers me or causes me to dodge and weave to avoid looking directly at it. The eastern sky, what little I can see of it, appears cloudy. The tree trunks at the edge of the forest aren’t bright. It would appear that cloudy conditions are developing.

The day is starting to drag. I’ve been looking for maps to illustrate my novel and am having trouble finding suitable ones. Before much more looking passes I’ll just break down and draw my own.  My cold is better, but I think I need one more day before I resume walking. Friday is April 2, Good Friday. It will be the day for me to post my progress and plans for the month. I’ll see you all then.

family, Writing

Ready To Get Back To Work

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For almost two weeks just past we have been much tied up with the grandchildren. We left for Texas two weeks ago, dropping recyclables in Oklahoma City, then six more hours to West Texas. We spent three days there, then on Sunday we drove back to Bella Vista with four grandchildren.

They were here a week. I wrote about them in the last post about some of the things that filled the week. We took them back on Saturday, another all-day drive. We spent four nights there, driving back Wednesday, dropping more recyclables in OKC as we came back. We stayed up a little late that night, and Thursday took a day of rest. We watched two of my favorites, Lawrence of Arabia and My Fair Lady,

Now, it’s time to get back to work on my writing. During the last two weeks I began going through my novel-in-progress for the third time. I also got some mock-ups of the cover for it and for the whole series. It will take another three days of reading to get through it.

I need to get back to the church history book. I’ve been brainstorming it while I was otherwise engaged the last two weeks, but didn’t add any words. I also need to get back to the Bible study I had started on. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but I need to get a little farther into it before I know if it’s a viable project.

Yesterday it became painfully aware to me that I have to do a lot of work on this website.  I hate the thought of that. The person suggesting I need to make changes said I first need to back up what I have. I have no idea how to do that. I know I need to learn how to but hate the thought of it.

But, today I need to work on all these things. Hopefully, I will be able to apply my mind to it.

family

A Good Reason to Interrupt Blogging

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The day before we left Texas for Arkansas we endured a hailstorm with golf ball size hail, and some bigger.

My last blog post was on March 8. As it’s now the 22nd, that means I missed three of my regular blogging days. I hate doing that, but I had a good reason. We drove to West Texas and picked up our four grandchildren bringing them back to Arkansas for their spring break.

Due to the covid pandemic, which included Lynda and I contracting it but processing through it easily (for me) or at least not severe (with Lynda) was reason enough to cancel any hope for a family Christmas. We had already decided not to have Thanksgiving together, so that meant we hadn’t seen our grandkids since last June—except on Messenger or Zoom calls.

The two 11-hour drives gave plenty of opportunity for food and treats.

So we had the kids from Sunday though Saturday. E1 and I worked on repairs to the fort in the woods across the street, which had a wall damaged from a leaning tree. We had to untie a number of posts from the damaged top bar, the try to push the tree in a way that it would not damage another wall. We could only do this after I sawed the tree into two pieces. I had already cut a new top bar from a dead but not yet rotted tree on our property. I carried it to the street then E1 took it across the street into the woods and to the fort.

Ice cream on the chin mitigates a lot of hours in the safety seat.

E1, who is in junior high track and ran cross-country last fall, did a timed mile on our hill. He did this in new running shoes we got him, well fitted at a running shoes shop.

E2 was his usual quiet self. He pulled out our set of The Chronicles of Narnia and picked up reading in them where he had left off at home. He is reading the Bible through, now in Job, and we read with him several nights. He went on a couple of walks with us. One evening, as twilight was beginning to fall, he and E1 went into the woods chasing after a herd of 10 deer that passed through our yard. They went through the deep ravine and made it back to our house via the street just as dark was closing in.

E3 enjoys art and making displays such as this.

E3 really enjoyed her walks. She and E4 and I played with Leggos in the play room. She reads a lot, and was always ready to go on a walk with me and Grandma, or sometimes just with me and “the two littles” i.e. E3 and E4. E3 also helped me put away the winter display and put up and Easter one. She especially enjoyed putting the tiny eggs on two little trees.

The youngest, E4, had the job of gathering up the lengths of twine and putting them in a bucket for re-use.

E4 worked on his potty training and did well with it. Since Grandma has had relatively little snuggling time with him, she was the designated “read him to sleep person”. Sometimes Grandpa had to come in to take him from her arms and put him in bed. A few nights he wanted me to sing him to sleep. He kept wanting to be on screens like his older siblings.

Mindful that this was their vacation, Grandma and Grandpa were somewhat lax with bedtimes and the amount of screen time we let them have. Hopefully they will fall back into regular routines quickly at home. The three older kids also got in some laser tag with the boy up the street (who was not on spring break) for a couple of days. But they all had opportunity to work on making words from longer words for money. The three older ones all earned something. And they wrote letters home to their parents and to their other set of grandparents.

They could do as many words as they wanted, limit of $15 per word at 15¢ per word made.

The two adults in the house are beat. We will be glad to be home soon and to wind down from all the work, but we wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Possibly we’ll get them back sometime this summer, when they will have another large pot of Grandpa’s Mythical Sandwich for supper over several nights.

memories, miscellaneous

R.I.P. Victor Turnage

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The corona virus pandemic may be in its waning moments (can’t be sure yet), but it has claimed the life of a good friend, Vic Turnage.

About five months or so into the corona virus pandemic I began seeing social media posts to the effect “Do you know anyone who has had covid? Do you know anyone who has died from covid?” The implication, of course, was that this disease wasn’t so bad and was being blown way out of proportion by individuals in the government who wanted more control over our lives. The longer we got into the pandemic you saw fewer of such posts as more as more people caught it and more and more died. Yes, it was then and still is a serious disease, worthy of being treated seriously.

For Lynda and me, an acquaintance in our daughter’s church died from it last spring/summer. Then, on Saturday a second person we know, Victor Turnage, died from it after a long battle in the hospital. He leaves his wife, Joyce, two sons, and four grandchildren.

They came to the Northwest Arkansas around 1995 or 96 from central Missouri. Vic worked then for Contractor Supply. They lived in Bentonville and began attending our church. Within the first week or two we had them over for dinner after church and we hit it off as good friends. Vic is about my age, was involved in construction, was interested in serving in the church, and so we had much in common. We went out for lunch often after church and were frequently in each other’s homes in evenings to play table games.

Such good people and hard workers. Vic will never be replaced as a husband, father, grandfather, and servant of God through the church.

When the church put together a building committee to construct a new family life center, Vic and I were both on it. We worked together on closing out things in the old church, on working with the architect as he developed concepts. Once construction started, Vic was our eyes and ears in daily dealing with the contractor. His knowledge of how construction took place was invaluable during that time. He and I and some others conducted the final inspection of the new building. Together we looked for those nicks and dings and bigger items that the contractor might have overlooked.

Later, he came to work where I worked, CEI Engineering, as a construction observer. He and I worked together on getting contractors to do the right thing on various development and public works projects. Vic wasn’t much on paperwork. which drove me nuts. I had to keep after him to fill out daily reports. But he sure knew construction, knew his way around a job site, knew how to handle contractors, make them follow the construction plans. The local business slowdown hit NW Arkansas in 2006, ahead of the rest of the country, and Vic was laid off by our company the next year.

After that, we kind of drifted apart. Life circumstances resulted in our having different goals and going in different directions in life. We saw each other at church, but Lynda and I stopped going out to eat due to salary cuts. Eventually we quit the evening get-togethers.  Whenever we did get together it was good times as always. During these later years, Vic was heavily involved in physical needs at the church. He ran cables, worked the sound booth, maintained just about anything and everything inside the buildings and on the grounds. He was the guy you would see bring a new microphone to the platform in the middle of a church service when the pastor’s mic died. When someone needed to climb a ladder to push the reset button on the ceiling-mounted projector, Vic would be the one to climb, as five of us down below would steady the ladder and encourage him.

The last paragraph really understates all that Vic did for the church. He truly had a servant’s heart and followed that up with action. If he saw a need he moved to fulfill it. He didn’t need to be asked. Yet, if you did ask him for anything he would do it. He had the gifts of both serving and helping.

Vic will be much missed by many people. We mourn, along with his family. What will help all who do mourn him is knowing that Vic has now heard those words from his heavenly Father that we all long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of the Lord.”