To the Editor:
Peggy Sims’s recent Spring Revival recounting brought back a flood of memories of my own childhood church experiences. Our family “belonged” to the Williamsville Methodist Church located on Williamsville Road next to Mr. Hugh Joplin’s cotton gin. As a matter of fact, my grandfather J. Will Owen gave the land on which the simple church structure sat.
To say our membership was small is putting it mildly as we struggled to keep John Wesley’s tenets alive and well in our community. When our church found itself without a pianist, my sweet sainted mother Ellie Neill anointed me to take piano lessons so that I could assume that role. Mrs. Howard Scarborough, wife of the Baptist preacher, was my teacher, and I finally succeeded in learning Jesus Calls Us #49 in the Cokesbury Hymnal. Unfortunately for our congregation, it was the ONLY hymn I ever learned to play so they were forced to sing it Sunday mornings and evenings for at least a year. They eventually didn’t even have to open their hymnals!
Even though they never said as much, I know our members all rejoiced when my younger sister Patricia became proficient at the keyboard with an ever-increasing repertoire of hymns, and I was eased into the “song leader” position.
Stanley Hartness, M.D.
Jackson, MS
