From Deb & Arlene

Your dad shared your blog and it is fabulous but I am not sure how it works so I am sending you this recent note I got from a friend of ours Deb Chandler Robus. Her mom Arlene was our piano teacher and she was a terrific journal keeper. Arlene wrote down this experience and shared it with her daughter Deb.     

“Kay...I hope you are safe and well during this period of self-distancing.  I was looking for some information this afternoon and somehow got sidetracked reading old e-mail messages from my mother. I found this gem that I wanted to share with you. It is her recollection of an interview done at First Baptist by their interim pastor...and it's about your dad.  Enjoy!

August 6, 2001

I wanted to share with both of you (before I forget it!) an interview last night at church with Henry Clay Kelley.  I've never seen that side of the man before!

Our pastor, Bro. Swihart, often does this on Sunday nights--calls someone up from the congregation to interview them.  He says we need to know each other better, and I agree.

Henry Clay went down the aisle with a spring in his step.  He said he was born at Big Flat, Arkansas, and came to Heber Springs in 1935.  (I had no idea his family ever lived at Big Flat.)  He had to explain to

the pastor that you went to Mountain View, then onto Big Flat.  He said they attended a little country church that wasn't even painted and that was where he got his first connotation of a Higher Being.  (Somehow, I can't quite see L.S. and Grace Kelley in a little country church, but then that's what we don't know about people.)

However, Henry didn't become a Christian until 1954.  I remember him as a young man who played baseball on the Young Business Men's Team.

Indeed, he played one afternoon when everyone was worried that Tommy would go into labor with Becky.

With enthusiasm, Henry went on to tell that he joined his dad in the oil distribution business in 1946, then went into real estate.  "I made a lot of money in real estate,"  he said, grinning.  He was just so happy as he talked.  He described his children and grandchildren and said he was a "grandpa out and out!"

The pastor asked about the patch he wears on his forehead.  (He's had some kind of surgery, I think for a cancer.)  He answered that the doctor told him he would have to wear it about six months and he was now in his sixth month.  "But I don't intend to ever take it off,"  he said.  "People come up and ask, 'How are you?"

The pastor asked him how he felt about the split in the church and he explained that he missed the ones who left us.  But he believed that God had a ministry for them, as well as for us.  Last, the pastor asked what he would like to say to the congregation and his words were: "Because of Jesus Christ, I'm free!  I would say to anyone in our congregation that Jesus Christ is the answer to life's problems."

As he went back to his seat, Gerry McCurry rose and said she wanted to add something to his interview.  Of course, the pastor made a big to-do about getting the microphone to her.  Then like a talk-show host, he said, "Now tell us who you are!"  She talked right over him.  But he insisted!  "Everybody knows who I am,"  she said.  "No," he answered. "We have two guests tonight and they might know you!"

Then she went on to say, after "Gerry McCurry,"  that she came to Heber Springs in 1948 and Henry Clay was the most eligible bachelor in town. He drove a yellow convertible.  Then Tommie came to teach school andthey started to date. "I told my husband, "That's a match!"  And she has been proven right.  They will soon be married 51 years.”