BILL CHERRY'S GREATEST DALLAS PARK CITIES REAL ESTATE BLOG: They Didn't Know Each Other, But a Common Denominator Brought Them Peace

Gaither Homecoming gospel music star and my friend for a number of years, Janet Paschal, emailed about three years ago to make sure I knew that her fellow performers Jake Hess and Vestal Goodman had both died, and within a week of each other.

Mr. Jake and Miss Vestal were pioneer Southern gospel performers. They had been there when the tunes were accompanied by maybe a four-cord bass line played on an out of tune piano before small church congregations on country roads between here and there. But by the time they had died, they had performed before TV audiences of millions and at mega-thousand seat auditoriums packed with admirers, all the result of the genius of producer Bill Gaither who had had that music arranged slick, and had professionally staged the entertainers.

While it probably wasn't very Episcopalian-like, in the last several of years of my mother's life, we accumulated about 15 tapes of the Gaither Homecoming programs, and she and I watched them over and over, almost one every day. Jake Hess, Vestal and Howard Goodman, the Easters, Mark Lowery, Jessy Dixon and Lillie Knowles couldn't help but become our friends, even though they didn't know us. When she passed away, I sent the tapes to the city library for others to enjoy. I was certain I wouldn't be able to watch those programs again without overwhelming sadness.

Many of those who contributed so much to the fabric of my faith and personality passed away this last year. It troubles me that I didn't get to write about any of them before they died. It troubles me even more that, no matter how fast I pedal, I may never be able to write about them or the many others who surely made God proud that he had invented human beings. There have been so many.

My friend Raymond Rapp's wife, Helene died, too. Mr. and Mrs. Rapp had been sweethearts for more than 60-years. He's at peace with his loss because of his strong Roman Catholic faith. He told me that she's waiting for him in heaven, and he knows they'll be together again soon.

Devotion to their faith is, interestingly, the common denominator of all of these people, even though they didn't all know each other, and even though they understood and expressed their faiths in different ways. I asked another friend, the Rev. Ray Pinard what it was like to pray the last prayer while holding a person's hand whom he knew, within moments, would breathe their last breath. He told me that every one of them transmits the same message from their hand to his as their soul leaves to join God. The message is, "Ray, I'm now at peace and with Him."

  <<Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows Allen

In his later years, comedian and jazz pianist Steve Allen and I became friends. Once he wrote that while he, himself, was an agnostic, he never turned down a church when they asked for a contribution. He said that it was undeniable that there wouldn't be as much good in the world if it weren't for people's faith and the churches they had built as a result.

Since, like all of us, he had benefitted from their commitments to good, he thought he should financially support them to help that continue.

When Mr. Allen died, his wife, Jayne Meadows Allen, wrote me a note to let me know that she thought, in her heart, that since Mr. Allen had never denied the existence of God, that he was at peace because he now knew and had accepted the truth, and because of that God "had accepted him in His arms." He would be waiting for her in heaven.

Mrs. Allen and her sister, actress Audry Meadows, had been daughters of missionaries. After they were grown, their father became the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. It was her faith that, like Raymond Rapp's, comforted her. And that was as it had to be.

For like Mr. Rapp and the rest of us who have lost loved ones, Mrs. Allen could not begin to comprehend how she would deal with the cruelty she would have to face and accept if she and Mr. Allen would not be together again, and this time for the eternity that her religious beliefs of more than 80-years promised.

                                                         Copyright 2004-2007 - William S. Cherry