HER NAME IS LILLY

# 2     February 17, 2013

HER NAME IS LILLY

Lilly Mae Owens, born November 17, 1938

We started college, September 1956.  We were back for a second year, September 1957. 

Most of ’57 I was attending Emmanuel Church of the Nazarene.  Several college Kids started attending there.  Someone had an old school bus for sale.  Some visionary Students arranged to buy it for transportation from college to Emmanuel each Sunday.  Those who rode paid a $1.  After a while the Bus belonged to the Students.

One Sunday evening during a revival, Lilly Owens, as a second year student was in attendance.  During Testimony time, she stood up and said, “My Pastor, Brother W. H. Johnson, back at Indianapolis Westside always says, “The best corn is not grown on the mountain, but in the valley.”  Then she sat down.  That was the first time I had seen her.

At the end of May 1958 school term, she went home for a year, to work.  That summer I moved with our family to Louisianna.  Daddy was leaving the pastorate of the Church in Eldorado, and taking a Church in Oak Grove, LA.  Granddaddy Shumaker was sick in the Altus Hospital.  The truck came to move our belongings.  We waited, wondering, if we should go or stay.  Then he died and soon after the funeral, we drove to the rented parsonage.  The little boys and Linda attended school in Oak Grove.  Pallie and Donnie graduated High School from there the next spring.  Friends, the Jack McClung family asked me to live with them and I attended a third year of college in Monroe, LA.

A lot of events took place beginning the summer of 1959.  Our Parents moved across state to pastor the Nazarene Church at Rodessa, LA.   Donnie and Charles were married.  He was in my class at College and they moved to Bethany.  September 1959 found Lilly and me back at Bethany Nazarene College, to finish our last two years.  Pallie Sue had come for her first year and was rooming in Fanning Hall where she met Lilly.  I was a religion major.  Lilly was a science major studying Pre-Med.  So our paths had never  crossed.  Soon after the second semester began, our Folks and family all moved to Bethany.

I never knew why, but Lilly asked Pallie, if she could come to our home and cook a spaghetti supper.  Mother and Daddy had rented a large house across the street from campus.  So Pallie and I were able to move back home from the dorms.   Lilly cooked all day long.  O my goodness, that supper was something beyond our Southwest Oklahoma imaginations.  Our little brothers and sister fell in love with Lilly that night, as did we all.