Churches

Hazel Tison, fresh from the beauty shop, works on her column for the Advertiser.

A MEMORY | HAZEL WELLS TISON

My sister Minnie Lee and I were one year apart in age, she being the older. We were about 16 and 17, both dark-haired, brown-eyed southern girls.

In the fall, when the cane had been harvested and the syrup-making finished, Daddy was taking a pickup load to sell in Pensacola. He allowed Minnie and me, along with cousin Lenora, to go with him. We spent the night there with some of his cousins — and, wonder of wonders, he took us shopping in downtown Pensacola on old Palafox Street. I don’t recall what all we were able to buy, but I know we each got a new dress. Mama had always pretty much dressed us alike. A lot of folks thought we were twins. I was younger but a bit taller and skinnier, while my sister was more shapely. She also had thick, well-managed hair, while mine was fine and wispy. It was the ’40s and glitz was being worn for casual wear, so we bought similar but not identical dresses, off-white and trimmed at the shoulders in gold sequins.

Our older brother Perry was dating Hester Lucas of Esto at the time. One Sunday evening he was attending a sing at Esto Baptist Church with her and he invited (or perhaps allowed or tolerated) his younger sisters to go with him. It was a golden opportunity to wear our new gold-trimmed dresses. We sang along with the southern gospel songs, with which we were very familiar. I don’t remember meeting any of the nice folks of Esto, though I am sure we did.

Later we got a report from Hester’s mother, Miss Pauline, that a group of the ladies were discussing the attendance of the Wells girls at the Esto sing and expressing their opinions about which one was the prettiest. Here was the conclusion of one of the Esto ladies: “Well, I thought that littlest one was the prettiest. Oh, she had that little ol’ mess of hair, but it just became her.”

That’s my Esto story. It has always been an apt description of my “little ol’ mess of hair.” That is why I resolved a long time ago that if I ever could afford it, I was going to the beauty shop every week. Don’t expect to find me at home on Thursday afternoons at 1:30.

Hazel Wells Tison, a retired teacher, is a longtime columnist for the Holmes County Advertiser and the author of Better Times a Comin’.

An ol’ friend loved gospel music

October 13, 2023

Churches

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From the front page of the Holmes County Advertiser, circa 1974.

“GIVE A Holmes Countian half a chance, and they’ll do well,” local broadcaster J. Harvey Etheridge often said on his morning radio program while bragging about a neighbor’s accomplishments.

For decades his distinctive warm voice came booming into homes in the tri-county area six mornings a week on WBGC 1240 from Chipley. (The station’s call letters stood for Bonifay, Graceville and Chipley.)

“Hello everybody everywhere, this is your old friend Harvey Etheridge, bringing you the news of Bonifay and Holmes County,” he always began.

He presented a mix of newsy items he’d heard or read or gathered on the tape recorder he always took with him on his travels around the area selling Liberty Mutual life insurance. Etheridge was the county’s chief spokesman and booster, sharing notice of birthdays, family get-togethers and local events small and large — especially Bonifay’s annual rodeo and all-night gospel sing.

J. Harvey Etheridge Street in downtown Bonifay — the address of city hall, the public library and his longtime office — is named in his honor.

Even before Etheridge moved to Holmes County in the 1950s and became a leader of the “World’s Biggest All-Night Gospel Sing” every Fourth of July weekend at Memorial Field in Bonifay, he was involved as a young man in promoting gospel music in Dothan, Alabama. For a time he was a member of a gospel group called the Alabama Four.

He had a powerful singing voice. For decades, he was a member of the choir at Bonifay’s First United Methodist Church. He led the singing during Sunday night services and often sang solos just before the sermon.

“He loved gospel music,” says his daughter, Lygia Etheridge Tisdale. “He had a beautiful bass voice. I always told my Mama she fell in love with Daddy’s voice first.”

For a week in the spring of 1972, Etheridge was lured across town from the Methodist church to First Baptist Church to lead the singing at a spring revival. Recently, retired educator and longtime First Baptist organist Kenneth Yates unearthed and digitized recordings that capture portions of the week’s services.

Etheridge’s distinctive voice and gentle sense of humor are on full display. He prays and sings and even hums favorite old gospel hymns.

Etheridge says in the recording that he was kidded all week about being a Methodist in a Baptist church, but found they weren’t that different.

“I thought I’d sing out of the Methodist hymnal tonight,” he says during one service. “And, lo and behold, the same song is in the Baptist hymnal.”

Harvey Etheridge led the singing at First Baptist Church in Bonifay during a revival in 1972.

His eye is still on the sparrow

October 2, 2022

Churches, Video

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GOSPEL WAS OUR MUSIC when I was growing up in Esto. In addition to church, we often had community sings, and the Biggest All Night Gospel Singing in the World was a major event every Fourth of July weekend, from sundown to sunup, at the football field in Bonifay, the county seat.

When I was a senior in high school, we went to a revival service at First Baptist Church in Bonifay — the big time in Holmes County. It featured traveling evangelists Ed and Bette Stalnecker and their entourage of musicians. I especially loved Bette’s soaring rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” a beautiful song not in our hymnal. I found the sheet music and must have played that song hundreds of times on the piano at Esto Baptist Church as the prelude or offertory or benediction hymn.

After I moved all the way to Tallahassee for college, I saw the Stalneckers again at Thomasville Road Baptist Church. The music was still joyous and uplifting, especially “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” (But you had to wonder about Rev. Ed Stalnecker’s demand at the end of his sermon that 100 people come forward to make a public profession of faith before the doors would be opened.)

I saw and heard the Stalneckers only those two times, but the memory of their music stayed with me. Once when I was back home, I asked retired school principal Kenneth Yates, then and now the organist at First Baptist Bonifay, if he remembered the Stalneckers. Not only did he remember; he had recorded some of their music, and promised to make a copy. I rarely saw Mr. Yates on my trips home that I didn’t ask about the Stalnecker recording. He always assured me he’d find it someday and make a copy. But it never happened. Decades passed.

And now, all of a sudden, it’s here. I went to the post office on Monday and found a yellow notice in our box that we had a package. The desk clerk came back with a small square padded envelope. Return address: K. Yates, Bonifay, FL. Inside was a CD with the inscription: “A Week of Gospel Music: The Stalneckers. FBC Bonifay. February 1973.” Only 49 1/2 years later!

“This is my story, this is my song.”

That’s the full-throated opening chorus of the first hymn, an old favorite. Then “Love Lifted Me” and “Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul” and “Oh, the Wonder of It All.” And then, on track 10: “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” every bit as wonderful as I remembered.

That voice! Bette Stalnecker was a contralto, it turns out, with a big deep husky singing voice that sounds almost like a man. Her soft-spoken sweetness and gentle humor come through between songs. At one point she says, “We get a complaint every now and then that we don’t do enough foot-stomping gospel music,” followed by a rollicking version of “Jesus Is Coming Soon.” And then, near the end, everybody’s favorite: “How Great Thou Art.”

I’ve played the CD dozens of times during the past week. A little searching revealed that Ed divorced Bette a few years after I saw them. He found another Betty and another ministry involving donated cars and boats. Allegations of forgery and other wrongdoing preceded his death in 2007.

Bette kept singing in Baptist churches throughout the South, successfully battling the throat cancer that took her voice for almost a year. She remarried, to a longtime family friend, after his wife died. Now, at 93, Bette Stalnecker Gibson is still singing — and on Facebook. A few days ago she posted a video of herself before a senior group in Tennessee. She was singing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

"HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW" (2022)

FOR TRUE FANS of gospel music, here is a selection of songs performed by the Stalneckers at First Baptist Church, Bonifay, in February 1973.

She loved her church

January 30, 2022

Churches, Neighbors

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Sybil Taylor was a devoted member of the Church of Christ.

TODAY WAS HER 98th birthday, so I called Sybil Taylor to wish her well and talk about the old days in Esto.

She didn’t answer. A little searching revealed that she died last fall, with no announcement made locally. My Christmas card was not returned.

Sybil Miller Taylor lived almost all of her long life just south of Holland’s Crossroads, where Highway 79 meets Highway 2. She was a devout member of the Esto Church of Christ, absolutely certain of her beliefs and eager to convert others. Late in life, she gave her family farm to Faulkner University, a Church of Christ college in Montgomery, and lived on campus during her final years.

Faulkner University posted this story in its “Supporter Spotlight.”

Sybil Taylor, who passed away October 22, 2021, at the age of 97, wasn’t sure what she would do when her husband Moody Taylor died years earlier and left their farm in Florida to her.
Taylor and her husband had been having financial difficulties with the farm when she heard a sermon on giving and she made a promise to the Lord that she would give half of what she earned to the Lord and his work. She kept her promise and the Lord blessed their farm and increased their revenue.
One night after her husband passed away, Elizabeth Wright Smith, who was one of Faulkner University’s strongest supporters, visited Taylor to share the university’s missions and need for funds. After sharing her story, Smith asked Mrs. Taylor if she would like to support Faulkner University. Her response was quick. At the time, Smith was asking donors to give $1,000 each year for a period of 10 years. The next morning, Taylor gave Smith a check for $10,000.
“I knew about Faulkner University when it first opened in 1942 as Montgomery Bible College and then as Alabama Christian College,” Taylor said. “I received the Gospel Advocate newspaper, as did all my family members before me. When Elizabeth came to ask me for my support, I wanted to give. Faulkner was one of the few Christian colleges I knew about at the time and I wanted to support them.”
Since that day, Taylor was an unwavering supporter and friend of Faulkner University.
When it came time to make a decision about her farm, Taylor, who was well into her retirement years, decided to deed the farm to Faulkner for the university to sell. Funds from the sale went to the university and five charitable gift annuities were set up for Taylor to live on a stable income for the rest of her life. With a charitable gift annuity, Taylor received a return based on her age. This fixed payment was in addition to a large income tax deduction.
She lived on campus for many years before her passing.
A memorial service was held on November 2 at University Church of Christ in Montgomery.

He is not here

May 20, 2015

Churches, Neighbors

Sybil Taylor honored on her 90th

January 30, 2014

Churches, Neighbors

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ESTO’S OWN Sybil Taylor, a longtime supporter of Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama, was honored in the school’s chapel on January 30, 2014, her 90th birthday. She received a proclamation from President Billy D. Hilyer proclaiming it Sybil Taylor Day on all four Faulkner campuses. “Thank you, Mrs. Taylor, for your unwavering support of Christian higher education and Faulkner University,” he said.

Sybil Miller Taylor was born near Esto and lived on Highway 79 just south of Miller’s Crossroads, which was named for her family. She was active all her life in the Esto Church of Christ. In recent years she moved from Esto to a new house built for her on Alabama Christian Drive on the main Faulkner University campus in Montgomery.