Some of our happiest years were spent in beautiful San Saba, Texas at the Second & Wallace church of Christ. While a student at ACU, I preached at Lone Camp in Palo Pinto county, driving out each Sunday for three years which gave me some extremely valuable experience. After graduating from Abilene Christian University in 1971, Dick Felts recommended me to the church in San Saba. Dick was a member at Hamby where I, and many other “future” preachers spoke occasionally. Dick’s father and two of his uncles were doctors in San Saba. Several weeks after preaching a trial sermon in San Saba, Bro. Russell Lewis called me and offered me the pulpit position.
I well remember calling my parents who were visiting my brother in São Paulo, Brazil and telling my father about the offer and my acceptance. I was to live in the parsonage built years before for Hulen and Guille Jackson. Guille was the sister of the beloved Foy Wallace, Jr. Hulen’s brother Oliver was the great Olympic track coach from ACU. My salary was $150 per week, the church paid my utility bills, and I got one-third of the pecans picked up on the church property. San Saba is the “Pecan Capital of the World.”
During the Great Depression, a dynamic evangelist, Bela L. Watson preached for the San Saba church and did a marvelous work. After leaving local church work, Bro. Watson served the Lord as a missionary for many decades. About the same time I was offered the pulpit position in San Saba, Bro. Watson was diagnosed with cancer. He thought his time was limited, but the Lord was not finished with him yet. Hearing about his situation, the San Saba church invited him return from the mission field to serve as their associate minister and where he could be loved by those to whom he had ministered forty years before. Bro. Watson and I served the church in San Saba together for four years. He never knew who purchased the beautiful suit he wore so proudly and in which he was buried.
San Saba is a rather isolated town, and we conducted many funerals for individuals who had some family connection to the church in years past. Often, my dear friend Paul Golding would serve as a pallbearer for such individuals. I would say, “I did not know the deceased, but am sure he (or she) was a hard worker, a good neighbor, an honest person and a good example to all.” More than once and with a gleam in his eye, Paul would approach me, put his hand on my shoulder, and quietly say, “James, it was obvious you did not know the deceased!”
After four happy years, the doubling of the membership, the acquisition of additional property, and a huge building expansion, I met a dark-haired young lady who was in her last years at Lubbock Christian University, Dottie Beasley. I remember sitting on the front row waiting to deliver the morning sermon and before I met her I heard her beautiful voice for the first time. Her father, Lloyd, was the new Superintendent of the Cherokee Home for Children. We married on August 1, 1975 in Lubbock in the chapel of the Sunset Church of Christ building. On my final Sunday evening in San Saba, the First Baptist church and First Methodist church called off services and we all worshipped together.