How Far Is Forward?

By Dr. George M. Hill

My military career ended with honor
at the time President Lyndon B.
Johnson was the Commander in Chief
of these United States. I served in the
United States Coast Guard, the United
States Navy, and the United States
Army in combat during the World
War II, Korea, and Viet Nam. When
my military career ended, I entered a
job market in which civil rights had
become a reality. Therefore, with my
education, electronic training, and motivation, I was able to secure
a job working for the Minolta Corporation. My military service
and my employment at Minolta enabled me to support my family:
three boys and one girl who are all adults now. In looking back over
my life, my memories of a strong religious upbringing brought me
back to the church. As a result, I found myself being called into the
ministry. Following Gods directions, I found myself moving from
Browns Mills, New Jersey to Columbia, South Carolina. Presently,
I serve as founder and president of Worthy is the Lamb Outreach
Ministries (Revelation 5:12). Therefore, proceeds from the book will
be used in funding programs for the elderly, the sick, and the needy
through my ministry. To God Be the glory!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 8, 2009
• ISBN: 9781477160350

Dr. George M. Hill

I remember that day when my military career ended. When the retirement document was presented, with the requirement years completed, with the integrity of honor. And now the PAC’s of life was change. At the time, President Lyndon B. Johnson was the commanding chief of these United States, and now the road to civilian life was no threat to me. After serving my country in world II. Korea, and Vietnam in combat. I service. In the US coast Guard, the Us Navy and the US Army. The job market was not in a critical state. When I enter back into the circle world, my educational level, and with some electronic achievement. Was suitable for the job that I applied for the Minolta Corporation. This employment was prosperous for me. Our four children. Three boys and one girl all was now adults. And service, in the military for a period of time. My early family. Days of my life was in remember, going back to church. Revive me, and shortly after I was called into the ministry. I move from Browns Mills NJ to Columbia. South Carolina. And now I am the president and founder of worthy is the lamb outreach ministries(revelation 5:12) without any restrict boundaries, the nursing home, the hospitals. he prison. streets. private homes. To god be the glory.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The Broken Bottle Incident

One mid-summer day an unusual thundershower occurred. I was approximately three years of age at the time. After the heavy rainfall the narrow, unpaved road that had no trench to channel the water caused the rainwater to settle in the flat surface of the road. Until the sun’s heat dried up the water, the road was very muddy. On each side of the road just across the fields there were one-story houses called bungalows where sharecroppers lived. The muddy roads were no hazard to the farmers because horses and mules pulled wagons and buggies up and down the road. Automobile industries were still in the early development and improvement stage in the 1920’s, but the industry was steadily moving forward with a focus on the future.

My two brothers, sister, and the neighborhood children were all having fun playing in the wet, muddy, slippery road. We were thoroughly enjoying the results of the heavy rainfall by sliding on the wet surface of the muddy road. As we continued to play, I saw an object lying on the side of the road; and as I moved closer, I saw it was some kind of bottle. I reached down and got hold of it and pulled the bottle from the mud and debris on the road. It happened to be a Coca Cola bottle, and it was very unusual to see a Coca Cola bottle thrown away in those days.

I was really excited over my discovery, and I grasped the bottle and started running toward our little bungalow just across the field to show my mother. I wanted to show her the Coca Cola bottle because I knew it had some recycling value down at the country store. Back in those days a couple of pennies could buy a lot of candy, so we were all excited! My brothers, sister, and the other children were running along with me. Being blind with excitement, I was not watching where I was going. Suddenly I stumbled over something, which caused me to fall with my arms stretched forward. I was trying to guard against the fall with the bottle in my right hand. The bottle landed on a rock causing the bottle to break. Shattered glass cut deeply into the thick part of my hand near the wrist. Now, my hand was that of a three-year-old child, and it seemed that the penetration of the broken bottle had severed my thumb from the other parts of my hand.

Inside the house, my mother heard loud screaming coming from the children who were with me in the slippery, muddy road. My mother ran out of the house and rescued me. Picking me up, she quickly observed the condition of my hand with blood flowing. Without asking any questions, she carried me into the house. In those days people didn’t know much about first-aid. In rural areas, the use of home remedies was very popular, so some of the neighbors came to the scene to offer helping hands. The nearest doctor’s office was a long way from our neighborhood, and the transportation we owned was an old Model-T Ford. Nobody could drive but my father, and he was at work. Not that it would have made any difference anyway because there was not enough money to buy gasoline.

Observing the condition of my hand, my mother located the blood vessel in my wrist, and she applied pressure to that area stopping the blood flow. Using some old clean rags, she dried up the blood from my hand. I remember lying on my back on a small bed in the kitchen. When everything came back into focus, I was too young to be aware of the danger, so I was not afraid and was not crying. However, I remember two ladies observing my condition; they were praying. One was a white lady from up the road, and one was a black lady from the field. I did not understand at the time what the neighbors were saying and doing. As time went on, my mother would explain.

In the corner of the kitchen there was an old wood-burning stove. An old iron kettle for heating water sat on the top portion. In those days it was common to have a washbowl and a large wooden or tin tub often used for bathing. We called the washbowl a wash pan and used it most of the time for washing our faces and hands. There was a bucket of water sitting on a small table near the corner of the kitchen near the stove. My mother took some water from the bucket and poured it into the wash pan and some from the iron kettle to make a mixture of lukewarm water. Taking some clean rags and dipping them into the water, she carefully cleaned out the place where the glass from the broken bottle had penetrated deep into my hand.

Now, in those days, there was no first-aid for emergency care; and there was no means of medication in the homes of poor people. Only the wealthy had access to medical care. Using the old home remedy, she improvised from things available in the house. In those days, the kerosene from the lamps was the best antiseptic for cuts and other emergencies. My mother dipped a clean rag into the kerosene and dabbed it gently on my hand. After my mother went through the necessary procedure with what she had available, she finished wrapping a clean rag around my hand for a bandage. This broken Coca Cola bottle left a mark in my hand that can be seen until this day!

CHAPTER TWO

The Moving

I remember when I first began to appreciate that old Franklin place in the little town of travelers in the province of Greenville, South Carolina. The landscape was that of fields with small bungalow houses scattered about, and on the edge of the fields there were small, beautiful trees. By the time I became kindergarten age, there was no kindergarten for the black and poor white children in those days, and most of the young children were educated by their parents’ habits and lifestyle. When a child became six years of age, they were able to attend public school. The black children, however, had no school bus transportation in the South. School busses were only for the white children. As a child there was so much that I didn’t understand. For instance, I didn’t understand things happening around me. I didn’t understand the long overdue political and social changes that inspired racism and discrimination.

Now during those early depression years, poor and middleclass working people were completely unprepared for the avalanche of the great depression. What seemed to be a perfect world ended when the tragedies of the decades began. I remember the day that my father came home from work in the early part of the evening with a strange expression on his face. It was a very unusual time of day for him to come home from his place of employment down at the country grocery store. The store sold food, seeds, fertilizer, feed for livestock and other things that farmers need. My mother quickly suspected that something was wrong, and my father didn’t keep her in suspense. He told her he had been dismissed from his job down at the store. There was a reduction in workers, and he was the first to go. He was the only black that was employed by that store as a laborer; his job was to load merchandise on wagons and trucks for the people. There was no forklift in those days to tow the load; everything was done manually using pure physical strength. My father also had to keep the place clean. He was paid according to the days he worked; there were no hourly wages. At the time, we were living just a little above the survival line with no excesses. Now, the news of his unemployment was painful for my mother. She was a housewife, which limited her ability to work. However, she did some work for some of the wealthy white families in the community nearby.

My mother was blessed with a God-given talent of playing the organ, and she was good at it! Because of her lack of education and music training, she was not accepted as a musician in the black community of the A.M.E. Methodist Service, but there was some opportunity for her to play in many other Christian engagements, whenever there was an organ available. My father was a preacher but was not in a pastoral position at the time. In those days the word minister had not been established as part of the black church’s administration of doctrine, so I use the word preacher. White people would always call my father preacher and never reverend.

In those days there was a tradition of words carried over from slavery, and white people still used traditional words that were carried over from slavery. In those days there was still a language barrier to be eliminated. White people would use the black person’s name but address the elder black man as uncle, a woman as aunt, and the young boys as boy. This was a widespread practice in the South at that time. The day after my father was dismissed, I remember standing on the back porch gazing across the fields at the many bungalow houses where farmers and sharecroppers worked someone else’s land in return for a share of the crop that the land produced. Sometimes, the farmer’s share would only balance the debt owed to the farmer. Just the night before I watched my parents with some of the neighbors pray together over the prevailing situation. After the prayer service, some of the neighbors tried to convince my father to take advantage of the work right in front of him on the farm. Harvest was almost ready; the crops were mature by that first week in September.

Even though my grandfather had been a farmer, my father decided against the offer. The morning of the third day after my father was dismissed from his job, nothing unusual was going on in the fields that morning. The sharecroppers were busy in the fields harvesting crops. Finally, when the crops were all gathered, the farmer who attended to the crop would sometimes break even but never surpass beyond breaking even in the settlement. That morning while I was looking across the fields and narrow, unpaved roads; the silence was broken by the sound of an automobile coming up the road. In those days, any sound of a moving automobile on the county back roads would attract everyone’s attention. Folks in the fields would look toward the sound of the moving automobile, and folks in the house would come out, look toward the sound, and watch for the moving automobile. As the automobile drew closer, we all saw that it was a Model-T Ford pick-up truck. The truck turned off the road into our yard. Not hesitating, my father walked over to the driver’s side and greeted the driver with Good morning Mr. Franklin. My father addressed him with kindness as my brothers and sister were trying to get a closer, excited look at the automobile. The driver of the truck was a white man, the owner of the farmland and the little bungalow house; he nodded his head in response to my father’s greeting. Looking past my father, he spit out a portion of chewing tobacco. He could have easily knocked a flying bumblebee out of its flight to the ground. He pushed the remaining portion of chewable tobacco to the other side of his jowl and finished contaminating his whole mouth.

Mr. Franklin did not turn off the truck ignition because in those days the Model-T Ford did not have a starter. Once the engine stopped, it had to be hand cranked to get the motor started again. Hand cranking was not an easy thing to wrestle with. As he gazed past my father toward the fields, he lifted his voice above the noise of the running truck engine and said loudly, Preacher, I will be needing my house. His command to vacate his property did not come as a surprise, since my father had turned down the offer to become a sharecropper. Now, he was unemployed with no way to pay rent, and we were all very young children. My father believed that all children should have the opportunity and adequate time to attend school during its season. So many of the farm children were a part of their parents workforce. They helped harvest the crops, and the process of gathering the crops was always slow, hard work. No modern farming machinery was available for the sharecropper in those days. When the harvesting season ended, it was only a short period of time before preparing the soil and taking care of other needed things to make ready the soil for the upcoming farming season. The fall short crop season always came around fast; so most children, especially the boys, only had about three or four months of leisure time to attend school if they were of school age.

Unfortunately, the expectation to vacate our house came earlier than expected. When Mr. Franklin said, I will be needing my house, my father replied, Yes sir. From the porch where my mother was standing behind the half-opened door, we could hear the conversation despite the noisy truck motor. During the entire conversation with my father, Mr. Franklin had been looking beyond him. Suddenly, he turned his head and looking straight at my father, he hesitated slightly before he said, Preacher, there is a job opening at the mill in Greenville. I have recommended you to the people in the main office for the job because I know them. Those words, heard above the engine, caused excitement in the house; and my mother began saying, Thank you, Lord, over and over. At that time I could not understand what the Lord had to do with what the man said.

Mr. Franklin continued, The job is shoveling coal into the furnace in the basement of the mill. There had to be some means of producing steam for the operations of the textile plant to weave the cotton into fabric. My father would fill the position of a fireman and laborer in order to keep the furnace going. The job would not be an easy one with the heat and dust from shoveling the coal. Responding with a grateful attitude, my father said, Thank you so much, Mr. Franklin. I sure do appreciate this job opportunity. God bless you! Replying, Mr. Franklin said, You need to get over there right away; and once again, he insisted that we vacate the house. Saying once more, I need my house. He drove his truck out of the yard into the road and out of sight. Mr. Franklin was not a man of long conversations; he was always brief, clear, and understandable.

Now my father had been working down at the country store for a long period of time before his employment ended. Along the way he had built up quite a reputation for himself, and there were times when the white people would observe his hard laboring and long hours. Also, there were times when he would work through his lunch period in order to help merchants load and unload merchandise that was coming into the store, not to mention, loading merchandise that was sold to characters. From time to time, the white people would make comments while watching him work. In their private conversations, they would refer to that colored man or that nigger, but never as preacher. Despite it all, my father’s recommendation for the new job came from one of them, and my father was grateful! Being a black man in those critical years and times with the on-coming depression was not a common challenge. Those times had their lasting effects on all races of people.

My father hurried into the house to share the good news. It seemed that all those prayers from my parents and the neighbors now had been granted. My mother was moving around in the small kitchen praising God for granting their petition, and my father joined in with her. At the time we as young children could not understand who God was and the unexplained miracle that had occurred at that time. However, I do remember that particular night when my parents joined the neighbors in prayer. At the end they thanked God for granting the petition they requested for my father to secure another job! This prayer meeting had ended long before Mr. Franklin came into our yard that morning. Now, we finished thanking God for his wonderful gift, and there was an expression of gladness on my parents’ faces. They ended the joyful moments with very loud Amens!

My father then confidently told my mother, I am going over to Greenville to the mill, and I will probably not come back here before tomorrow evening, and there is not much gasoline in the old car, but I believe I can make it there. This new job would be a great challenge to him. An opportunity to be employed by the Southern Worsted Textile Mill of Greenville, South Carolina was rarely given to a black man. Greenville was near cotton fields, railroads, streams and rivers. Cheap labor was available for the black man in the cotton field, stream and river transportation, but not in the textile mills. The mill had always been like the locomotive union, and it was truly amazing that this fireman position was open to a black man. Much of this came about for the black man because of the northern New York investors.

On Saturday afternoons before this event, when my father was still working at the country store, he would always bring some food for Sunday; sometimes fish to be fried for Sunday morning’s breakfast and something for dinner. Sometimes there were some kinds of candies or fruit for us children. Even though the apples would have dark spots on them, my mother would cut the blemish away, and we would eat the fruit. Most of the candies were not of the best flavor, but their taste was sweet. We were extremely thankful to my father and to the country store because the candies and fruit were free. Now, this morning, my mother had prepared breakfast as usual, and she never had any problems getting us seated around the table. Food had its own way of disciplining us because at every meal there was just enough to go around. We were thankful to God for what we had. My mother asked my father if he was going to eat. She knew that many times he would not eat breakfast before going to work. His answer to my mother was, No. Then she would say sympathetically, It is a long time from now until tomorrow evening. However, his response was, The Lord will see me through. I’ll just have some coffee.

Taking the coffee pot from the stove, she brought it to the table where my father was seated at the head of the table. She poured some coffee into his cup, which was made from a small food can; it was nothing special. Our plates and drinking cups were that of tin quality, inexpensive metal-ware. There was other china in our house, but my mother used it only for guests. My father accepted the coffee my mother prepared. I watched him sip from the cup of black coffee without sugar or any type of cream. His desire was disciplined for the taste of black coffee only out of necessity. Sugar, milk, and cream were rare substances in our house at times. However, there were times when some of our farming neighbors shared with us. Because they tended to Mr. Franklin’s livestock, sometimes they were able to give mother fresh milk and butter. Even though my father was not pasturing any church at the time, the people who knew him cherished him and our family. Many times he was called upon to go out and preach in different places. Since there was never much money in the collection plate, someone would always bring something by during the week in exchange for the church service he had preached. Depending on the season of the year, the food products would differ. Sometimes there were fresh vegetables, chickens, eggs, meat and flour. My parents would always thank the people and show their gratitude unto God in prayer for our many blessings. However, I digress. Just before my father finished his black cup of coffee, he started telling my mother to prepare to move. I still remember his enjoyment of that bitter coffee as he told her. As a young child I just assumed that kind of taste was for grown ups!

Now, I realize that I didn’t understand the problems that moving our family could cause. Moving would be fun for me, because our present neighbors were made up of sharecroppers and older children. Opportunities for leisure time were seldom, and I had only a few friends to play with. Moving away would not be difficult for me at all. Now at this particular moment, my mother was unprepared for an answer. Where will we move to, and when will you have time to look for a place? The question was not an unexpected one, and my father, drawing himself up, replied, I will look for a place tomorrow, and you can start preparing tonight or early in the morning. Now, as we were all seated around the table, my father asked us all to stand and join hands for prayer. Despite all my father and mother were going through, there was an expression made of admiration and glory to God—a prayer of thanksgiving for his achievement. I didn’t understand how the unprecedented would come, but I had a feeling that God would find us a place to live. After all, He had already provided my father a new job, and I was strongly influenced by that!

My father, followed by my brother and me, got up from the table and went to the car. It was always exciting to watch my father crank the old Ford and listen to the motor running. After he had engaged the hand-crank into a special slot at the bottom of the radiator, we looked on as my father started turning the crank. After a few turns, the engine started running, and my father removed the hand crank, climbed into the high frame back of the car, closed the door, said goodbye, and drove off. We watched him as he drove out of sight with the engine fluttering and skipping slightly.

The idea of moving kept me awake through most of the night. My imagination could not encompass the new place we would move to. My mind was a void with no idea about our new location. Finally, my mind’s imagining came to an end as it was interrupted by a familiar voice. My mother’s voice echoed through the small room that my brothers and I occupied with, It’s time to get out of that bed! It was in this room that I slept between my two brothers since I was the smallest and the youngest. There were times when the bed bugs were raging, and it seemed that I was always the prime meat for the bloodsucking insects. My mother would scald the tight space between the nails and the hookup on the old bed frame with boiling hot water. This would only temporarily provide relief from the bedbugs’ attack. If it had not been for my mother during those difficult times with all of her sacrifices and her undying love, we would never have survived.

Morning routines were always the same; some things never changed. I was old enough to dress myself and to wash my face with the lukewarm water that my mother prepared by taking some hot water from the old, iron kettle on the wood-burning stove. She rationed a portion of hot water and cold water by mixing it in the old wash pan for each of us. Being the youngest, I had no choice but to always be last. After breakfast, one of the neighbors came by on her way to the field. In those days cotton was harvested by hand; there was no modern cotton picking machine. With an expression of kindness the lady greeted my mother, Good Morning, Mrs. Hill. Hello children. I heard you have to move: Is there anything I can do to help you? Showing her gratitude, my mother responded, Good morning, Mrs. Coleman. How is your family? I appreciate your offering to help out. Thank you so much! Please keep us in your prayers that God will provide us a place to move into. My mother understood Mrs. Coleman’s position and did not detain her in a long conversation. As Mrs. Coleman left, she said to my mother, The offer still stands. Good day!

At the time I was too young to understand the word faith, but I admired my mother’s courage. This lady, Mrs. Coleman, was a good neighbor and a true friend. She had a husband and five children. Sharecroppers had more opportunities when the family was large, and the children were old enough to work from sunup to sundown. Sharecroppers exerted their energy five and a half days a week. This was no illusion; this was life for many Southern blacks and poor whites—a way of surviving very difficult times. White and black worked shoulder to shoulder in the heat of the day in the field, only separated in exiting the field. However, in the midst of all the discrimination imposed by the upper class, there were some God-fearing white people who refused to totally separate themselves because of color. Those who promoted racial discrimination considered these people white trash.

By the end of the day, my mother even made moving look like an achievable goal. We children tried to be helpful, but she was the great organizer. I remember that old wood burning, cooking stove was not easy to take apart, but we managed to get it down. With all the moving preparations, I did not get in any playtime that day. Standing on our back porch, I watched the sun set. As the sun descended below the horizon, the amber color was a reflection that beautified the evening skies. The natural surroundings made me grateful to God that my parents served Him even though my understanding of His miracles was limited. However, I was old enough to appreciate the true treasures of life. The sun disappeared behind the horizon as dusk, and then darkness closed in.

Then came the sounds of motor vehicles. They could be recognized some distance away. An automobile was something different! The sound brought my mother, sister, and two brothers to the back porch to become spectators as well. As they approached, the motors of my father’s old Model-T and a truck drove into the small back yard. My father got out of his car, and then the truck driver got out. They walked up to the porch and said hello to all of us. Then my father introduced the truck driver. This is Mr. Brooks, and he will move us in. We all said hello to Mr. Brooks, who was a tall, slim white man. He was very polite with an accent that was different from most white men. As my father entered the house, he said, I have found a place for us to move into—an old army barracks. It was never torn down and it has no petitions, but it is in walking distance from the mill." I could not form a mental picture of our new home that was in a storage warehouse over at the mill, but I was grateful to God.

While we were getting ready to move the next day, some of the neighbors brought food by that was already cooked. However, my mother had made us a promise that we would not eat until my father came home, and I didn’t mind being disciplined because of all the excitement that moving had created. My mother was thankful to God for providing us a place to move into fulfilling her faithful vision. Finally, when my mother started preparing our meal, my excitement began to give way to hunger. All the furniture had been disassembled and put in place for moving, so my mother improvised by placing an old tablecloth on the floor and placing the food on it. She prepared a plate for each of us, including the white man. We ate by the light from three old kerosene lamps and enjoyed the food. After we finished eating, Mr. Brooks backed up his truck to the back porch to load it. After we loaded everything, the old house looked different, and the lamps were put out. Through my mind’s eye I couldn’t see anything but memories.

My brother and I were very excited about the truck, and we asked to ride in the truck. My father said we could as long as it was ok with Mr. Brooks. His response was, Yes, I would like to have their company. For once, my older brother’s age didn’t sway my father because we had put our bid in first to ride in the back.