All the Days of My Life: The Autobiography of a Pioneer Missionary in Europe

By Samuel D. Faircloth

All the Days of My Life is a detailed autobiographical account of the life of evangelical pioneer missionary Sam Faircloth. Sam records how he arrived in Portugal as a young man of 28, with his wife Arlie and little daughter Becky, to learn a new language and found a new seminary in Leiria north of Lisbon, where some students lacked even the basic necessities of life. His chronological account narrates both the joys and struggles of further work later in evangelism and church planting in the Lisbon area. Sams family of eventually seven daughters were all actively involved at some point in the Faircloths ministry. They felt blessed to witness Gods clear hand at work in the birth and growth of the Parede Baptist Church, which then went on to plant other churches in the Lisbon area. Another great privilege was co-founding the Portuguese Bible Institute and watching again as graduates from the Bible institute took greatly needed leadership of churches around Portugal, as they had from the Baptist Theological Seminary of Leiria years before. Spending his last six years of overseas ministry in the Netherlands, Sam was again thrilled to be involved with the founding of a seminary, Tyndale Theological Seminary. Sam writes candidly of the heartbreak of losing both Arlie and his second wife Ruth but rejoices in Gods goodness and mercy as he continues to serve the Lord with his wife Betty in retirement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973633907

Samuel D. Faircloth

Samuel D. Faircloth served as a U.S. Army Chaplain in Italy, WWII, and then as a missionary in Portugal and the Netherlands for a total of over sixty years. Based on his experience as a church planter, his previous book Church Planting for Reproduction was well received and published also in Portuguese and Russian. Sam and his wife Betty reside in Carol Stream, Illinois.

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Copyright © 2018 Samuel Douglas Faircloth.

Art Credit: Elizabeth (Faircloth) Dye

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®)

Copyright © 2001 by Crossway,

a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

All rights reserved.

ESV Text Edition: 2016

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-3389-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3391-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3390-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018908239

WestBow Press rev. date:  07/24/2018

CONTENTS

Foreword

1.     1921-1935: Early Years – The Beginning

2.     1935-1940: The Teen Years.

3.     1941-1945: Preparation For Full-Time Ministry

4.     1945-1947: Chaplain Corps – The Army of The United States

5.     1947-1949: Preparation For Missionary Service

6.     1949–1954: First Term Of Missionary Service

7.     1955-1958: Second Term Of Missionary Service

8.     1959-1964: Third Term Of Missionary Service

9.     1965-1969: Fourth Term Of Missionary Service

10.   1970–1975: Fifth Term Of Missionary Service

11.   1976-1979: Sixth Term Of Missionary Service

12.   1979-1982: Seventh Term Of Missionary Service

13.   1983– 1985: Eighth Term Of Missionary Service

14.   1985–1990: Ninth Term Of Missionary Service

15.   July 1990–December 2001: Retirement?

16.   2002: My Great Loss

17.   2002–2006: A New Love, A New Loss

18.   2006–2007: Betty Jane Crippen

19.   2007–2013: Ministry And Travel With Betty

20.   2013-2017: His Grace And Mercy Abound

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About The Author

I began to record these memoirs, for the benefit of my family and interested friends, in my eightieth year, following the death of my beloved wife and life partner, Arliss Ardele Faircloth. The Lord graciously took her to be with Him on January 5th, 2002. These memoirs were updated in the spring of 2018.

Samuel D. Faircloth, Windsor Park Manor, Carol Stream, Illinois

In Psalm 23:6 (ESV), David says, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life … On January 10th, 1993, my beloved father, Samuel Edward Faircloth, went to be with our Lord. He had requested in writing that the message of the minister on the day of his funeral should be based on the above phrase. It so happened that I, as his eldest son, served as the messenger at the memorial service and I honored that request. In thinking about how to present my autobiographical recollections, I decided to use this scriptural phrase as a reference point. Without doubt, the goodness and mercy of the Lord have not only followed me since birth but had preceded me in my family’s heritage.

FOREWORD

One of my earliest memories of my dad and growing up in Portugal is a vivid recollection of hurrying with him up one of the main streets in the downtown area of Lisbon, probably when I was around 7 or 8 years old, heading to the bank. I loved going downtown with my dad. He always walked very fast so that meant I would be running to keep in step with those big strides. But I can still recall the feeling of his big warm hand holding mine and the pride I felt at being with him and the feeling of being totally safe. One of the banks we passed on the way to ours was called ‘Banco Espírito Santo,’ the ‘Bank of the Holy Spirit,’ which always got a few laughs! I remember watching carefully to avoid tripping on any loose pieces of limestone from the mosaic sidewalks we were running upon. I loved the excitement of going to Lisbon, but for my dad, I think it was more likely another task he had to check off of his busy day.

Yes, throughout this autobiography it is clear that Sam Faircloth had lots of very busy days! I told him after I had read through his manuscript the first time, that my head was spinning from reading how much he had done before he was even 40! But there are other things about my dad that I thought it would be fun to share from the perspective of a daughter.

Even though this is actually the second time I have had the privilege of working on a book with Dad (the first being the Portuguese publication of his book on church planting in 1985), I did not exactly realize what I was in for when I offered to get his manuscript ready for self-publishing, especially since I am not an editor! It was clear that this job could only be completed by someone who was intimately familiar with our family, my parents’ work and Portugal. Dates, names and other facts had to be checked and researched. Letters our mom had written to her mom, during the many years they were separated by over 4,000 miles of land and sea, were an invaluable resource for my dad. He includes many quotes from these personal accounts of their experiences in those pioneering days of their work in Portugal. His letters to their supporting churches also were historical records he used for recalling many details. But Dad also always had an amazing memory!

I know that all of my sisters will remember some of the things I am going to share here about Dad, but some things were specific to the era of the three little kids, the youngest three girls of the seven. My four older sisters were called the big kids. There are four years separating the older sisters from the younger ones and fifteen years between the oldest and the youngest. We moved from the city of Leiria (north of Lisbon) to Lisbon during my second year of life, in 1959, so there are many memories the older sisters have from the Leiria seminary days that we younger ones did not experience and vice-versa after they headed for college.

One memory I have is Dad playing his John Philip Sousa LP’s of band music on our record player. He loved band music and he would often take a couple of knives from the table after dinner to do a drum beat on the table that he still remembered from his time in marching bands. He and Mom encouraged each of us to learn to play an instrument, whether piano, ukulele, guitar, organ, violin or accordion. Dad also recognized and truly appreciated excellence in art, music, craftsmanship, achievements in science and all types of scholarship. His encouragement of my artistic endeavors played a big part in my confidence to pursue a career as an artist.

Dad and Mom loved camping and travel and he writes about the trips we were able to do around Portugal and up into Europe as a family. His love for the outdoors, nature and animals has been passed down to each of us. I would have to say that he took great enjoyment from photography especially on these trips, since he neither had the time, money or opportunity to pursue the hobby he’d enjoyed as a kid, of building model airplanes. I remember him carefully setting up his super 8 on a tripod to film a bumble bee going in and out of some flowers. We have lots of fun family movies he shot with that camera and some of his photos taken with an excellent Leica are included in this book.

We may not have had many white Christmases since most of them were spent in Portugal, but Mom and Dad always made that a very special time for each of us. Extra money for gifts was not abundant but Dad seemed to love taking us downtown to see the lights and decorated store windows, making peanut brittle, always getting a real pine tree to decorate and surprising us with the rental of a little black and white TV set for the Christmas holidays (a real treat even though programming was only available for 3 or 4 hours each evening!).

One thing I’m sure that my sisters would agree was consistent throughout all of our lives was a time after dinner every evening for family devotions, which included a Bible reading, hymn singing, and prayer. Annie, Miriam and I especially remember the Bible memorization program Dad came up with for us. He made a huge chart with hundreds of verses we worked on learning for prizes. I loved getting to finally walk to the store with him to pick out another Matchbox car for my collection!

A very consistent part of my dad’s life has been the hours he spends daily in prayer. I believe that this has had the largest impact on all of his children, grandchildren and now his great grandchildren. Each of us has been prayed for by name since we were born, and to this day we would not hesitate to ask Dad to pray for a specific request and know that he and Betty would go before the Lord with it. This has been an amazing and invaluable gift and definitely one of the reasons why all seven of us sisters keep an almost daily prayer chain going through a text message group.

Something else I bet all of my sisters would remember is waking up to the thump, thump, thump of Dad jogging in the living room early most mornings! He kept in great shape his whole life by following an exercise routine developed for the Airforce, later jogging on a mini trampoline until just a few years ago, when in his 90’s his doctor told him to abandon it for something closer to the ground. I wish exercise could be inherited!

Sunday nights at the Faircloth house, after the last church service, Dad loved to relax with a bowl of popcorn and some dark chocolate and maybe watch a movie, after we actually owned a television set and programming was better. He also loved to read, and still does, which has been a real delight for me as an adult, because he will read every book I give him! He and Betty read aloud to each other, so it is really fun to send a book to both of their Kindles that I know they will read to each other. As a kid I used to love to browse through the library he kept in his office, only realizing after getting to college how well read my dad and mom really were.

No one made cake donuts like Dad! We all have great memories of those times and it was a fun tradition that has been carried out in family reunions and by some of the grandchildren now in their own homes. I was always amazed at how careful and organized Dad was even when making donuts. His German heritage and mechanical engineering background meant that he always did the best job he could with any given task and measurements were precise!

I have also come to realize that the work ethic for those in ministry of many of my dad’s generation was one that included great personal sacrifice. This is something that is hard for later generations to comprehend. It is not however exclusive to that generation, of course, and I know that our family would agree with me in recognizing what sisters Ruth and Miriam do for Dad and Betty on a regular basis. The rest of us live far enough away that we are not able to help with much. It is with immense gratitude that I write how much they are appreciated especially since Dad and Betty no longer drive. Ruth’s nursing skills and her willingness to use them at any hour of the day or night is well documented in these pages. Thank you, Ruth and Miriam, from every one of us, for being our hands and feet to be there for Dad and Betty in these later years.

One thing I can’t leave unmentioned is Dad’s sense of humor and how quickly he will laugh at himself and how much he enjoys a good joke! He is amazing with his quick and witty comments and lots of corny jokes! Ruth told me that she noticed and commented recently, while out to dinner with Dad and Betty, that Dad still has such a great appetite while most people his age eat like birds. Dad retorted, well, I am a bird, I’m a vulture!

As one of my sisters reminded me, every person mentioned in these pages will have a slightly different memory of any given event. So, if you are one of those dear folks mentioned in a story, remember that this is just one person’s imperfect perspective. My dad would be the first to admit that.

What a daunting task it was for my dad to set out to tell the story of what God has done in his long life. I know for a fact that Dad’s dearest wish and sincerest prayer is that through this work someone will come to know the Savior he has served faithfully for all these years. We sometimes wonder how much difference one life can make? I have to say that, in looking at my dad’s long life and heritage, obedience to God’s call will last well beyond his lifetime. I thought of my dad when I read these words in Isaiah recently. I know that he would agree that he has been upheld, carried, rescued and sustained since birth by a wonderful, faithful Savior!

³ "Listen to me, you descendants of Jacob,

all the remnant of the people of Israel,

you whom I have upheld since your birth,

and have carried since you were born.

⁴ Even to your old age and gray hairs

I am he, I am he who will sustain you.

I have made you and I will carry you;

I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Isaiah 46:3,4 (NIV)

Betty (Faircloth) Dye

1

EARLY YEARS – THE BEGINNING

1921-1935

Childhood

My grandparents, Samuel Lee and Emma Faircloth lived at 370 North Avenue in East Aurora, Illinois. As best I can recall, my parents, Samuel Edward and Florence Drew Faircloth, lived on 458 S. Lake Street also in East Aurora. They had gotten married in 1920 so this was in the early 1920s. I was the first born on June 22, 1921. Then Jean was born on October 30, 1922, Doris on October 31, 1924, Richard on March 4, 1927, and finally Miriam on January 31, 1935.

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Young Sam, mom Florence and sisters Jean and Doris, 1925

In those early days, my father worked as a draftsman in the engineering department of a young firm called Barber-Green Company in West Aurora, making material-handling machines. He was a graduate of the College of Engineering of the University of Illinois in Champaign. Following World War I, in which he served as a lieutenant in the Field Artillery, Dad was employed by Barber-Green Company. He gradually rose to management positions.

I remember playing in the neighborhood with our tricycles and wagon, collecting horse chestnuts from the trees and Mom feeding squirrels nuts, from the front door on the porch. Once a squirrel dared to rob a robin’s nest out front and paid for it with a good part of his tail snipped off by the furious mother squirrel!

Adolescence

We attended the First Presbyterian Church in East Aurora where both my parents were increasingly active. Often following church, we either had the noon meal at Grandpa and Grandma’s or spent Sunday afternoon with them. We were a close family.

Grandpa was a railroad engineer for the Burlington Railway in those days. He would come home from a run in a steam locomotive and have to take the cinders out of his eyes with an eyeglass. If the engine hit anything he would have extensive reports to fill out. He would sit out on the front porch and smoke his cigar. Grandma made him do it outside! If we happened to be over at those times he would entertain us for hours telling us stories of his exploits as a boy back in North Carolina. In the summer, Grandma would give us jobs to do around the yard digging up weeds or even cutting the grass. Grandpa had a big chicken coup. There were always fresh eggs. Several big cherry trees were tempting to climb and pick in the summer. Grandpa had wildlife magazines and cases of his books behind his chair in the living room. He was very particular as to how any of us would handle these.

Of the many stories we heard from Grandpa, several come to mind. One day a farmer carelessly came up over a crossing on the track with a huge load of eggs. Of course, Grandpa said that his engine could not be stopped within a mile. The farmer jumped to safety, but the engine hit the eggs, resulting in fried eggs all over the engine! In those days, the engineers were responsible for the cleanliness of their equipment and it was a job to clean up the mess. On another occasion, they were coming in from a run on Thanksgiving and almost home to Aurora when Grandpa’s fireman leaned out of the cab for some reason. His head hit a post and he was killed instantly. Grandpa said that he could not sleep for a week after these experiences. In the early 1900’s, he brought his engine into Union Station in Chicago following a run. The place was lighted poorly with gas lamps. He pulled alongside the steam pits where they normally let off the steam. He miscalculated the stop zone in the dark and stepped down out of the cab into one of the steam pits with both legs, badly burning them. He was laid off for almost six months recovering. I remember Grandma having to spiral bandage both his legs before he went off to work.

I remember Grandpa explaining to me how the steam engines worked. He had a working model of an engine unit on a piece of wood. Both he and my father encouraged me in my interest in following their lead as engineers. When I was twelve, Grandpa took his last run. He was seventy. He invited me to go with him and I sat in the cab alongside the fireman. He had been an engineer for forty-four years with the Burlington.

As a boy, I remember walking home from church with Grandpa. I noticed in church that he never closed his eyes during prayer times. He was raised a Baptist in the south and I had the idea he was not at home in the Presbyterian Church! I’m not sure of course. He loved to play Parcheesi. He insisted that we all play by the rules. No mercy for the kids!! We also were Chicago Cub fans and listened intently to the games on the radio. Sometimes, Dad would take Grandpa and me into Chicago to the games. We would always end up at a favorite Italian restaurant to eat. Grandpa loved ravioli and Italian ice cream. He lived to be seventy-five and even when he was bedridden, at the last, Grandma had to make ravioli as a treat for him. I have many wonderful memories of Grandpa. I was a junior in high school when he died in 1938.

I also have many wonderful memories of Grandma (Emma). She was a very good cook. I remember her making about six loaves of bread a week. She would put the big dough pan in the closet off the kitchen, which was very warm, and wait for it to rise enough to kneed and prepare for baking. Our family would receive several of these loaves each week. When we kids were eating in the kitchen at Grandma’s and we were not cleaning up our plates she would point up to a vent on the wall above the table and scare us saying, If you don’t finish eating your food Old Can and Must will come out and get you!

She always joked about Grandpa’s insistence that all the saltshakers on the stove should have their handles pointing out just right. I am sure, as I look back, that Dad’s sense of orderliness and discipline came from my southern-raised grandfather. This was passed on to me and to my siblings. My recollections of Grandma are of a woman who must have come to know about the Lord through Dwight Moody or Billy Sunday. She had books in her bookcase by such authors. However, I’m not sure of the timing of her experience.

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Miriam, cousin Stanley Hogle, Richard, Doris, Jean, and Sam

Grandma Emma was the daughter of Philipp Schlachter who was born in Ludwigshafen, Germany. His wife’s first name is unknown but her last name was Rothenstein and she was born in Rhodt, Germany, in the Rhine valley. Philipp had immigrated to the US along with two brothers of his five siblings in the mid-1800’s and settled in Streator, Illinois. He was a house builder. When his daughter Emma married Samuel Lee Faircloth, Philipp built them the family home that I mentioned earlier, located on 370 North Avenue in Aurora.

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Young Philipp Schlachter and his parents and sister

Since WWII, many of us have made contact with the cousins in Germany through visits there and their visits to us in the States. Fritz senior was a pilot in the German air force in WWI and an engineer with I.G. Farbin factory (now BASF). In WWII, his son, Fritz junior, was only 15 years old and a member of the Hitlerjugend (the youth organization of the Nazi party) when he was captured on the front lines in Bavaria by American troops. Since he was so young he was not taken to a regular prison camp but to what he described as a baby camp, a fenced holding area where the youngest of these captured soldiers were being kept, and he was able to escape and go back home. He too became an electrical engineer with BASF after the war. His son, Jörg, is a judge today in Karlsruhe.

Grandma told us many stories of her youth. She was one of eight children. Her father Philipp was a wonderful man, when he was sober. However, when he had too much beer, he could be violent. Grandma said that when he was like that all the kids hid under the beds. She took great pains to warn us not to drink alcoholic beverages with the stern warning that we could not know whether what happened to her father would happen to us.

Aunt Flora Schlachter was one of Grandma’s sisters. She often was with us on holidays. Aunt Flora lived in Chicago and worked at Carson’s in the Loop in the fur department. Sometimes she would take us kids out to eat to places like Stouffers. I recall that she would attend church services at Moody Church in Chicago.

I can’t remember the exact year, but we must have moved in the late 1920s to west Aurora, nearer to Dad’s employment. Our house was on Iowa Avenue around the corner from Nancy Hill School. I remember that I joined the Cub Scouts around that time. Their meeting place was in our church in East Aurora and I was afraid to go on the streetcar across town by myself at that age. At any rate, that is the neighborhood I remember best. As children we made a lot of friends in the area. This eventually included the depression years. Dad had already risen to be superintendent of the shop and he would walk several miles to and from work every day for the exercise. He also gave extra work to some of the Barber Green workmen who had skills in gardening and could help keep up our big yard. Mom loved to work in the yard too. Dad was highly thought of in the shop because of his regard for these men and women during the trying times these families had financially. Food was always rationed out on our table, but we always had enough.

As I mentioned earlier, Dad took a special interest in me, as I showed aptitude to follow him in an engineering career. While I was in grade school he took time to introduce me to the budding hobby of model airplanes. He bought a small kit for a solid model made of balsa wood. He helped me cut templates for carving the fuselage. Soon I was building my own small models. He taught me how to make drawings – basic drafting techniques. On special days like Christmas I was given presents of power tools. The pattern maker of Barber-Greene was Mr. John Gode, a German craftsman. Dad took me over to Barber Green one day and asked Mr. Gode to supervise anything I made. He was to hold me to the strictest discipline in the quality of my work. I was not allowed to make anything without first producing a working drawing of it. Then Mr. Gode made me a workbench with a real vise and tool racks. I began to acquire many basic tools. Our basement was partly given over to a small shop.

One Christmas, Dad had Mr. Gode design and build a small band saw which I received over at Grandpa’s on Christmas day. I was the envy of the neighborhood! Even my Mom got into the act and learned to use some of the power tools for things she wanted for the yard. Together with several buddies, I made different things out of wood to sell. We copied characters from the funny papers to enlarge and sold them to neighbors to decorate their yards (Mickey Mouse, etc.).

We also began to make weapons of wood with which to wage battles against each other in the neighborhood. One was a rubber-band rifle. We cut up inner tubes from tires and made large powerful rubber bands to shoot from the rifles. One Saturday this got us into serious trouble down the block. Being kids we did not remember that Seventh Day Adventists meet on Saturday mornings. The church at the end of the block was one of their churches. We were looking for targets to shoot at and decided to see who could put one of the big rubber bands through the circular window of the church that we noticed was open. Sure enough, one of our guys succeeded in doing just that. It so happened that one of the elders was reading the Scripture at that moment and the rubber band came through the window and plopped onto his Bible! He was furious and came out of the service shouting at us. Everyone ran to get away, but yours truly did not run fast enough and was caught. He took me by the collar and asked me where I lived. I told him, and he took me down the block to our house. My mother was in the backyard hanging up some clothes. He advised her to punish me. Mom listened politely, and he left. After he left she laughed and laughed at what had happened!

The Snare Drum: When I was in sixth grade I was encouraged to learn to play the snare drum. One of my relatives on Grandpa’s side had played the drum. I then joined the band and orchestra of Nancy Hill School. One of the humorous things I recall now is that when Mom and Dad wanted us to get up to bed at night they asked me to play my drum and to my beat we kids would march up the stairs to our rooms!!! The drum then became my instrument right through my college years.

Scarlet Fever: In 1935, the year my younger sister was born, our family was seriously threatened. All of us, with the exception of my father and the baby, came down with scarlet fever. In those days, there was a mandatory quarantine of the house to prevent spreading the sickness in the neighborhood. Dad was faced with a difficult decision. He decided to stay in and be quarantined with us in order to help the best he could. Baby Miriam had been breastfed and could not continue in the house. So, the Barbers (he was president of Dad’s company) generously offered to care for her during the duration of the quarantine. This is why Miriam was later given the name of Miriam Barber Faircloth, in memory of what the Barbers did for us in this crisis.

2

THE TEEN YEARS

1935-1940

Aeronautics

As I mentioned earlier, Dad originally interested me in aviation. It was the in thing and many kids were interested. I was fascinated to read John Glenn’s autobiography of his identical experience over in eastern Ohio at about the same time.

Models: About five of us boys eventually began to seriously build small gliders that we could shoot into the air with the rubber bands. We painted them so that we could find them later. We practically took over the upper closed-in back porch of the house as a place to build model aircraft. We tracked chips through the house and Mom made us clean up after each day. This was mostly in the summertime.

In the late 1930s, we worked seriously on primitive radio-controlled aircraft. We even had vague plans to form a company in the future to design and build aircraft. I acquired a Brown 1/5 hp gasoline engine that we broke-in clamped to the arm of one of our white lawn chairs. One summer we worked full time to build a monoplane, each boy working on specific parts of the plane. I remember I worked on the planked fuselage. It turned out to be a beautiful little airplane. We mounted the Brown engine in it. The engine was on a timer and not on a radio. We took it to the golf course in Aurora to test its glide ratio. We wanted twenty to one, twenty forward to one down. Sad to say that on the maiden flight day, with many of our families present, the plane took off beautifully, but, at a certain altitude before the timer could cut off the engine, it encountered a strong wind gust that flipped it into a dive. That experience was not a happy one. However, we were not dismayed. Before we all left for college, we were working on a very large radio-controlled airplane that we never were able to finish.

Career Plan: While in high school, I was in correspondence with the engineering department of Boeing Aircraft in Seattle. They coached me in planning for a career in aeronautical engineering with a view to employment with them following college. I entered the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois with these plans in mind in September 1939.

U.S. Army Air Corps Ground School: In 1938, my junior year at West High in Aurora, Illinois, the U.S. Army Air Corps sent several army aircraft mechanics to Aurora. They rented a large facility in the middle of town and brought a number of radial and in-line engines in along with all the tools we would need to learn all about these engines and their maintenance. It was a course lasting many months. Over a hundred fellows enrolled and I was one of them. Under the supervision of these mechanic instructors, we dismounted and put together these engines and were given written and on-the-job exams on what we learned. I was fortunate to be among the top few whose prize was a flight in a chartered American Airlines DC3 from Chicago around the state of Wisconsin! I think there were about 30 of us. This was my first flight in an airplane!

Scouting

When we moved to the west side of Aurora, I eventually joined Boy Scout Troop 23 meeting in Nancy Hill School. I can’t recall exactly when I transferred to Troop 4 meeting in the First Baptist Church also on the west side. We had some excellent leaders. One was a baseball pitching coach who tried to get me to get serious about pitching. When I was a sophomore (1937) I was a patrol leader in our troop, which went by train to Washington, DC for the Jamboree, a gathering of 25,000 scouts from the USA and foreign countries. We had an interesting long train ride and ended up camping along the Potomac River in some marshland, which we had to clean off first. The troop with the cleanest camp was to receive a prize of tickets to the All-Star Game. We won it. I remember some of us carrying bats for players like Lou Gehrig before the game. At one point during our stay, we were taken to the FBI and shown the shooting gallery where agents practice. We saw their files on criminals of the time (Baby Face Nelson, Dillinger, etc.). They fingerprinted all of us!! Pitchers like Dizzy Dean and other famous players of that time were in the game. Scouting, in those days, taught us valuable lessons for life. I was active most of my adolescent and teen years.

Christian experience

Earlier I mentioned that our immediate family were all members of the First Presbyterian Church of Aurora, Illinois. In the 1930’s theological liberalism was wreaking havoc in many mainline denominations including the Presbyterian. Ministers who took graduate studies in Germany came back to the States doubting many fundamental doctrines of the historic Christian faith. Rev. Irwin S. Yeaworth had ordained my father an elder. However, at some point under the pastorate of a Rev. Congdon, Dad was increasingly concerned about our family’s spiritual life under his ministry.

Bible studies – East High School: During this time in the mid-1930s Grandma was informed about a Pastor Billy McCarrol of Cicero Bible Church who was coming to Aurora every week to teach the Bible in the East Aurora High School auditorium on Thursday evenings. Dad decided to investigate. I think Grandma went with us. Rev. McCarrol was an excellent expository teacher of New Testament books such as Romans and Hebrews. We became regular visitors to these meetings. The need for a personal faith in Christ was emphasized.

Claim Street Baptist Church – evangelistic services: Dad noticed that of all the 300 or so people who were in attendance at the high school, there was only one local pastor. He was Rev John R. Humphries who was pastor of the Claim Street Baptist Church located in East Aurora. Dad reasoned that he must be preaching what McCarrol was teaching, so he decided to visit the Claim Street Baptist Church on Sunday evenings, while we continued to go to our own church in the mornings. There were about thirty young people in their BYPU. They were enthusiastic kids led by the pastor, even though he was already an older man. He taught kids how to speak about Biblical topics up in front of the rest of the kids. They had regular evangelism times scheduled together to go to places such as Skid Row in south Chicago. We would charter a bus and go into the city on a Saturday night to work with a rescue mission. In this way, we were introduced to people who had ruined their lives with sins of all types, especially alcohol and sex.

Conversion: There were special times of evangelism in the church when visiting preachers were invited for series of meetings. It was on one of these occasions on November 11, 1937, that Rev. James McGinley (a Scotch evangelist) was preaching on John 3:3 (New International Version, NIV), Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. I responded to the invitation to accept Christ as my personal Savior and was counseled by Pastor Humphries. Eventually, our entire family was baptized by immersion by Rev. Humphries and we became members of the Claim Street Baptist Church. My life was radically changed. I became burdened for those who did not know the Gospel. At one point I, together with several other young people, purchased a set of evangelistic tracts. We wrapped them in colored cellophane sheets. They were known in those days as gospel bombs. We distributed them to about fifty thousand homes all over Aurora.

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Sam 1939

Arliss A. Albright

One of the young girls at Claim St. was Arlie. I guess I noticed her more because she occasionally led the young peoples’ meetings. There was no friendship; I just must have secretly admired her for some time. In the fall of 1938, she went away to study at Northern Illinois State Teachers College in DeKalb. I hardly noticed. I was too busy in my senior year at West High preparing to enter the University of Illinois in the fall of 1939.

First date: The summer of that year, Arlie was home from college. The young people planned a birthday party for one of the girls at Church – Thelma Barnett. They decided that to go to the party a fellow had to have a date. I was not the dating type and was