Tag: biography

The following is personal in nature and not specifically witness, as are my usual posts. – Roger + 

It was forty years ago tonight, December 6, 1974, that we celebrated as our first date. It was an anniversary perhaps more important in our memories than a wedding day many months latter in 1976.

We were drawn together socially by a love of theatre and music. She was a dancer and as a musician I had volunteered to take on the musical score of Applause at TNT in Niles, Ohio. In years since I continue to have many friends and fond memories from that place and those times.

Rebecca Ann Rice Harned touched many lives at TNT and in her work as a physical therapist at Trumbull Memorial Hospital & Warren General Hospital (now St. Joseph’s), Rebound Inc. (Gallatin TN), Sunland and Tachechale (Gainesville FL). Further, Becky was loved for her work in several school systems where she worked along side many others with handicapped children: Lakeview H.S., Cortland, Ohio (where she was instrumental in establishing handicapped sports for Trumbull County Schools and the handicapped exercise playground at Lakeview Middle School; Palm Beach County FL schools and Putnam County FL Schools. All these works wonderfully done for the Lord and love of others.

December 6, 1974, we went Christmas shopping at Eastwood Mall (after a practice, I think) to find child-size jeans (not yet popular, then) for my niece Terri. We went out dancing in Youngstown and then just kept going out and getting to know each other. I insisted on driving her through a predicted snow storm to Hamilton Ohio to her parents for Christmas. A mutual friend from TNT would drive us and others the next winter through a driving snow storm to the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to see Yul Brenner in Ulysses (that would be ‘The King & I,’ Yul Brenner, to you non-theatre types). These fond memories of times spent together with others remain even to this day.

NO vocation and NO avocation (like theatre or music or dancing or sports) is more important than God. Yet Becky and I both tried as best as we could to have Jesus as Lord in our life and evident in our attitudes toward others. We were one, true; but we were also one with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Becky was raised Roman Catholic, I was raised in the Methodist Church and we were married at Christ Episcopal Church in Warren Ohio. I suppose the separate stories of our faith in Jesus Christ are as complex as any, but our witness of love to others was and is always that God’s love in Christ must be evident in our love for others.

Can it have been fifteen years already?

Yesterday (which I had incorrectly noted as January 7 as I lost track of days) I stopped by Cracker Barrel for dinner. Near the end of my meal some waitresses came out of the kitchen joyfully with a candle on a desert toward the table next to mine singing a happy birthday song. It brought back some buried memories.

We were going to use hospice at sometime in that preceding year of life-threatening cancer, but the nurturing of our now six-year old daughter instilled more perseverance for life in her mother. The goal, even with crumbling bones in her body, a neck brace in place of pearls and her hospital bed as the center of our family room life, was to survive one more day to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. So that we did: we headed out the door with her walker to take a ride out to her fiftieth dinner celebration at Cracker Barrel.

As God would know a bone inside her crumbled as she merely eased down our front walk. Her pain was excruciating!

Do you want to go to the hospital?

NO! We have to go to Cracker Barrel.

The brief dinner with husband, six-year old daughter and both heart-sick parents showed even those at tables near us how extreme her pain must have been – surely 10 on a scale of 10 (as they always ask).

Can it really have been fifteen years ago today? Although I know that she is with the Lord, as all were confident by her witness of love for the Lord and all others, I could not set foot in a Cracker Barrel for many months after that. Since then her father has died and my mother and numerous others.

What about 15 years from now – January, 2029 – where will you be?

God knows.

I know by my faith in Christ Jesus that God has even more plans for me here and an eternity with Him and all of my beloved believer friends – no we are neither married or are given in marriage in heaven – but our love for Christ and for all is like a loving marriage.

I do pray that the later Blessing of our vows, my wife, will by then be with us all by her repentance and return to the love of Jesus Christ. I pray that ALL of our children will be with the Lord and will not be misled by the false desires of this temporary world and even more crumbling flesh of dust.

I love so many of you in Christ. Won’t you join us, while it is yet today?

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