Meals on Wheels has been in the news and on my heart this week. You may have seen the coverage of the July 15th groundbreaking for the new Meals on Wheels of Metro Tulsa Service Center on 51st Street near Yale, beside the YMCA building. I was asked to lead the invocation to start the ceremony. This new facility will include a state-of-the-art kitchen, food preparation and delivery system, as well as a community event center. Why is healthy food and caring contact for sick and homebound seniors so important? The cost of one year’s worth of meals for one person is less than one overnight stay in the hospital for that same person. 

This past Monday, July 19, the coordinators from our Eastside Meals on Wheels churches met at our church to discuss a recommended plan for us to cautiously begin to restart delivery. The proposal is for volunteers from our churches to deliver seven frozen meals at a time to 20 residents in a single apartment building near 11th Street every Friday starting at 11 a.m. There is a phone app that volunteers would use to contact the recipient and update the office on the delivery and care that might be needed for these neighbors. I would like for you to prayerfully consider becoming a part of this ministry. We are having a meeting to learn the procedures for beginning delivery again, and to be trained on how to use the app on Friday, August 6 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. at the church.

The story of Tulsa’s Meals on Wheels organization goes back to 1970 and the kitchen at First Presbyterian Church downtown. The church provided a regular noonday luncheon for the business community. In the course of time someone suggested delivering some of those meals to homebound members. Someone else read about a program called “meals on wheels” in another state. Soon other churches were recruited, and the Tulsa program became an official Task Force of Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry, our local interfaith organization. In March 1978, I received a phone call from our own Waneta Reynolds suggesting that this might be something we should consider as a church.  The next month we held an organizational meeting in our Fellowship Hall with five of our neighboring churches. Eastside Meals on Wheels began serving meals from our kitchen in August 1978.  

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Thank you for serving. And let’s experience the love and power of God together. 

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Once I spent the day on a very personal, behind-the-scenes grand tour of The Miami Herald. I was being guided by the Grocery Advertising Representative, Hoyt Frazure, who was my grandfather. He started with the paper in 1927 and was credited with inventing the Thursday grocery ad supplement used by newspapers to this day. In all of my memories of him, this was the only day we spent together, just the two of us. I was about 12 years old. He and my grandmother had divorced when my mother was in high school. He and his wife, Olive, lived in far south Miami where he had planted all kinds of fruit trees. His Ponderosa lemons were as large as his grapefruit. He had orange, avocado, papaya and mango trees also. On that one day with him at the newspaper, I saw him stop the presses just for me, his only grandson. Great rolls of newsprint were threaded like ribbons through the system. Various sections of the paper were being printed simultaneously and then cut to form the actual newspaper.

A visit to the typesetter gave me my most lasting memory. In those days a “hot type” was used to provide the basis for the printing. All of the articles were entered through a linotype machine where each word was entered by hand. An actual metal plate was created with all of the type entered in the appropriate columns. My grandfather asked the typesetter to make a line of type with my name, which he did. A few minutes later I was handed a still warm piece of metal with my name in italic and written backwards. Seeing my confusion they showed me how, when ink and pressure was applied, my name would be printed perfectly. I treasure that line of type to this day.

I remember many Sunday afternoon trips when our family traveled down to Granddad’s place. On our visits we would look at the trees, examine the fruit and sometimes be entertained by Olive at the piano. Before he retired from the paper, he gave an extensive 10-week Sunday supplement interview where he told his stories of the early days in South Florida. It was made into a book, Memories of Old Miami, which holds family stories we never knew. Time spent with my grandfather made all the difference in the world to me. Spend time with your Heavenly Father. Let Him show you His handiwork. Ask Him to write your name in His Book of Life.  

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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Apparently, I keep nearly one of everything in my office. I came across this notice from The Baptist Standard dated May 8, 1992. I may have used this in a sermon once. “Mary-Ellen Smauley was honored recently in Sweetwater in celebration of her 100th birthday.” Mrs. Smauley was a member of First Baptist Church, Sweetwater, Texas. Among the gifts she gave visitors at an open house at her daughter’s home was a list of  “Things You Might Find Useful in Your 100 Years of Life.” 

 1.  Be forgiving of yourself and others.

 2.  Live beneath your means.

 3. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.

 4.  Keep a tight rein on your temper.

 5.  Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life.

 6.  Eat fruit.

 7.  If you have time to pray, God has time to listen.

 8.  Never use profanity.

 9.  If you never forgive others, hope you never sin.

10. You know you are old when you feel you corns more than your oats.

11.  Be kinder than necessary.

12.  Leave everything a little better than you found it.

13.  Never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink.

14.  Take care of your reputation—it’s your most valuable asset.

15.  Pray. Pray. Pray.

16.  Eat jellybeans.

17.  Never, never neglect your Heavenly Father.

18.  Let not envy or jealousy consume your soul.

19.  Happiness is midway between too much and too little.

20.  To live a long life, get somebody else to worry for you.

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Live your best every day. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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Just a few weeks after he had been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, the celebrated pitcher Dizzy Dean arrived at our church—to lay a brick. Our pastor at the time, Rev. Patrick (Pat) Murphy, had a promotional idea to stir up some interest in the church and raise some funds for the completion of a new sanctuary. The building project had begun in 1949. Things were going slowly. That spring of 1954 the pastor invited Dizzy Dean to church. Pat Murphy was from Arkansas and was acquainted with some of the Dean family. Pastors occasionally have bright ideas like this.

This story, which I have told before, was recalled as I was contacted by Andrea Brixey Shoemaker after she was looking at some old photographs from the church. We have begun displaying old photographs from our church archives on the Braden Park Church Facebook page. Andrea’s father, Herb Brixey, died in 2012. She was thinking about her dad and the red brick.

Ten-year-old Herby was chosen to go with Dizzy Dean and the pastor up on top of the roof of the northeast office where Herb handed the baseball player-turned-announcer a red brick. With wet mortar and trowel, Dean carefully placed the red brick up high on the east wall facing Yale Avenue. Pictures were taken, autographs were signed and then it was over. The workmen proceeded to add the beige-colored bricks that matched the rest of the building. If you stand across the street from the church and look real closely towards the upper north side of the big stained-glass window, you will not see the red brick.

I suspect the pastor went to sleep pleased with the day’s events. But that very night some displeased church leaders had the red brick removed. The pastor’s comments were not recorded. I think of it as a cautionary tale of a bright idea not completely talked through with those most affected.  Some years before Herb had his double lung transplant in 2000, he and I were cleaning a closet near the back of the sanctuary. There we came upon a mortar-encrusted red brick. We decided this was “The Red Brick.” It has since been kept in the church library. This week we passed the brick on to Andrea and her husband Curt, as the family reminder of the day Dizzy Dean came to church and met Herby Brixey.

Keep healthy. Pray mightily. Enjoy your life today. Actions affect others. And let’s experience the love and power of God together.

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