ST. LOUIS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE YEARS

ST. LOUIS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE YEARS

When I separated from John for two years I moved to Irvington, just two blocks from Little John and Peg. I was working for a dentist in Nashville at the time. When the divorce was finalized I bought a house in Mt. Vernon. I wasn't there very long before I decided to go to St. Louis Christian College for various reasons. In hindsight, I think I should have done something different. I regret the time I had to spend away from my kids and grandkids. But I only had a high school education and needed something more. I could get an A.A. Degree in General Studies with an emphasis on the Bible at SLCC, which I did. I had a 4.85 grade average. I found out later it was worthless when transferring to a secular college. 

I went to Rend Lake College before I went to SLCC to see about becoming a student there. The guidance counselor suggested I go to the city. She said they couldn't help me anymore than what I already knew. I thought that was so odd because she was supposed to be recruiting students, not directing them somewhere else. I began thinking about how I always wanted to go to SLCC and I could heal there without putting up with the liberal ideas I would have encountered at Rend Lake College.

I got settled in at SLCC and then made a trip to the library. There behind the desk was Phil Orr. He and I had gone to the same church in Nashville. He was a great guy. He was 6'4" and as thin as a toothpick, but he had Lupus. While at SLCC I went with him to a high school play as friends. He and my Mexican friend, Irma, and I went to the Muny several times and sat in the cheap seats. It was nice that he was there, although he wasn't there the last year that I was there. He was killed in a car accident a couple of years ago. He was a big loss to the Christian community.

During the first semester I asked the Dean of Student Affairs if she would consider me for Dorm Mom. I was thinking about the second dorm with no Mom. There were two girls' dorms. Months later the one Dorm Mom left and I was asked to take her place. I was over both dorms. I can't say being a Dorm Mom was a pleasant experience. It was so different than what I expected. So many of the kids that were there were more or less juveniles and their parents sent them to SLCC to get them straightened out. They went places they shouldn't. Two girls even went to a gay bar. One of them was the child of missionaries in Japan. There were thefts in the dorm and girls would steal other girls' food from the refrigerator. A couple of them were smart-alecks. Two girls got pregnant. Many of them were slobs. But there were some good ones too.

We had a security guard for the girls' dorms. He would sit in his van and watch to make sure the girls got in safely and on curfew. I passed him walking one day when we were on a break and no one was around. I noticed he had a video in his hand with a pornographic label on it. I chewed him out and he insisted it was a cult classic or something like that. I later went to the Dean of Student Affairs and told her what had happened. Evidently he had gotten to her first and told her it was a cult classic. She believed him and not me.

But one day he fainted on the lawn of the boys' dorm. The ambulance had to take him to the  hospital and a substitute was put in his place. When the sub got into the van, it was full of pornographic magazines and pornographic video covers. I was asked to tell my experience to the President of the college and subsequently the security guard lost his job. The young man kept going to the college with the intention of going into the ministry. I was seething inside because I thought the college was going to let him graduate. But came time to walk down the aisle, he wasn't in line. The administration had made up an excuse not to pass him.

Before all of that occurred, that same security guard used to come to the door of the dorm and tell me how people were holding seances in the field beside the girls' dorm that I was in. He also told me that he had seen a man dressed in black roaming around the dorms. I believed him until I got to know him. We did have a peeping Tom in the other dorm on one occasion, though.

I started out full time as a student but had to drop to part-time when Mom quit eating at the nursing home. I had three Resident Associates (RA's) that helped me out by watching the students while I was gone two days a week to go to the nursing home and feed Mom. She started eating again. Marilyn and I took certain days feeding her. When I got  job off campus two years later I was more limited in my time with Mom. I could go to the nursing home mostly on weekends. I always took Dad along with me.

We students had to do field work while at the college. We had to go off campus to help the poor and needy. I went with other students to the inner city food pantry. It was a crude building but they gave away produce, canned goods and every other kind of food that came from places like Dierberg's and Schnucks. I had gotten to be friends with the two African-American men that ran it. They were also nontraditional students (around my age). One of them mentioned that they would like to make a chapel on the upper floor. I was in a class one day when the professor mentioned that the class needed a project. I thought of the chapel but didn't say anything. Ironically or by divine design, the professor and one of the men that ran the food pantry crossed in front of me in the hall. I stopped them both and asked the food pantry man to tell the professor about his dream project. The professor was so excited and told everybody about me setting the whole thing up. I felt like God did, not me. But I love being His tool. Both black students were elders in their respective churches and were going to SLCC to become better elders. The one in the picture, Robert Lawrence, had retired from General Motors so was free to attend as a daytime student. He ended up behind the pulpit. The other one had an accredited upholstery college and later began buying up real estate. I don't know if he was retired but he found a way to be a daytime student. Unfortunately he died of cancer.

The last semester I was there Florissant got hit with a major hailstorm one afternoon. It was spring break so many of the students weren't there. But others were on a mission trip to Africa and left their cars in the parking lot open to the weather. My car was also exposed to the weather. One student and I got on the stairs leading to the basement which was like another floor. It had tables and a kitchen. We had to stay on the stairs, though, because the hail stones were breaking all of the basement windows. I could only imagine what it was doing to my car. When the storm passed we went to survey the damage. The back window of my car was completely gone. There were dents all over my car and one big baseball-size dent on the trunk. I was told by the insurance agent to go get the window replaced right away and then we could meet at an assigned time and place. My car was completely totaled, though it was still driveable. But the smell was awful and besides, I am allergic to mold. So when I moved to Mt. Vernon, I traded it in on a new car. Just about everybody in Florissant got a new roof including the college, which turned out to be a blessing. They got new windows too. Anyone whose car was outdoors got had their car totaled. The alarms in the cars whose owners were in Africa were going off and I didn't know what to do to stop them. Inside their cars were expensive books and their windows were out so the rain was getting in. There was nothing I could do.

Changing the subject, my job off campus was secretary to the President of CWBA. It was a part-time job but I got full benefits. Christian Women's Benevolent Assn. (CWBA) was the parent organization over a 180-bed nursing home in Ferguson. It was also over an assisted living complex. CWBA used to have a mothers and babies home many years ago. Due to a plage and the deaths of too many babies, they were instrumental in starting a

hospital that eventually was turned into Christian Hospital Northeast. My boss was on their Board of Directors and her picture hung above the chapel. The first hospital they started was out of necessity because so many babies were dying. 

At some point in time CWBA also ran a children's home. It is no longer in operation. The first time I heard the name of the parent organization I mentioned to someone that it sounded like a sewing circle and how amazed I was at their accomplishments. I was later told it did start out as a sewing circle. The women would sit around and make baby clothes. Then they saw the need to provide a home for some of those babies and their mothers. And it went from there into the hospital, the children's home, the nursing home and the assisted living home. When I told the board at CWBA that I was leaving, I was asked to make trips back to CWBA for board meetings. I had to decline because of the long drive.

Back on campus, an awards ceremony was held after graduation and I was awarded $500 for a story I submitted about a circuit riding preacher whose grandson went to the church I attended. I needed a subject and when he started talking about his grandfather, I knew the grandfather would make a good subject.

I applied for a job at Central Christian Church in Mt. Vernon. Lo and behold, Jamie Allen, the lead preacher, called me and asked me to be their secretary. I found out later that he wanted
someone from out of the area. When I got there and was working the job he discovered I knew alot of the Mt. Vernon people. Back to that first phone call, he told me what they were offering as a salary and I told him I couldn't live on that. He said he would talk to the Board and see if they could increase the amount. A day or two later he called me back and told me they upped the salary to an amount I could live on so I took the job. And long story short, it didn't work out.