Her name is Vallerie King.  I have not seen her in some twenty-five years.

It was summer of 1989.  I broke a personal land speed record to get from my home in Harrison County, Indiana to a crowded funeral home in Forest, Mississippi to call on the family, myself included, of one Paul F. Hines who was laid out at the Ott and Lee Funeral Home in Forest.

Uncle Paul was an older brother to my mother, Tressie Hines Johnson.  Uncle Paul was the second of seventeen brothers and sisters to go.  His brother, my beloved Uncle Durwood, died in April of 1988.  They are sorely missed.

So is Vallerie King.

On the way home from Uncle Paul’s funeral, I drove my ’66 Mustang (3 on the floor) off of Interstate 57 to the college town of Carbondale, Illinois.  I was there to see Vallerie King.  I hadn’t seen her in over three long years and I so wanted to see her face to face once more.

Vallerie was working as a pastor at the time at the University Baptist Church in Carbondale, the home of Southern Illinois University.

While I may be an afterthought to Vallerie’s memory bank, she holds a personal vault all her own in mine.

Vallerie King was a student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky around the time I was a sophomore, junior, and senior in high school.  Her field charge at the time was to serve as the youth minister at the Palymra Baptist Church in Palmyra, Indiana.  I was one of the youth there that she ministered to.  Did she ever.

Know this…I have always had a strong mind of my own.  Thanks to Vallerie, it was softened just a bit.  Formative years?  Is that what you call them?  For me, the years I spent with Vallerie King were the Wonder Years and the Living Years all in one.  Vallerie had a way about her.  She was calm.  She was deliberate.  She did more listening than she did talking.  She did things that would make most of the Baptist preachers I knew at the time swallow their snuff.

We listened to music at our parties at church.  We listened to the soundtrack of the movie “Footloose” for heaven’s sake!  Not only that, but we watched “Flashdance” and “Footloose” at the church during a lock-in.  No matter, Pastor Vallerie always had a way to tie things together in a biblical sense.  She made us examine not ourselves, but how we were treating others.  She was a great influence on a great many us…I know she was and still is important to me.

Maybe it was because I was the oldest and most vocal in the church group.  The girls in the group were more concerned about hair conditioner than the human condition.  I remember Vallerie and I arguing about politics; how she could not support a candidate based on moral views and how I could not support a candidate whom I thought spent too much time “talking out his rear-end”.  Yet…Vallerie let me make a fool of myself and never made me feel foolish.  She took her time and found the right time to interject the moral and biblical high road and provided a masterful example of just that.

She’ll never know how many times I have looked out into space when I was so confused by the ways of this world…wondering where she was and what she might say to me to clear some things up.  She could do that.  She had that charisma that is bestowed on just a couple of people you will come across in your lifetime.  For me, I am blessed to count that time in years instead of just moments…though those years seem a bit fleeting twenty-five years on.

Still…when I am still…and I listen just a little bit better and think about so fondly the words of wisdom and love she poured out to me like she was spreading butter on an ear of corn…I feel better.

I thank God for the opportunity to know Vallerie King.  She saw the Beatles at RFK for goodness sake!  More importantly, she saw through so much of my personal aggrandizement and she loved me anyway.  She showed me the way.  If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be typing these words twenty-five years later.

I am thankful for the information age.  I found Vallerie today. It felt good.  Like the seasons that change every year…she’s always been there for me.  Thanks Vallerie.

Walden Pond…fall of 2011

Winter of 2009…LutherSpring 2011…The Rockies

Summer 2010 Hatteras