by Keith Bassham
Drought-stricken Texas has been ravaged by fire the past few weeks, and fires, being what they are, have no respect for the sacredness we attribute to buildings dedicated to worship. Horizon Baptist Church of Leander, TX, was surrounded by the blaze, and when Pastor Darin Felty was allowed to check on things, he said the only part of the church’s property, indeed the only structure on his street, to survive was the church building itself.
But there was a reason. According to Pastor Felty, when the building was erected, the city had forced the church to install a 600-foot fire-main water line along the property line. He protested the extra expense back then, but today, because of the fire main’s location, and with no other close by, the church’s parking lot was a key vantage point for locating the trucks and fighting the fire.
Providential, I think, is the word we’re looking for here.
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We went to press just as the nation began to observe the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Not yet an official holiday on the calendar, it is shaping up to be a combination 4th of July, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day all in one. And while this magazine will arrive days after the events of this weekend, and we will be thinking instead of fall and Thanksgiving and the coming holidays, I did not want the anniversary to pass without some form of acknowledgement. With that in mind, we have added the patriotic element to the traditional fall motif on the cover, and I have resurrected an older (and probably not-at-all-familiar to most) column written by Noel Smith in 1954. Most of our readers know Mr. Smith was the founding editor of the Tribune, and many will know that in the early 50s his wife Mattie died, but a smaller group is aware that he and Mattie had a son, Charles. In 1954, Charles, a naval reservist, was activated, and Mr. Smith’s essay tells us what it was like for him to send his son into the service of his nation. His thoughts will resonate with many fathers and mothers — and others — who have done the same, especially these past 10 years.