Freed-Hardeman Connections
Researching the Restoration Movement in Mississippi and West Tennessee
Alonzo Williams
Unforgettables - Alonzo And Mary Williams
Over 70 Years Of Preaching!
Alonzo and Mary Sue Williams of Paducah, Kentucky are indeed a most unforgettable couple. They are, to those of us who know them ' intimately, the modern day counterpart of Aquila and Priscilla, one of the most famous husband-wife teams in the New Testament Church during the first Century. Had the Williamses lived in Corinth during the time of the visit of the apostle Paul to that city, he would have formed an equally close relationship with them. There have been many young evangelists, along the way, to whom Alonzo and Mary have "expounded the way of God more perfectly" just as Aquilla and Priscilla did in the case of the eloquent and bold Apollos in Ephesus.
It would seem most difficult for me to endeavor to write about Alonzo and Mary Williams without writing in the first person, because of my long and close association with them. Other than my Mignon, they have influenced my life more than anyone else. I have known them since they came to Cuba High School, Graves County, Kentucky, when I was a seventeen year old Junior. He served as the principal of the 12 grade rural school and she as a high school English teacher. He also coached the basketball and baseball teams and the male vocal quartet.
I played first base on the baseball team, "Jumping Center" on the basketball team, and sang the lead in the quartet. He also organized and sponsored our first school paper of which I was the business manager. The basketball team played on an outdoor clay court but won the district championship.
We were eligible to participate in the regional tournament which was held in a gymnasium twenty-five miles away. Our parents decided that was too far to travel to play ball.
Mr. Williams was sensitive to our disappointment and was skilled enough in dealing with boys that he went to Wingo and bought parts to a radio. We assembled the parts into the first radio that I ever heard. To finance the project he purchased two pigs. The students, who brought "their lunches to school, fed the pigs their scraps.
The ball team brought corn from home to supplement the "slop." The Williamses remained at Cuba only one year. They went to Martin, Tennessee for full time work with the local church of Christ. During the summer of 19n Williams returned to the Cuba Church of Christ and conducted a protracted meeting in which eighteen of his former students and teachers were baptized. My father and I were baptized in a pond during the revival.
Alonzo Williams influenced me to enroll in Freed-Hardeman College and persuaded churches to call me to lead singing for gospel meetings and to invite me for preaching appointments. The first meeting for which I led singing was at Webb's Chapel in Carlisle County where I preached my first sermon. The first meeting in which I did the preaching was at Bald Hill in Nicholas County.
Brother Alonzo was receiving fifty dollars each Sunday preaching for the Martin Church and he sent me one of his checks each month during my first year in college. They also took two orphan children into their home whom they reared to be grown. Had it not been for this godly couple, perhaps, I would never have found the resources, confidence and courage to go into the ministry.
Doctor Williams was born and reared on a farm in South Graves County, Kentucky. He attended and' was graduated from Wingo High School. He received an A.A. degree from David Lipscomb College, an A.B. degree from Abilene Christian University, an L.L.B. degree from Cumberland University Law School and completed one year 'toward a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Vanderbilt University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Morehead State University while I was president.
Mary Sue Williams Campbell was born and reared in Dresden, Tennessee. She was graduated as Valedictorian of her high school class. Mary attended David Lipscomb College, was graduated from Freed-Hardeman College and earned her baccalaureate degree from Murray State University as a member of the first graduating class. She did graduate study at Peabody College and Vanderbilt University. Mrs. Williams taught in the high school in Cuba, Kentucky, and in the high schools in Lone Oak 'and Tilghman in Paducah.
She has labored with her husband, in the gospel, in the many congregations where he has preached. She has authored and taught the book, A Tour Through The Bible. She is also an accomplished pianist.
Alonzo Williams has preached the gospel of Christ since December 5, 1914, after having been baptized in June by T. B. Thompson. The first person whom he baptized during a meeting at Dresden in 1918 was Mary Sue Campbell, who became his wife on August 9, 1924.
Brother Williams served as a Teacher-Administrator in the schools of Western Kentucky and has preached for over fifty congregations from Michigan to Florida and from Virginia to Texas. He practiced law for a number of years and served as a member of the Kentucky Board of Parole and Arbitration. He preached for 12 years for the Murrell Boulevard Church in Paducah during which time nearly 400 members were added. He is a long time member and past president of the Downtown Lions Club.
Williams was the Associate owner and editor, with Cecil B. Douthitt and Coleman Overby, of the Primitive Christian which was published at Union City, Tennessee. He has written and published four books dealing with "Jesus and His Friends" which cover the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
For relaxation and recreation, Williams, has spent most of his leisure time hunting and fishing. He owned a hunting dog, named Tennessee Rebel, who was the granddaughter of a world grand champion.
Alonzo's experience as a gospel preacher for seventy years has been fruitful and eventful. He was paid seventy-five cents for preaching his second sermon. He conducted a meeting at Old Hickory, Tennessee, over fifty years ago, which ran for twenty-six days and nights and resulted in eighty-five baptisms. On the twenty-sixth night an aged elder of the church led the public prayer. He prayed for the meeting to close because said he, "I am an old man and this meeting has worn me out." The meeting closed that night.
Brother Williams continues to preach by invitation at Sunday appointments near Paducah where he has lived, in the same house for over 45 years. Mignon and I heard him preach at the Central church in Fulton on last October 21. He was as strong and effective as he ever was. His mind is clear, his eyes are sharp, his form is straight, and his pulpit presence represents him speaking with complete command of the situation.
Williams will not tell his birth date only saying that he came over on the Mayflower and his birth certificate was lost at Plymouth Rock. However, Boone L. Douthitt, a boyhood friend, reports that he came on the boat with Alonzo and saw the certificate! Boone claims that it was dated October 2, 1899.
Williams has already lived in parts of two centuries (19th and 20th) and seems to be determined to enter another (21st). May he do so and then find his life extended by eternity to be with his beloved Mary Sue through eternity.
Editor's note: Congratulations to Alonzo and Mary Sue Williams. I heard brother Williams speak at a graduation exercise at the high school in Greenfield, Tennessee more than forty years ago. I followed him as the preacher for Murrell Blvd. Church of Christ in Paducah where he had preached 12 Years.
Basil Overton, The World Evangelist, March 1985, 1, 14.
A Letter from Adron Doran to the Widow of Alonozo Williams
August 3, 1994
My Dear "Miss" Mary:
Yesterday was a very sad day indeed for us knowing that your beloved husband was being buried in Dresden, Tennessee and we were not able to be there. It was good for Mignon to talk with you and find that you understood we had planned and hoped to be there at his request, and express our deep gratitude to his many friends for what both of you have done for me during my lifetime.
As you know better than anyone else he was the greatest influence in my life during my days as a high school and college student and in the beginning of my public work in the church of Christ. I was a junior in Cuba, Kentucky High School when you and he came there to teach in the fall of 1926. He became my principal, my basketball and baseball coach and organized a male quartette in which he sang with me, Fulton Edwards and Noble Taylor. We sang for activities on campus and went to one-room schools in the area and sang at their programs in an effort to recruit students to come on to high school.
In the spring of 1927 our basketball team won the third distinct basketball tournament by beating Lowes in the Lynn Grove gym (13 to 9) because neither Cuba nor Lowes had a gymnasium. We were eligible to go to Lone Oak to compete in the regional tournament but that was about 35 to 40 miles from Cuba, and the parents of the players thought that was too far for us to go to play ball.
To appease our disappointments as a team Mr. Williams organized a "Radio Club." We bought four pigs and built a pen in the back comer of the school grounds. We brought corn from home and collected food scraps from students' lunches to feed and fatten the hogs. When they were ready for market we sold them for $40 and took the money to purchase radio parts from Cornelius Holmes, at Wingo, and assembled the first radio that I had ever heard. I was president of the club and he let us come to the schoolhouse on the first night and listen to KDKA in Pittsburgh. He knew how to handle boys and we forgot all about basketball.
Brother Williams also organized a student staff to edit and publish the Hillbilly newspaper. Hattie Page was the editor and I was the business manager. He taught me how to go to Mayfield and sell ads to the merchants to finance the publications. You were my English teacher and brother Alonzo was my Geometry teacher. And great teachers both of you were.
I recall that you all resigned from Cuba High School after one year and moved to Martin, Tennessee for Mr. Williams to preach for the Martin church. During the summer of 1927 he returned to the Cuba church of Christ to conduct a gospel meeting in which I, my father, a number of students and at least one faculty member (Fred Rhodes) were baptized. The night after I was baptized in the afternoon, Mr. Williams and Carl Shockley persuaded me to lead singing and the closing prayer.
Brother Alonzo was solely responsible for my deciding to go to Freed-Hardeman College. I had little or no encouragement to go to college from my family or peers. My parents had no money with which to pay my expenses. He convinced me that I could go anyway and that he and the Lord would provide a way. On a Saturday the latter part of December I caught a milk truck at our house and rode it to Mayfield where it delivered milk to the Pet Milk Company. I then caught a milk "tanker" which was hauling milk from Mayfield to Martin to be processed. I had all of my belongings in a 98 cent pasteboard suitcase which I had purchased at J. C. Penney's. When I got to Martin I came to your house and spent the night.
We went to church and ate lunch at a boarding house. We got up early on Monday and spent the day making pulpit charts which he gave to me and I used them later in my early preaching.
On Tuesday, January 1, 1928, we got in Mr. Williams' little whippet automobile and went to Henderson. We went to brother Hardeman's eleven o’clock class in a study of the New Testament. I was enrolled in the college and went to room in the Walker home. I had $5 in my pocket so I went to the drug store and spent part of it to buy a safety razor and shaving soap.
I was left in Henderson as an 18 year old on the first college campus I had ever seen, and among people none of whom I knew. However, both of you kept in close touch with me. You would make and send me date candy and he took one of his weekly checks in the amount of $50 and sent it to me. The college credited my tuition and I struggled through the two quarters of the spring of 1928.
Brother Williams wrote a notice for The Gospel Advocate asking congregations to invite me to lead the singing for their summer revivals. A number of churches called me, among which was the Webb's Chapel church of Christ in Carlisle County, Kentucky. A brother Davis, who married one of the Bowden girls in Martin, was doing the preaching.
On Saturday night Davis decided to close his part of the meeting and return to Texas. The elders asked me to preach on Sunday morning and close the meeting. I preached my first sermon on August 23, 1928, on the subject, "What Holdest Thou n Thy Hand?" (Exodus 4:1-5.) If it had not been for the foresight and confidence of Alonzo Williams, I would not have had the opportunity of that situation. The following year he got me my first gospel meeting at Bald Hill church of Christ in Nicholas County, near Carlisle, Kentucky.
From then on I was on my own and was "off and running" though never lost contact with your moral support and encouragement.
While I was principal of the Sylvan Shade High School (1935-38) you all came to Fulton County in 1938 and brother Williams delivered the Baccalaureate address to the graduating class.
After we moved to the principalship of Wingo High School brother Williams came there to preach in a meeting at the Wingo Church of Christ. You all spent a Saturday night with Mignon and me. I remember that your dog got hold of a pillow that night and to your disgust scattered chicken Feathers all over the yard. In 1944 while he was preaching for the Murrell Blvd. Church of Christ in Paducah he invited me to preach an eight day meeting. I considered this a great and high compliment, to be invited to preach where he was the minister.
While I was a student at Freed-Hardeman brother Williams suggested that brother Ira A. Douthitt give me $20 each month to go and preach at Sidonia near Sharon, Tennessee. I went to fill this appointment for a few months in 1929. He advised me when I first began to preach to get a ledger in which to write the date, place, sermon title amount of money received and the results. I have kept that record for the last 66 years. I have almost filled my second large ledger.
You will recall our being together at a meeting of the National Education Association in Philadelphia and that we went to church together on Sunday. You stopped in Morehead on the way and spent the night with us in the President's home on the college campus. In an effort to reward Mr. Williams and to recognize his outstanding contributions as an educator, minister, volunteer, and jurist the Board of Regents of Morehead State University conferred upon him an honorary doctors degree. He seemed to be pleased with this honor which he wore well and with distinction.
We attended the open house at the Expressway Church of Christ when the new building was completed. Dr. Williams was preaching there and was and was mighty proud of the physical facilities.
During the last times we saw him we could tell that he was breaking rapidly. We stopped in Fulton and met both of you for a short visit at the restaurant.
On our way home from a lecture at Troy on June 6, 1994, we stopped by the Hawes Health Center to see brother Alonzo. It was early in the morning and he was eating his breakfast. We told him who we were and tried to remind him of some past events but we did not think that we registered on him who we were. He tried to talk but we could not understand what he was saying even if he knew. He had lived a very meaningful and fruitful life during his nearly 95 years. One of my greatest pleasures was to write and have published in The World Evangelist a short sketch of you along with your photograph. I could in nowise give you justice.
Mrs. Williams I just want you to know how deeply I appreciate the fact that Alonzo Williams took me up as a country high school lad and sent me on my way by taking me to Freed-Hardeman. Had it not been for his sensitivity to my potential I might have remained as a subsistent farm boy in West Kentucky. I not only consider him my mentor, but he has always been my ideal of what a teacher and preacher ought to be. I regret deeply the fact that I could not come and preach his funeral. We have suffered great sorrow at his passing. However, we sorrow not as those who have no hope because we believe we shall see him again in a better world in heaven, as the Holy Spirit moved a Bible writer so write about Abel, "He being lead yet speaketh." I am sure Harvey Lynn Elder did an excellent job in conducting the funeral.
Mignon joins me in sincere sympathy and best wishes for your latter days. You know both of us are octogenarians and are making the very best of our time together. I continue to do research writing and preaching in what I hope is a contribution to others.
Brother Williams told me to make no effort to pay him back for his investment in me and to only make a comparable investment in other young people. We have tried to do just that.
Warm personal regards,
Adron
I too, "Miss" Mary appreciate all the wonderful things that you and brother Williams did for Adron. He turned out exceedingly well I think!!
Love to you . . . in sympathy, Mignon.
The Alonzo Williams Story
About 55 years ago, I heard Alonzo Williams deliver an excellent speech at a graduation exercise at the high school in my hometown, Greenfield, Tennessee. He was a very good speaker.
After brother Williams had preached about 12 years for the church of Christ that met at Tenth Street and Murrell Boulevard in Paducah, Kentucky, I became the preacher there. The Tenth Street or Murrell Boulevard congregation met in a beautiful building which had been the meeting place of Tenth Street Christian Church which had been started by L. M. Stetin in 1890.
From November 1895 to July 4, 1897, Hall L. Calhoun preached for the Tenth Street Christian Church. He was a scholar. He later was affiliated with, and preached for churches of Christ. The story about him is best told in a book entitled: The Christian Scholar by Dr. Adron Doran and Dr. J. E. Choate. This is the best book I have ever read on the differences in the Christian Church and the church of Christ. I recommend it highly.
In 1929 Tipton Wilcox was preaching for the 19th and Broadway Church of Christ in Paducah. Floyd Decker was preaching for the Tenth Street Christian Church when Wilcox converted Decker.
Brother Adron Doran was in the audience at 19th and Broadway church the Sunday that brother Decker and others came from Tenth Street Christian Church to make their statement and to be identified with the church of Christ.
I also knew Floyd Decker and heard him preach in Metropolis, Illinois when we lived in Paducah. He preached on Christians letting heir light shine. He illustrated his lesson with a using of small light bulbs which he hung above the pulpit platform and plugged them into the electrical outlet.
After the terrible 1937 flood, the Tenth Street Christian Church gave up their building and the church of Christ acquired it and it became the meeting house of Murrell Boulevard Church of Christ. Some still called it the Tenth Street meeting house when I preached here. The building is located on a comer of Tenth Street and Murrell Boulevard.
The Murrell Boulevard congregation later moved to a new building in another part of Paducah and has since been known as Central Church of Christ. I have preached in several gospel meetings for the congregation since we moved from Paducah in 1955 to do mission work in Richmond, Kentucky.
About eight years ago I preached in a series of meetings with Parkway Church of Christ in Fulton, Kentucky while Alonzo Williams was their preacher. He was very cooperative and encouraging.
Now he has joined the ranks of history, and laid down his Christian soldier's armor to go and be with the Captain of his salvation. (Hebrews 2: 10.) Much of the foregoing is out of my memory, but, obviously, some of it is from historical sources, including Adron Doran. --- The Editor
Alonzo Williams
Alonzo Williams is buried at the Sunset Cemetery in Dresden, Tenn.
GPS - N 36* 17.204' W 088* 42.671'
Tombstone: "Bro. Alonzo preached Gospel 1914-1994"
Alonzo Williams preached for the Tyler, Texas church of Christ from 1938 to 1940.
Cf. also Gospel Advocate, Sept. 26, 1940, 923.
Unforgettables - Alonzo And Mary Williams
Over 70 Years Of Preaching!
Alonzo and Mary Sue Williams of Paducah, Kentucky are indeed a most unforgettable couple. They are, to those of us who know them ' intimately, the modern day counterpart of Aquila and Priscilla, one of the most famous husband-wife teams in the New Testament Church during the first Century. Had the Williamses lived in Corinth during the time of the visit of the apostle Paul to that city, he would have formed an equally close relationship with them. There have been many young evangelists, along the way, to whom Alonzo and Mary have "expounded the way of God more perfectly" just as Aquilla and Priscilla did in the case of the eloquent and bold Apollos in Ephesus.
It would seem most difficult for me to endeavor to write about Alonzo and Mary Williams without writing in the first person, because of my long and close association with them. Other than my Mignon, they have influenced my life more than anyone else. I have known them since they came to Cuba High School, Graves County, Kentucky, when I was a seventeen year old Junior. He served as the principal of the 12 grade rural school and she as a high school English teacher. He also coached the basketball and baseball teams and the male vocal quartet.
I played first base on the baseball team, "Jumping Center" on the basketball team, and sang the lead in the quartet. He also organized and sponsored our first school paper of which I was the business manager. The basketball team played on an outdoor clay court but won the district championship.
We were eligible to participate in the regional tournament which was held in a gymnasium twenty-five miles away. Our parents decided that was too far to travel to play ball.
Mr. Williams was sensitive to our disappointment and was skilled enough in dealing with boys that he went to Wingo and bought parts to a radio. We assembled the parts into the first radio that I ever heard. To finance the project he purchased two pigs. The students, who brought "their lunches to school, fed the pigs their scraps.
The ball team brought corn from home to supplement the "slop." The Williamses remained at Cuba only one year. They went to Martin, Tennessee for full time work with the local church of Christ. During the summer of 19n Williams returned to the Cuba Church of Christ and conducted a protracted meeting in which eighteen of his former students and teachers were baptized. My father and I were baptized in a pond during the revival.
Alonzo Williams influenced me to enroll in Freed-Hardeman College and persuaded churches to call me to lead singing for gospel meetings and to invite me for preaching appointments. The first meeting for which I led singing was at Webb's Chapel in Carlisle County where I preached my first sermon. The first meeting in which I did the preaching was at Bald Hill in Nicholas County.
Brother Alonzo was receiving fifty dollars each Sunday preaching for the Martin Church and he sent me one of his checks each month during my first year in college. They also took two orphan children into their home whom they reared to be grown. Had it not been for this godly couple, perhaps, I would never have found the resources, confidence and courage to go into the ministry.
Doctor Williams was born and reared on a farm in South Graves County, Kentucky. He attended and' was graduated from Wingo High School. He received an A.A. degree from David Lipscomb College, an A.B. degree from Abilene Christian University, an L.L.B. degree from Cumberland University Law School and completed one year 'toward a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Vanderbilt University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Morehead State University while I was president.
Mary Sue Williams Campbell was born and reared in Dresden, Tennessee. She was graduated as Valedictorian of her high school class. Mary attended David Lipscomb College, was graduated from Freed-Hardeman College and earned her baccalaureate degree from Murray State University as a member of the first graduating class. She did graduate study at Peabody College and Vanderbilt University. Mrs. Williams taught in the high school in Cuba, Kentucky, and in the high schools in Lone Oak 'and Tilghman in Paducah.
She has labored with her husband, in the gospel, in the many congregations where he has preached. She has authored and taught the book, A Tour Through The Bible. She is also an accomplished pianist.
Alonzo Williams has preached the gospel of Christ since December 5, 1914, after having been baptized in June by T. B. Thompson. The first person whom he baptized during a meeting at Dresden in 1918 was Mary Sue Campbell, who became his wife on August 9, 1924.
Brother Williams served as a Teacher-Administrator in the schools of Western Kentucky and has preached for over fifty congregations from Michigan to Florida and from Virginia to Texas. He practiced law for a number of years and served as a member of the Kentucky Board of Parole and Arbitration. He preached for 12 years for the Murrell Boulevard Church in Paducah during which time nearly 400 members were added. He is a long time member and past president of the Downtown Lions Club.
Williams was the Associate owner and editor, with Cecil B. Douthitt and Coleman Overby, of the Primitive Christian which was published at Union City, Tennessee. He has written and published four books dealing with "Jesus and His Friends" which cover the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
For relaxation and recreation, Williams, has spent most of his leisure time hunting and fishing. He owned a hunting dog, named Tennessee Rebel, who was the granddaughter of a world grand champion.
Alonzo's experience as a gospel preacher for seventy years has been fruitful and eventful. He was paid seventy-five cents for preaching his second sermon. He conducted a meeting at Old Hickory, Tennessee, over fifty years ago, which ran for twenty-six days and nights and resulted in eighty-five baptisms. On the twenty-sixth night an aged elder of the church led the public prayer. He prayed for the meeting to close because said he, "I am an old man and this meeting has worn me out." The meeting closed that night.
Brother Williams continues to preach by invitation at Sunday appointments near Paducah where he has lived, in the same house for over 45 years. Mignon and I heard him preach at the Central church in Fulton on last October 21. He was as strong and effective as he ever was. His mind is clear, his eyes are sharp, his form is straight, and his pulpit presence represents him speaking with complete command of the situation.
Williams will not tell his birth date only saying that he came over on the Mayflower and his birth certificate was lost at Plymouth Rock. However, Boone L. Douthitt, a boyhood friend, reports that he came on the boat with Alonzo and saw the certificate! Boone claims that it was dated October 2, 1899.
Williams has already lived in parts of two centuries (19th and 20th) and seems to be determined to enter another (21st). May he do so and then find his life extended by eternity to be with his beloved Mary Sue through eternity.
Editor's note: Congratulations to Alonzo and Mary Sue Williams. I heard brother Williams speak at a graduation exercise at the high school in Greenfield, Tennessee more than forty years ago. I followed him as the preacher for Murrell Blvd. Church of Christ in Paducah where he had preached 12 Years.
Basil Overton, The World Evangelist, March 1985, 1, 14.
A Letter from Adron Doran to the Widow of Alonozo Williams
August 3, 1994
My Dear "Miss" Mary:
Yesterday was a very sad day indeed for us knowing that your beloved husband was being buried in Dresden, Tennessee and we were not able to be there. It was good for Mignon to talk with you and find that you understood we had planned and hoped to be there at his request, and express our deep gratitude to his many friends for what both of you have done for me during my lifetime.
As you know better than anyone else he was the greatest influence in my life during my days as a high school and college student and in the beginning of my public work in the church of Christ. I was a junior in Cuba, Kentucky High School when you and he came there to teach in the fall of 1926. He became my principal, my basketball and baseball coach and organized a male quartette in which he sang with me, Fulton Edwards and Noble Taylor. We sang for activities on campus and went to one-room schools in the area and sang at their programs in an effort to recruit students to come on to high school.
In the spring of 1927 our basketball team won the third distinct basketball tournament by beating Lowes in the Lynn Grove gym (13 to 9) because neither Cuba nor Lowes had a gymnasium. We were eligible to go to Lone Oak to compete in the regional tournament but that was about 35 to 40 miles from Cuba, and the parents of the players thought that was too far for us to go to play ball.
To appease our disappointments as a team Mr. Williams organized a "Radio Club." We bought four pigs and built a pen in the back comer of the school grounds. We brought corn from home and collected food scraps from students' lunches to feed and fatten the hogs. When they were ready for market we sold them for $40 and took the money to purchase radio parts from Cornelius Holmes, at Wingo, and assembled the first radio that I had ever heard. I was president of the club and he let us come to the schoolhouse on the first night and listen to KDKA in Pittsburgh. He knew how to handle boys and we forgot all about basketball.
Brother Williams also organized a student staff to edit and publish the Hillbilly newspaper. Hattie Page was the editor and I was the business manager. He taught me how to go to Mayfield and sell ads to the merchants to finance the publications. You were my English teacher and brother Alonzo was my Geometry teacher. And great teachers both of you were.
I recall that you all resigned from Cuba High School after one year and moved to Martin, Tennessee for Mr. Williams to preach for the Martin church. During the summer of 1927 he returned to the Cuba church of Christ to conduct a gospel meeting in which I, my father, a number of students and at least one faculty member (Fred Rhodes) were baptized. The night after I was baptized in the afternoon, Mr. Williams and Carl Shockley persuaded me to lead singing and the closing prayer.
Brother Alonzo was solely responsible for my deciding to go to Freed-Hardeman College. I had little or no encouragement to go to college from my family or peers. My parents had no money with which to pay my expenses. He convinced me that I could go anyway and that he and the Lord would provide a way. On a Saturday the latter part of December I caught a milk truck at our house and rode it to Mayfield where it delivered milk to the Pet Milk Company. I then caught a milk "tanker" which was hauling milk from Mayfield to Martin to be processed. I had all of my belongings in a 98 cent pasteboard suitcase which I had purchased at J. C. Penney's. When I got to Martin I came to your house and spent the night.
We went to church and ate lunch at a boarding house. We got up early on Monday and spent the day making pulpit charts which he gave to me and I used them later in my early preaching.
On Tuesday, January 1, 1928, we got in Mr. Williams' little whippet automobile and went to Henderson. We went to brother Hardeman's eleven o’clock class in a study of the New Testament. I was enrolled in the college and went to room in the Walker home. I had $5 in my pocket so I went to the drug store and spent part of it to buy a safety razor and shaving soap.
I was left in Henderson as an 18 year old on the first college campus I had ever seen, and among people none of whom I knew. However, both of you kept in close touch with me. You would make and send me date candy and he took one of his weekly checks in the amount of $50 and sent it to me. The college credited my tuition and I struggled through the two quarters of the spring of 1928.
Brother Williams wrote a notice for The Gospel Advocate asking congregations to invite me to lead the singing for their summer revivals. A number of churches called me, among which was the Webb's Chapel church of Christ in Carlisle County, Kentucky. A brother Davis, who married one of the Bowden girls in Martin, was doing the preaching.
On Saturday night Davis decided to close his part of the meeting and return to Texas. The elders asked me to preach on Sunday morning and close the meeting. I preached my first sermon on August 23, 1928, on the subject, "What Holdest Thou n Thy Hand?" (Exodus 4:1-5.) If it had not been for the foresight and confidence of Alonzo Williams, I would not have had the opportunity of that situation. The following year he got me my first gospel meeting at Bald Hill church of Christ in Nicholas County, near Carlisle, Kentucky.
From then on I was on my own and was "off and running" though never lost contact with your moral support and encouragement.
While I was principal of the Sylvan Shade High School (1935-38) you all came to Fulton County in 1938 and brother Williams delivered the Baccalaureate address to the graduating class.
After we moved to the principalship of Wingo High School brother Williams came there to preach in a meeting at the Wingo Church of Christ. You all spent a Saturday night with Mignon and me. I remember that your dog got hold of a pillow that night and to your disgust scattered chicken Feathers all over the yard. In 1944 while he was preaching for the Murrell Blvd. Church of Christ in Paducah he invited me to preach an eight day meeting. I considered this a great and high compliment, to be invited to preach where he was the minister.
While I was a student at Freed-Hardeman brother Williams suggested that brother Ira A. Douthitt give me $20 each month to go and preach at Sidonia near Sharon, Tennessee. I went to fill this appointment for a few months in 1929. He advised me when I first began to preach to get a ledger in which to write the date, place, sermon title amount of money received and the results. I have kept that record for the last 66 years. I have almost filled my second large ledger.
You will recall our being together at a meeting of the National Education Association in Philadelphia and that we went to church together on Sunday. You stopped in Morehead on the way and spent the night with us in the President's home on the college campus. In an effort to reward Mr. Williams and to recognize his outstanding contributions as an educator, minister, volunteer, and jurist the Board of Regents of Morehead State University conferred upon him an honorary doctors degree. He seemed to be pleased with this honor which he wore well and with distinction.
We attended the open house at the Expressway Church of Christ when the new building was completed. Dr. Williams was preaching there and was and was mighty proud of the physical facilities.
During the last times we saw him we could tell that he was breaking rapidly. We stopped in Fulton and met both of you for a short visit at the restaurant.
On our way home from a lecture at Troy on June 6, 1994, we stopped by the Hawes Health Center to see brother Alonzo. It was early in the morning and he was eating his breakfast. We told him who we were and tried to remind him of some past events but we did not think that we registered on him who we were. He tried to talk but we could not understand what he was saying even if he knew. He had lived a very meaningful and fruitful life during his nearly 95 years. One of my greatest pleasures was to write and have published in The World Evangelist a short sketch of you along with your photograph. I could in nowise give you justice.
Mrs. Williams I just want you to know how deeply I appreciate the fact that Alonzo Williams took me up as a country high school lad and sent me on my way by taking me to Freed-Hardeman. Had it not been for his sensitivity to my potential I might have remained as a subsistent farm boy in West Kentucky. I not only consider him my mentor, but he has always been my ideal of what a teacher and preacher ought to be. I regret deeply the fact that I could not come and preach his funeral. We have suffered great sorrow at his passing. However, we sorrow not as those who have no hope because we believe we shall see him again in a better world in heaven, as the Holy Spirit moved a Bible writer so write about Abel, "He being lead yet speaketh." I am sure Harvey Lynn Elder did an excellent job in conducting the funeral.
Mignon joins me in sincere sympathy and best wishes for your latter days. You know both of us are octogenarians and are making the very best of our time together. I continue to do research writing and preaching in what I hope is a contribution to others.
Brother Williams told me to make no effort to pay him back for his investment in me and to only make a comparable investment in other young people. We have tried to do just that.
Warm personal regards,
Adron
I too, "Miss" Mary appreciate all the wonderful things that you and brother Williams did for Adron. He turned out exceedingly well I think!!
Love to you . . . in sympathy, Mignon.
The Alonzo Williams Story
About 55 years ago, I heard Alonzo Williams deliver an excellent speech at a graduation exercise at the high school in my hometown, Greenfield, Tennessee. He was a very good speaker.
After brother Williams had preached about 12 years for the church of Christ that met at Tenth Street and Murrell Boulevard in Paducah, Kentucky, I became the preacher there. The Tenth Street or Murrell Boulevard congregation met in a beautiful building which had been the meeting place of Tenth Street Christian Church which had been started by L. M. Stetin in 1890.
From November 1895 to July 4, 1897, Hall L. Calhoun preached for the Tenth Street Christian Church. He was a scholar. He later was affiliated with, and preached for churches of Christ. The story about him is best told in a book entitled: The Christian Scholar by Dr. Adron Doran and Dr. J. E. Choate. This is the best book I have ever read on the differences in the Christian Church and the church of Christ. I recommend it highly.
In 1929 Tipton Wilcox was preaching for the 19th and Broadway Church of Christ in Paducah. Floyd Decker was preaching for the Tenth Street Christian Church when Wilcox converted Decker.
Brother Adron Doran was in the audience at 19th and Broadway church the Sunday that brother Decker and others came from Tenth Street Christian Church to make their statement and to be identified with the church of Christ.
I also knew Floyd Decker and heard him preach in Metropolis, Illinois when we lived in Paducah. He preached on Christians letting heir light shine. He illustrated his lesson with a using of small light bulbs which he hung above the pulpit platform and plugged them into the electrical outlet.
After the terrible 1937 flood, the Tenth Street Christian Church gave up their building and the church of Christ acquired it and it became the meeting house of Murrell Boulevard Church of Christ. Some still called it the Tenth Street meeting house when I preached here. The building is located on a comer of Tenth Street and Murrell Boulevard.
The Murrell Boulevard congregation later moved to a new building in another part of Paducah and has since been known as Central Church of Christ. I have preached in several gospel meetings for the congregation since we moved from Paducah in 1955 to do mission work in Richmond, Kentucky.
About eight years ago I preached in a series of meetings with Parkway Church of Christ in Fulton, Kentucky while Alonzo Williams was their preacher. He was very cooperative and encouraging.
Now he has joined the ranks of history, and laid down his Christian soldier's armor to go and be with the Captain of his salvation. (Hebrews 2: 10.) Much of the foregoing is out of my memory, but, obviously, some of it is from historical sources, including Adron Doran. --- The Editor
Alonzo Williams
Alonzo Williams is buried at the Sunset Cemetery in Dresden, Tenn.
GPS - N 36* 17.204' W 088* 42.671'
Tombstone: "Bro. Alonzo preached Gospel 1914-1994"
Alonzo Williams preached for the Tyler, Texas church of Christ from 1938 to 1940.
Cf. also Gospel Advocate, Sept. 26, 1940, 923.