By Robert Evans Burnette / Chronicle columnist
May 13, 2008 05:37 pm
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The road to a delightful experience is sometimes fraught with pitfalls. There is not one person among us who cannot testify to this reality. Gratefully, it is the nature of most human beings to persevere in the pursuit of noble goals. I recently completed just a journey. There were detours, roadblocks, wrong turns and obstructionists. But, I did persevere and the result was worth the investment.
Last summer, I attended a change of command ceremony of the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell, KY. As I sat in my motel room reading a major newspaper, I saw a lengthy article praising an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School who had suddenly passed away. He was an activist for his faith and specialized in ministering to people in prison. He was only 60 years old. His name was exactly the same as one of my late mother's brothers. He could very well have been my cousin, and I set about to find out if we were related. That is when the road turned rough.
I wrote to the church he attended in Nashville, directing my inquiry to a specific staff member. I included a rather complete genealogy, including information about my grandmother, who would have been his grandmother. I named my aunt and uncles. I told the man where they lived, and I told him the name of the woman who I believed married my uncle. I got no response. So, I tried again. I still got no response. The third time, I expanded the information and politely asked that he forward my materials to the late preacher's survivors. The church rewarded my efforts with silence.
I got the same treatment from the divinity schools at Vanderbilt University and Austin Peay. I foolishly believed that the "Christian" thing to do would be to help a fellow believer in his quest to discover long-lost family members. I had gone to great lengths to be candid, and to protect the people in question in the event I was mistaken. When I called the church, in desperation, the party to which I had written three times was rude, indifferent and uncooperative. If these people had been in the Holy Land, instead of Jesus, that beggar would still be lying beside that well.
Refusing to give up, I managed to locate a woman who had shared the preacher's prison ministry. I sent her the same package and she forwarded it on to the elderly woman who had been the late preacher's mother. Shortly thereafter, I received a hand-written letter from Memphis. The letter began with the words, "I am your aunt Celeste." The kind lady included a lot of information about my mother's side of the family, all of which dovetailed with my own recollections. I had lost a cousin, but I gained an aunt.
I drove to Memphis where my son and baby granddaughter met with "Aunt Celeste." We brought her flowers and candy, talked at length and I took them to lunch. The gracious lady gave me photos and showed me many old documents she had gathered over the course of her life. Nearly 87 years old, she remains active in her church and in her volunteer work. Perseverance has its rewards. It seems to run in the family.
Robert Evans Burnette is a Crossville Chronicle columnist. His column appears on Wednesdays.
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