Summoned
My Unlikely Career in Politics and Policy: Chapter Fourteen
“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road…”
— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
This is where the story gets harder to talk about—because some of it I accepted without question.
How much of it do I really tell? After I moved home, I spent four years deeply involved in that church’s ministry, with a fierce loyalty to the pastor. It was preached—and expected—of anyone who claimed to be “standing with the man of God.”
Those of us who were considered “with him” didn’t make decisions without consulting him. And we certainly didn’t leave town or miss a service without his direct approval. We were told that our absence made it difficult for him to preach.
Nothing that was said or done or required over the years came from a place of malice. It was presented as what was necessary to be a man after God’s own heart.
But good intentions were not the same as balance. Or even health.
The benefits of that arrangement often seemed to flow in one direction, and that was toward the pastor and his family. They may have sincerely meant well, but they also thought that, since they were “in the center of God’s will” that they were entitled to certain perks.
It was our job as his flock to provide them. That was often presented as the need to give sacrificially.
I have always had the instinct that if something needed to be done at church, and I could do it, then I should. It’s just the way I grew up. My standard example is that even after my music professor told me I was not really a tenor I still sang tenor in church choirs because I could hit the notes when others could not.
That was service freely given. If I was asked, I would say yes. If I saw a need, I would try to meet it.
What became harder over time was that I was no longer being asked. I was being told. Expected. Summoned.
“Can you do this” quickly became “do this.”
I didn’t notice when the change became permanent.
I sometimes spent Saturdays helping cut wood—even though I didn’t have a wood stove and didn’t know how to use a chainsaw. But the pastor needed wood.
I was never asked if I had plans. I was told I was going to help gather wood on Saturday.
For weeks we worked to finish the family room in the pastor’s basement, while the other side filled with shelving for his food storage. I have no construction skills, but I could carry stuff and wield a paintbrush. On the weekend, and sometimes in the evening after work, I was expected to be there.
In the summer, we took care of the pastor’s yard and washed his car. Every Saturday. One of the older men in the congregation regularly shined his shoes.
In the early 1980s, through the pastor and through the larger fellowship that the church was affiliated with, we began to hear about the coming famine. For months, we were warned that we needed to prepare. We were encouraged to buy tons, literally, of grain and freeze-dried food to stock up for when we couldn’t have access to stores, or power, or anything. We spent thousands of dollars.
When the 18-wheeler arrived with our order, I was called late on a Saturday night. About a dozen of us were summoned to come and unload the truck. We were cautioned to be silent, because the neighbors couldn’t know what was going on.
There was a lot of that kind of paranoia. On Sunday and Wednesday evenings, a friend and I were the main ushers, taking turns, every fifteen minutes walking the perimeter of the church property to make sure nothing was amiss. I’m not sure what we thought we were looking for—and no idea what we would have done if we had.
Not long after we unloaded the grain and food, with the warning that we would also find water supplies scarce, we received a truckload of empty bourbon barrels for water storage. I got two and stored them in the basement, along with my supply of wheat and food.
Years later, when I had the sense to get out of there, and that story is coming, my brother and I emptied the barrels of some of the best bourbon and branch you could buy. I wish I’d kept one of the barrels.
Then there was the weekend when my mother and I drove to Richmond to see my brother and his wife, and then on to Virginia Beach to visit her sister. I didn’t ask the pastor’s permission to go.
Or the time when a friend and I skipped choir practice to drive to Roanoke to hear the Gaither Vocal Band and Sandi Patty.
They say sometimes it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
Except in these cases, it wasn’t. I had disappointed God. More to the point, I had disappointed the pastor.
Meanwhile, I still needed to earn a living.
I kept searching for work, any work, and finally a friend suggested I apply for work at the company where she worked as receptionist. I was hired as a lab assistant at an environmental engineering firm in Blacksburg. My first weeks were spent washing and scrubbing lab equipment. I later got to do field work and collect the samples. It was not glamorous. It was not what my communications degree had prepared me for. And everyone knew I was still looking elsewhere.
My cousin had suggested I take the merit exam to qualify for social work. At the time, the qualifications were less elaborate than they later became: a four-year degree and a passing score. Unlike some of the standardized tests I had endured before, I actually did well on this one.
That is also where I began to understand the concept that it is not always just what you know but who knows you. I got the interview, and on the interview panel was the chair of the board, a family friend who had worked with my mother for years.
Unlike the support and influence I had received from the Kanes, and the Davis and Coleman families, I was getting advice and support. Only this time it wasn’t to follow your dreams or figure out who you are. It was you need a nine to five job, and it doesn’t matter what it is.
For years my mother would tell me that she wished I would get a steady job. While I was in Washington, I kept trying to tell her I had that. I worked with the same association for almost eight years. That’s not the norm in DC.
I don’t know what my competition looked like for the social services position. I only know that I was hired.
I had no idea what I was doing. But for the first time in a while, I felt like I might be doing something that mattered.
That didn’t prevent the county from making me a social worker responsible for part of the Adult Services caseload.
There was a lot of on-the-job training. Shirley, the other Adult Services worker, took me under her wing and taught me patiently. She showed me how to visit clients, how to navigate the paperwork, how to help someone move into a nursing home with as much dignity as possible. I learned because she taught me.
I started in May of 1981, and my starting salary was around $7,000 a year. Even in the early 80s, that was not a lot of money.
It was a regular nine-to-five job, and for the first time I began to think maybe I should expand my training in social services. Meanwhile, the earlier dreams—speech pathology, graduate school, missions—began to fade, with the expectations of holding a steady nine to five job.
The expectations, whether from the pastor or the church, were that I would never leave Pearisburg. I began to believe that I would spend my life there and that I’d better make the best of it.
The larger world kept moving.
In December of that year, when I was still working in Blacksburg, emotional tributes were placed on the Virginia Tech campus following the murder of John Lennon in New York.
By January 1981, Ronald Reagan had been inaugurated and the American hostages in Iran were finally released, closing a humiliating chapter for the Carter years. In the months that followed, Reagan was shot and survived, Pope John Paul II was shot and survived, the space shuttle Columbia flew for the first time.
All of that was happening. Just not where I was.
MTV launched that summer and actually played music videos. Millions of Americans, my mother included, woke up early to view the royal wedding of Charles and Diana, even though we fought a war that gave us the freedom to sleep in.
Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers. And the CDC published the first report of what would later be understood as AIDS.
We had no idea what that meant.
In 1982, the Falklands War came and went. The Equal Rights Amendment failed to reach ratification, thanks in part to the actions of Virginia State Senator John Chichester. I already told you that story in Chapter Seven.
Leonid Brezhnev died in the Soviet Union, and Israel invaded Lebanon. USA Today published its first edition, EPCOT opened in Florida and Michael Jackson’s Thriller arrived at the end of November, eventually becoming the biggest album of them all.
But I didn’t have much time to pay attention to world news. I had obligations at church. I had things I was expected to do for the pastor.
Despite the requirements. Despite the lopsided attention to leadership, often at the expense of what I needed to be doing, there were some good times. And some good friendships.
For a time, friends and I would drive to the mountain home of another friend to lift weights, and we’d often finish with a swim in a cold mountain stream. Or we’d gather for board games and dinner. Sometimes we’d drive to a neighboring city to see a movie. Of course it was often one the pastor recommended.
March of 1983 brought more sorrow to my family. My Aunt Carrie Lee, who had worked alongside my mother at the Celanese plant for years, died of a major heart attack in her early fifties. Twelve days later, on what would have been my father’s fifty-fourth birthday, my Uncle James died from heart complications. For the second time in two weeks, I met my cousin Elaine at the airport and told her, “We have to stop meeting like this.”
Later that summer, my Uncle Cecil, Aunt Carrie Lee’s husband, asked my mother out on a date.
There was nothing hinky about it. Aunt Carrie Lee was my dad’s sister. There was no blood connection. They both were widowed. They’d known each other for decades.
I remember my mother telling me that he giggled the whole time he was asking. It seemed like a natural fit.
The final episode of MASH aired in February and practically brought the country to a halt. Beirut was bombed. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in June, and Guion Bluford became the first Black American in space later that summer. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by the Soviets in September.
The famine for which we had prepared so diligently—and borrowed money—finally arrived.
In Ethiopia.
President Reagan signed the bill creating the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and effectively making the Virginia version “Lee-Jackson-King” Day until later when Governor Jim Gilmore split the two and, for a while, gave state employees a four-day weekend.
By year’s end researchers had identified the virus that causes AIDS. In movie theaters, Return of the Jedi was conquering the box office.
In the fall of 1983, we heard about a trip to Israel through the larger fellowship. About twenty of us signed up to go in December. Fortunately, I had not completely exhausted my ability to borrow money on freeze-dried food and wheat, so I signed up.
This is part of what makes writing about those years difficult: some of the experiences were genuinely wonderful.
That made it harder to see clearly.
The trip was organized, yes. Expectations were clear, yes. But there were still ten glorious days in the Holy Land—Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem. I found it moving and inspiring. I didn’t want to leave and told myself I would return someday.
Not long before that trip, I had gone next door to check on Aunt Ethel. That day she had fallen out of bed and could not get up. I called my uncle, who came over, and then we called the paramedics. From the hospital, to everyone’s surprise, she agreed to go into the local nursing home.
When I came back from Israel, I visited her there and brought her a small gift from the trip.
As I was leaving, I hugged her and said I would see her on Christmas Day.
She looked at me and said, “Oh honey, I won’t be here for Christmas.”
I thought she meant that she would be moving back home.
Christmas fell on Sunday that year. At the end of the morning service, someone handed the pastor a note. I didn’t realize that my brother and cousin had slipped in to pass a note to my other aunt. As the pastor stood to close, he told us “Sister Ethel” had died that morning.
Only later did we learn what she had known and had forbidden the doctor to tell us —that her kidneys were failing. She did not want the family to know, and she did not want us to carry the burden of having her die at home.
Not long after that, another Israel trip was announced for March 1984. This time, it was understood that the pastor would be going and needed a few men to accompany him. One evening I told him I could go if necessary. He told me I had better make plans. So, I did. This time I truly maxed out the personal loan. My friend Eric and another gentleman from church went as well. Eric later sang at our wedding. He was a good friend who left this world far too soon. Eric and I spent most of the trip making sure the pastor didn’t need anything.
Back in Virginia, another path was opening. My cousin’s husband, Jeff, was running for Congress. He had served for years in the House of Delegates and had even helped us write legislation back in Model General Assembly days. My friend Betsy was his chief fundraiser. I began volunteering for the campaign and soon found myself there most evenings and weekends.
When I was not expected to be at church.
Before long, I was spending nearly all my free time on the campaign and even ended up managing a major mailing project—a personal ‘handwritten’ letter from the candidate’s wife to some thirty-five thousand women.
Apple launched the Macintosh in January of 1984. In Los Angeles that summer, the United States was triumphant at the Olympics, in part due to the absence of the boycotting Soviets.
My mother and my Uncle Cecil were married in June of 1984. Some time later, the pastor told me he had counseled them against it. But they were happy, and perfect for each other. They had thirty-two years together.
That summer I again took two trips the pastor had not sanctioned. One was to Virginia Beach with a friend. We stayed with my aunt and went barhopping along the boardwalk. I was not much of a drinker then and am still not much of one now, but there was a sense of freedom.
I didn’t really get in trouble with that one. We left after church on Wednesday and returned Saturday evening. I needed to get away. But I also had to play by the rules.
Still, the campaign was heating up and there were projects to do and events to attend on Saturdays. I stopped showing up for yard work. While no one said anything directly this time, I kept getting “we’ll pray for you” looks from the other men. My not showing up to trim the weeds caused them to be concerned about my spiritual well-being.
I so wish I were making that up.
By early July I was becoming deeply disillusioned—not with God, and not with faith, but with the church as I was experiencing it. The campaign was opening up new opportunities. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was doing something meaningful.
As I write that I realize how bad it sounds to imply that what I was doing for the church, and the pastor, wasn’t meaningful. It wasn’t like that at all.
I felt trapped. Trapped in the church. Trapped in that small town. Trapped in a job that might by then have been paying me ten thousand dollars a year.
I decided I needed to get out of town to have time to think. I told no one but my friend who had moved in with me for a while. I got in my car—by then I finally had my Honda Civic—and drove to Myrtle Beach for the weekend. It was just time to get away. Time on the beach. Time by the pool.
When I got back, I was summoned to the pastor’s office. This was in early August.
I was made to understand—quietly but clearly—the error of my ways. Yes, I understood. Yes, I was wrong. Yes, it would not happen again.
A few weeks later, the church celebrated the pastor’s tenth anniversary. I went to all the events, including a banquet at Mountain Lake Lodge, which years later everyone else would know as the place where Dirty Dancing was filmed. At the time, it was simply Mountain Lake Lodge and another obligation fulfilled.
The final night, after the customary Sunday softball game, a group of us went out for ice cream.
I knew it was time.
No dramatic announcement. No slammed door. No confrontation worthy of a television script.
I just never went back.
Miss a Chapter?
INTRODUCTION: My Unlikely Career in Politics and Policy
CHAPTER ONE: My First Political Memory
CHAPTER TWO: My First Campaign...sort of
CHAPTER THREE: Give Peace a Chance
CHAPTER FOUR: Transitions
CHAPTER FIVE: This time, vote like your whole world depended on it
CHAPTER SIX: Didn’t We Just Vote Last Year?
CHAPTER SEVEN: Only Nixon Could Go to China
CHAPTER EIGHT: I Was a Teenage Idiot: Your Mileage May Vary
CHAPTER NINE: Parades, Peanuts, and Pianos
CHAPTER TEN: Meanwhile, the World Kept Moving
CHAPTER ELEVEN: In the Shadow of an Election
CHAPTER TWELVE: Right at the Edge of Something - Just Not Sure What
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Road Trips and Guilt Trips
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