Uncle Homer Stewart

Uncle Homer Stewart has been a great pleasure in my life.  As long as I remember, he always brought laughter and joy to every occasion.  As a Methodist minister among Baptist and Church of God families, he has always been respected as a man of God.  It has been his joy to tease me, a Baptist minister nephew, about our differences in doctrine at every meeting, always in jest.  It was fun to tell him that my grandchildren have a Baptist minister as their Grandpa Jewell, and a Methodist minister as their Grandma Matthews.  I said, “I guess it must be the best of both worlds.”

He always loves to remind me that he was “nearly” present at my birth.  His wife, my Aunt Zelma was staying with Mother and Dad as the due date arrived.  According to his version, he and Aunt Zelma were holding hands in the living room, when my Dad asked him to leave.  “What have I done”, he thought.  “I have been behaving myself.  Why are you making me leave?”

“The baby is on the way”, Dad said.  So out the door he went.  So he was “nearly” present at my birth, but my first act in this world was to break up a perfectly good date!

I guess it wasn’t permanent because he married my Aunt Zelma and has been my Uncle Homer for most of my life.

A Natural Part of Their Conversation

Vermin and Margaret Jewell carried a little bit of West Virginia everywhere they lived.  Like many Mountaineers, they left their beloved state to find work in other areas of the country.  For Dad and Mother, it was the Buffalo, New York area and years of work in the Chevrolet plant in Tonawanda.

                We lived in a variety of places, since it is not always easy to find a house to rent with 5 children.  But whatever condition the property was in, they always made it a warm, loving home.  One thing always held true, though, we rarely missed a church service.  It was just an essential part of life for these Jewells.

                Years later, after college and marriage, I became the pastor of Jefferson Baptist Church in Jefferson, South Carolina.  My wife, Patsy, became close friends with a deacon’s wife and in conversation one day said, “Why don’t you all just go to New York with us on our vacation as we visit the Jewells?”  To her surprise, she said yes.

                Mother and Dad opened their home with great West Virginia hospitality, as usual, and we had a wonderful time showing the Reese’s Niagara Falls and all the other sites in Western New York.

                After returning home to South Carolina, Sabren and Carroll Reese and their 2 children had great memories of our trip.  Deacon Carroll pointed out something that impressed him about my Mother and Dad.  It was more than the hospitality and Mother’s good “Southern” cooking, though they gave plenty of praise for that.  Carroll said, “When we sat on the porch each evening, before the conversation went very far, they were talking about the Lord.  It was just as natural as talking about the weather or what we had seen that day.  I have never seen anything quite like that.”

                I had never noticed before, because it had been, and always would be, that way for Vermin and Margaret.  Their faith was not just for Sunday.  I thank God that I was brought up in that environment.  Though they didn’t actually trust in Jesus until they were both 20 (their birthdays were just 8 days apart), their determination to walk with God never wavered until I preached their funerals and we laid them to rest just 3 months apart in 2005.