[Ohio-Communities-of-Faith] FW: Easter in 1946

Wed Mar 31 12:59:02 UTC 2021

From: Larry Perry <larryperry at performancepress.ccsend.com> On Behalf Of Larry Perry
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2021 8:11 AM
To: mmoore11 at kent.edu
Subject: EXT: Easter in 1946

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Letter from Larry

Wednesday

March 31, 2021

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Good Wednesday Morning Everyone:

Sunday is Easter. Easter is the day that we in the Christian world 

celebrate the rising of Christ. We celebrate Christ rising from his 

death to be with His father in Heaven. It is the basis for our

faith. I hope that each of you cherish to think about today as 

you meditate about loved ones. Pray for those who have gone on 

before us and are now with God. Here 

is a story about Easter in 1946.

                                              *****

            EASTER IN 1946  

I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister

Ocy, 12, and my older sister Darlene, 16. We lived at 

home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it 

was to do without many things.

My dad had died 5 years before, leaving Mom with 

seven school kids to raise and no money. By 1946 my older 

sisters were married, and my brothers had left home.

A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced

that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor 

family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially.

When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We 

decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. 

This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. 

When we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much 

as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that 

month's electric bill.

Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and 

both of us baby sat for everyone we could. For 15 cents, we could

buy enough cotton loops to make three pot holders to sell for $1. 

We made $20 on pot holders.

That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted

the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the 

dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having

the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in 

church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, 

the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every 

Sunday the Pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial 

offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got

the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all 

our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We

had never had so much money before. That night we were so excited

we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new 

clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could 

hardly wait to get to church!

On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, 

and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to 

matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill 

the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet. But we 

sat in church proudly.

I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their 

old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich. 

When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second

row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us girls put 

in a $20. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way.

At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, 

and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late that 

afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked

with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her

hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened

the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp 

$20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1. Mom put the money back in 

the envelope.

We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from

feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids 

had had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't 

have our mom and dad for parents and a house full of brothers and 

sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to 

share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the spoon that

night. We had two knives which we passed around to whoever needed

them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, 

but I'd never thought we were poor.

That Easter Day I found out we were. The minister had brought us

the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being 

poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed

that I didn't want to go back to church. Everyone there probably 

already knew we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the 

ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered

if the kids at school knew we were poor. I decided I could quit school

since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required

at that time. We sat in silence for a long time.

Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went 

to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on

Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. 

What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never 

known we were poor. We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, 

but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't

talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she

only sang one verse.

At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how 

churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but 

they need money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on

a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these 

poor people? We looked at each other and smiled for the first

time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the

envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and 

I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering. When the offering 

was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over

$100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a 

large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have 

some rich people in this church."

Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100."

We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary 

said so? From that day on I've never been poor again. 

~Thank you Eddie for the story.~

'Good friends are like stars... You don't always see them,

But you know they are always there. 

*****

Much love from the East Tennessee mountains where God's

glory is in full bloom !

Larry

‌

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