Hometown: Tyler
Present City: Dallas
Education: B.B.A.,University of North Texas
Profession: Retired commercial property and casualty insurance underwriter
Tell us about your family.
Vicki and I have been married 32 years. We have no children. We do have a dog that likes to stay awake most of the night, so one of us stays up with her, either feeding her or letting her outside while the other sleeps. It’s like a baby that never grows up.
What are your favorite places to travel?
Anywhere I can get away from the dog and get a good night’s sleep. My favorite vacation was a trip to New York City in 2017 with folks from Wilshire.
What brought you to Wilshire and when?
We moved back to Dallas in 2005 from San Antonio, where we attended Woodland Baptist Church. We wanted the same type of church here, and Wilshire was close to where we live.
What do you think God is up to in your life right now?
I can never tell. If I look back, I can see where things seem to have happened for a reason. I believe that to be the hand of God.
Tell us about your faith journey.
I was brought up in the Southern Baptist church. I’ve had anxiety issues all my life, and they got worse as I entered puberty. I read in the Bible that people were healed just by asking Jesus to heal them, and I thought if I made a public profession of faith, the same could happen to me. I learned that God was not transactional. Other than a short time in high school, I didn’t attend church, and after SBC president Bailey Smith said that God doesn’t hear the prayers of a Jew, I became a little ashamed to be a Southern Baptist. I discovered the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship while we were in San Antonio. It seemed a very enlightened way to bring Baptist tradition into the 21st century. I’d always been curious about mainline denominations, and there was a hint of that in the service as well. Over the years, I have come to the difficult realization that God’s will is most important, not mine.
What is something interesting most people would not know about you?
I wrote a screenplay about the actor James Stewart’s World War II experiences and tried to market it to production companies without an agent. I actually got two companies to read it and provide feedback and talked to one producer on the phone. Of course, nobody wanted to buy or even option it.