Traveler
This page is a work-in-progress
Ed and Jean loved traveling, and their trips usually involved a Wake Forest or a Baptist connection…
Or a beach connection. A favorite destination was the North Carolina beach, especially the Baptist Retreat Center at Caswell Beach, southwest of Wilmington. Caswell (now part of the town of Oak Island) was the site of family retreat weeks for many North Carolina Baptist churches and college student groups. With its plain but spacious old homes and newly built ‘motel,’ the retreat was a perfect combination of community and solitude. Wake Forest Baptist Church families attended one week per summer and enjoyed taking their friendships along on vacation. There was sometimes a bit of friendly competition for the best houses…
Ed also attended regular work-related retreats for administrators held at Caswell and elsewhere at the beach. Beach conferences always seemed richer and probably were made more productive by their location. He especially enjoyed the retreats organized for the Division of Student Life, with Bill Currin and many other congenial friends.
[See Jots and Tittles #1 Summer School for more comments about the beach as place to experience God, natural beauty, and fun.]
New York City trips (1960-1, 1968-9)
Ed and Jean, with little Carolyn, lived in New York City from 1960-1961, when Ed first attended Union Seminary.They lived in the Morningside Heights neighborhood not far from the Seminary and Columbia University. It was an exciting time with Reinhold Neibuhr, Paul Tillich and other luminaries on the Union faculty. They were also reunited with Tracy Early, a fellow Southeastern student who had also continued studies at Union.
Ed and Jean, in their early 30s, found the city to be a fairyland of friendly people and many new discoveries: yogurt! Chock Full of Nuts! the Automat restaurant! Doctors who made house calls for $10! Carolyn, at age 3 to 4, was amazed at the nuns in full habit (“It’s Black Riding Hood!”), the Rockettes, and at the Macy’s Christmas parade where chimpanzees rode tiny tricycles like hers.
Ed did his course work but still had time to do many touristy things with the family. In the city, they had a front row seat to the leaders and events of the day, hearing Dean Rusk on the Union campus and Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. Jean read books, read and typed Ed’s thesis, and audited classes. They had good friends in Charlotte and Don Crosby and Tom and Ginny Derr, both couples with children Carolyn’s age.
Jean’s New York diary of 1961 shows visits to the Perry Como and Ed Sullivan TV shows and hearing Leonard Bernstein conduct in Carnegie Hall. They saw Shakespeare in Central Park and saw the Wake Forest basketball team in Madison Square Garden. They attended Yankees games, saw Wilt Chamberlain play for the Philadelphia 76ers, and attended the Macy’s parade. A steady sampling of Broadway plays included My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Young Abe Lincoln, and Becket. One of their favorite outings was to take the Staten Island Ferry and return to Manhattan at night to see the NY skyline in the moonlight. They also toured New England, including Hyde Park, Walden Pond, Harvard, Yale, and Williams College, always seeing friends along the way.
Seven years later, in 1968-1969, Ed and Jean, with Carolyn (age 11) and Kim (age 6), returned to New York for another year of Ed’s study at Union. The City was still full of wonders, and it was an fascinating and volatile time politically. The family lived in a tall apartment building on Riverside at 122nd St, near Grant’s Tomb.
This was another mystical, magical year. Though Ed and Jean dearly loved Wake Forest, Jean remembers that the years in the City were such a good time, absolutely free of responsibility and expectations.
Ed and Jean both came to love New Yorkers, too, finding them almost always to be helpful and kind in their own way. One memory stands out. During the fall of 1968, Ed’s mother became ill and died. The family traveled to the funeral and upon return to New York, Ed began his work as executor of her estate, paying bills and taking care of business. On a winter afternoon, he had written checks and signed documents in about twenty-five letters, sealed the envelopes, and dropped them into the mailbox on the corner of Broadway and 124th St. Back at the apartment, he felt good that this intimidating chore was finished. Then Jean asked if Ed had stamped his letters. Ed remembers the “incredible silence… that lasted a lifetime.” Jean asked him what he was going to do about it, giving him “the chance for redemption.”
Ed remembers saying, well the postman comes at 4:30, and I’ll be waiting at the mailbox with the stamps. When the postman arrived, Ed cut to the chase, “There are 25 letters on top that need stamps. I’ve got the stamps.” The postman even helped Ed stamp the letters. Ed remembers, “Never said a word… I can still see his young handsome face.” This was the face of New York and the people they encountered during that extraordinary time.
Ed loved New York so much that for many years he organized student trips to share the magic of the Big Apple. These trips, offered between semesters or during spring break, were later supported by Campus Ministry and called the New York Seminar, co-directed by Jake Viverette.
Ed also traveled to New York for conferences. One of these conference trips to the Big Apple is described is described in a November 1978 Jots and Tittles essay which appears under Sermons and Writings.
Europe and the Middle East (1963)
In the summer of 1963, Jack Noffsinger and Ed Christman led a trip of eighteen Wake Forest students to the Baptist Youth World Conference held in Beiruit, Lebanon. “Dr Jack,” then pastor of Knollwood Baptist Church, organized the trip with the International Auto and Travel Club, a Charlotte-based travel agency. The itinerary spanned June 24 to August 4 and included stops in England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Greece, Austria, Germany, Denmark, and Holland. The main stage was attendance at the Baptist Youth World Conference, which would host 4,000 students from around the world.
[Dr. Jack Noffsinger, about ten years older than Ed, was at the time a prominent Winston-Salem pastor, known for his liberal Baptist views and for his preaching to students across the Southeast. For example, Jean had seen him preach at Ridgecrest when she was in junior college. To learn more about Dr. Noffsinger, listen to audio interviews here. [If the link does not work, see the Knollwood Baptist Church website / About Us / In Our Own Words]
This story to be continued…
While Ed was off on this adventure, Jean was at home caring Carolyn, age 6, and Kim, age 1. The family spent some of the time in Winston-Salem and then, with help with the driving from Margaret Blackburn, drove to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, staying with her mother Emma Sholar for a leisurely weeks-long vacation of her own. When Ed got back to the United States, he flew to Nashville, Tennessee, and they reunited for the drive home to Winston-Salem.
Baptist Peace Fellowship Conferences
Ed and Jean, with daughter Kim and son-in-law Stan Dotson, were members of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. They spent many vacations attending the annual BPFNA summer conference — known affectionately by its regular attendees as “Peace Camp” which was convened in cities across Canada and the United States.
Stan Dotson: “The conference trips became a wonderful way to stay connected to friends across the country and to stay engaged in the work for peace and justice. They were also a great way to sight-see in many unique communities in North America. Canadian sites included the capital of Ottowa, during a week when the queen was visiting; and Nova Scotia, with a side trip to Prince Edward Island for a tour of the house that inspired Anne of Green Gables and a sampling of Cow’s Ice Cream, the best in the world. U.S. conference sites included a trip to the Finger Lakes region of New York and the Bay area of California.
“The world of art has always played an important role in Ed and Jean’s life, and many of these trips included excursions to see beautiful works of art. The California trip included a ride to the Stanford University campus to see the stained glass of the chapel and the Rodin sculptures on the campus quad. A Peace Camp in British Columbia included a ferry ride over to Vancouver Island to view the incredible floral displays of Butchart Gardens.
“The BPFNA always had world-class scholars and teachers and preachers facilitating the programs, giving Ed and Jean opportunities to connect with people doing amazing work for peace around the world. But the conference planners also recognized that there were amazing peacemakers among the organization’s own members, so Friday night was always set aside an “open mike” opportunity for story-telling and sharing from the attendees. It became a great tradition during this segment of the week’s programming for Ed to stand up and make his way to the mike sometime during the evening. Each year the regulars of the conference looked forward to some compelling and often humorous story he would tell from his rich experience as a peacemaking chaplain.
“One of the most fascinating parts of the trips for me was the guarantee that no matter where Ed and Jean went, no matter what town or city or community, they could go into a grocery store or shopping mall and invariably a Wake Forest alum would recognize them from years past and come up and speak. It proved just how strong their influence had been and how far their web of friendships had been woven. That influence, and those friendships, defined a ripple effect of peace and justice that reached far and wide.”
No comments yet
You must be logged in to post a comment.