Acknowledgments
Prologue
Foreword
Introduction
PART I --
THE LAD FROM LINDSAY
1. "In the Beginning was the Word" 1901 - 1917
2. The
Runaway 1918
3. Return of a Prodigal 1918 - 1922
Picture Section
One
PART II -- A SINNER SAVED BY GRACE
4. The Briar and the Lily 1922-1925
5. Converted to Christ 1925-1926
6. The Longest Year 1926-1927
7. Holy Toledo!1927-1930
Picture Section
Two
PART III --
"AMERICA'S FOREMOST
EVANGELIST"
8. "Hear A. Word Preach the Word" 1930-1931
9. Where Angels Fear to Tread 1931-1932
10. Fame and Fortune Beckon 1932-1933
11. To Tackle a Thief 1934-1935
Picture Section Three
PART IV -- THE MAN FROM MONTAVILLA
12. "The Fightingest Church in the Northwest"
1934-1936
13. The Church at 550 1937-1940
14. Montavilla Leads the Nation 1942-1944
15. To Build a Fire 1945
16. "Repent or Perish!" 1946
17. "Let 'Er Split!" 1947-1948
18. "Here I Stand!" 1949-1951
19. "We'd Rather Have the Devil!" 1952-1957
20. Lambasting Sinners 1958-1962
21. The Flames of Hell 1963-1967
Picture Section Four
PART V -- A LEGEND IN HIS LINE
22. On the Road Again 1968-1975
23. The Last Hurrah 1976-1983
24. Mending Fences 1984-1987
25. "He Is Not Dead!" 1988
Epilogue
Where Are They Now?
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to acknowledge members of the Word family for their kind help in providing me with pertinent data for this
biography: Nellie Word Arnold, David Brink, Loren and Barbara Brink, Tom and
Esther Burgess, Jenelle Green, Donald and Margaret Hunt, Don Hunt Jr., Anna Jean
Rodda, Stan Rodda, and Arch Word Jr.
Several professional people aided in
research that took me from Glasgow, Kentucky, to Gering, Nebraska, via Portland,
Oregon, Ottumwa, Iowa, Lindsay and San Jose, California. To the following I am
deeply indebted: Norval Campbell, Director, Christian Restoration Association;
May Reed, Assistant Librarian, Disciples of Christ Historical Society; M. Sue
Rhee, Director, Learning Resource Center, Northwest
Christian College; Sam Stone, Editor,
Christian Standard; and Thomas Thurman, Editor,
Restoration Herald.
A good number of friends and associates
of both Archie Word and myself were also of great assistance. Among them are: K.
O. Backstrand, Russell and Lutie Boatman, Marjorie Bixler, Kenneth Broad, Mary
Carlson, Ron Carlson, Bob Chambers, Earl Chambers, Harry Chapin, Charles Crane,
J. Charles Dailey, Alton Danielson, Elsie DeWelt, Richard M. Ellis, Esther
Nahi-gian Jackson, Bill Jessup, Paul Leavens, Eunice Mickey, Ed McSpadden, Hugh
M. Olson, Elery Parrish, William E. Paul, Woodrow and Minnie Phillips, Don and
Gerry Pinon, Verna Ramme, Rodney Reyman, Clifford Shaw, Don Strain, Lee Turner,
Saundra Ukena, Edward Werner, Charles and Novella Winiger, and those three
lovely ladies from Lindsay — Lola House Austin, Effie Bachman Bayly, and Alpha
Carter Engleking.
I was saddened beyond words when four
special people who had helped me during the writing of this biography died:
Dorothy Shaw, J. Willis Hale, Bill Jessup and Don DeWelt.
Last but not least, my own family. How
patient they have been with me for the last four years as I burned the midnight
oil and kept some of them awake with the tippety-tap of a computer keyboard.
Special thanks to my father, Dale V. Knowles, and my wife, Evelyn, and oldest
daughter, Mindy.
It is inevitable that I have overlooked
someone. If you are that person, thank you for your help in producing this
biography.
—Victor Knowles
PROLOGUE
The road to Glasgow, Kentucky, is a
winding, snaking ribbon of concrete. A modern four-lane highway takes you north
and east out of Bowling Green, home of Western Kentucky University. Soon the
road narrows into two lanes and points due east. It is as though one is also
driving back into time.
Smith's Grove. Patrick Henry's sister
lies buried here. Hays. Merry Oaks. Faded remnants of yesterday, hanging on in
the 90s. Weatherbeaten barns, growing grayer with age than its owners, wherever
they are. Here and there a few stately brick homes with gleaming white pillars
can be seen, but only a few.
As the road dips through hollows and
wends its way around ridges, old shacks with tin roofs become common, if they are not already common
enough. A Missionary Baptist church can be seen every two or three miles. Next
to the churches are sprawling tobacco fields which shamelessly bask in the hot
July sun. Over in Clay County, according to the USA Today we bought back
in Paducah, forty per cent of the county's 24, 100 citizens grow marijuana, the
new cash crop in Kentucky. Mary Jane growers are the "bootleggers" of the 90s.
But this is Barren county — strictly timber and tobacco country.
There are no whitewashed fences in
Barren County. Only stone walls and split-rail fences making a zigzag pattern
across the sleepy Kentucky countryside. Nor are there any fine-blooded
thoroughbred horses grazing in the pastures. Only polled herefords and Holstein
cows dot the meadows, seeking shade beneath groves of hackberry trees. Farm
ponds are in abundance. Heavy-bodied deep-voiced bullfrogs croak out a summer's
melody.
Soon you drive under an overpass, a
toll road, the Cumberland Parkway, which will also take you to Glasgow. But why
bother? Why pay good money when you can see the backside of America for free? On
we go, driving a leisurely fifty miles an hour on State Highway 68. The smell of
freshly-mown hay filters in through the open window. Massey Ferguson tractors
toil in the fields, looking like busy rust-red ants. There are many abandoned
gas stations along this stretch of highway, most of them missing pumps. We do
spot one Esso pump but that is in a farmer's front yard, covered with columbine.
Climbing ivy has a field day with the telephone poles. Hanging ferns adorn
nearly every front porch of the white clapboard houses.
Only a few miles out of Glasgow we
cross Beaver Creek (Kentuckians pronounce it "crick"). As we learn later, this
is where many baptisms took place among the Baptist and Christian Church folks.
And we are looking for the family roots of one of those people, Archie James
Word, born April 21, 1901, near Glasgow.
Right now, however, we are looking for
the remnants of a town that no longer exists, Oil City. Suddenly, about a mile
or so out of Glasgow, we spot a sign - "Oil City Road. " What a stroke of good
luck! The paved road drops gently into a pleasant valley. There are a few new
houses, some trailers, a couple of old abandoned houses. On our left is the
Brotherhood Freewill Baptist church. The modern "handicapped only" parking sign
in front of the building seems an anachronism in this pastoral setting. We drive
slowly by and spot a little cemetery set back in a grove of hickory and pine
trees. The soil is red and rocky. A mockingbird sings in the quietness of the
hour and place.
A toothless old woman — "jest moved
hare from Tennysee" — tells us she knows nothing about the old Word place. "Ask
ol' Wininger back up the road a piece. He knows everything aboot these hare
parts. " But first we take the Oil City Road to its end, past the old Wininger
homestead (1849), down into the valley, until our progress is blocked by a power
plant. Such is progress.
We turn the car around and drive back
to where Oil City Road and Highway 68 converge. There we find old Wininger
himself, in the flesh. He is glad to see us, welcoming us into his living room
where we find the breeze of an electric fan most refreshing. What a
gold mine we have found in Charles Wininger,
born 1912, once the President of the Barren County Historical Society. Not only
can he tell us about Oil City and Glasgow, he can take us right out to the old
Word place. "Ah'm glad to do it. Ah'm always giving folks tours who come around
here a researchin'. "
We soon discover, to our chagrin, that
Oil City Road won't take you to what is left of Oil City, birthplace of Archie
Word. You have to backtrack west on 68 until you come to Dripping Springs Road.
There you turn north to take a somewhat circuitous route into the remains of Oil
City. By now the summer skies have turned black. The rinsing rain comes in great
slanting sheets. As the tires sing merrily on the wet asphalt, and the
windshield wipers make their own mechanical music of sorts, old man Wininger
tells us about Barren County, Glasgow and Oil City.
Barren County got its name from the
Indian practice of burning off the ground. At one time, buffalo and elk were
plentiful. Glasgow, population about 14, 000, was founded in 1799, and was named
after her sister city in Scotland. This was once rough justice country.
Murderers and horse thieves were hung, posthaste, not always with benefit of
judge or jury, at Gallows Hollow Hill, only a mile or so from Wininger's place.
The last hanging took place in 1900, just one year before Archie Word was born.
"Do you smoke?" Wininger asks. "No, I sure don't, " I reply.
"Good, " he says, and hands me his
business card. "Turn it over and read it. "
I do and bust out laughing. "Man, if
this doesn't sound like Archie Word himself!" I hand the card to Evelyn and she
reads to Emily and Portia,
|
THIS MEANS YOU
you miserable, stupid, vulgar,
slobber-jawed, wry-mouthed, crooked-faced genus homo. Can't you see
that
NO SMOKING
of stinking tobacco is wanted here?
That foul stinky stench is not desired. Smoke out among the pigs and goats in a
tan yard where you may be of some benefit!
|
Religion came to Barren County in the
person of none other than Alexander Campbell himself in 1823 and again in 1831
when the great man preached in Glasgow. He was followed by Barton W. Stone,
Jacob Creath, and Z. T. Sweeney. The Christian Church was then located on the
corner of Green and Wayne streets; today it is located on Glenview
Drive.
The rain was letting up a little by
now. We were getting closer to the mortal remains of Oil City, a town which got
its name from the discovery of petroleum. Wininger continued to talk out of a
rich and fertile memory. William Penn's niece was buried in a cemetery near
here. Oil City was never a big place, maybe 200 at best. There was a general
mercantile store run by a one-legged man named Butler. There was also a one-room
school called Sinking Springs School, a salt plant, a water mill where you could
take meal by mule to be ground. Denton Mill pond (later Staples Mill) was where
the baptisms took place on Sundays and during revival meetings. And there was
Mount Tabor Baptist Church.
The church still stands in a stand of
sugar maple trees. It is the oldest remaining church in the area.
Luther Word, Archie's hardshell Baptist
father, probably went to this church. Wininger laughs softly.
"One time the local preacher sent a
little black boy out to fetch a roast from a farmer named Paul, just before
church began. By the time the boy got back, the preacher had already started his
sermon, so he slipped into the back pew and waited for the sermon to end. About
that time the preacher rared back and yelled, 'And what did brother Paul
say?'
"Quick as a wink the lad jumped up and
hollered, 'He sed you ain't gwine to get any mo' meat 'til you done pay for what
you already et!' " End of sermon! But not the end of our story.
The rain has stopped. We round a bend
and there it is — the old Word place. A beautiful farm and handsome brick house
now grace the land. A Glasgow lumberman named Holloway owns the place. The
meadow is green and lush. A neat wooden fence works its way up the hill to the
house on the horizon. Virtually nothing is left to announce the fact that Luther
and Maggie Word once lived here, that Archie Word was born here.
We continue down the road to where the
railroad depot once stood. All that is left are the railroad tracks. It was
here, on this spot, that the Word family, in 1906, boarded the Glasgow train and
headed for California via Park City, never to return as a family. But part of
our family has returned, if only for a few hours, to visit the birthplace of a
man who should not be forgotten, Archie Word, who in time became
"America's foremost evangelist. "
—Victor and Evelyn
Knowles
FOREWORD
Evangelist Archie Word: A man to be
remembered! And how I do remember him! More than sixty years ago he came into my
life. For that I remain deeply grateful.
Archie Word came into my life via a
revival in my home church, the 14th & E St. Church of Christ (Christian),
San Bernardino, California, the year after my high school graduation. Early on I
sensed he was "gunning" for me. On the closing Sunday of a six-week revival he
announced a special Sunday afternoon service. I resolved to boycott that
service, but I couldn't do it. "Better late than never?" Right on! On the final
verse (the second time around) of "Just As I Am, " like the prodigal son, I
"came" (along with several others) who committed themselves that day to
the ministry of The Word that A. Word had drilled into our souls.
Never for a moment has that decision been regretted.
Workaholic? "A workman that needed not
to be ashamed" would more aptly describe him. Hour-long sermons followed by
extended pleading in the invitation made for a long evening following a busy day
of house-to-house block-calling. Calling, on foot for the most part, began at
least by mid-morning and continued well into the afternoon. Years later, while
calling with him in a three week's revival during my ministry with the Westside
Christian Church, Wichita, Kansas, he just about "walked the legs off me. " A
year later he invited me to conduct a meeting for him with "the Church at 550 NE
76th Ave., " Portland, Oregon. There, he did it again. Archie Word, in the
pulpit and out of the pulpit, was a tireless worker.
Obsessed? To borrow an expression, his
was truly a "Magnificent Obsession. " He was a man possessed with a sense of
urgency. Ever mindful of wasted years, he was determined to make the most of the
years that might yet be allotted him. And he did.
Resourceful! In his nomadic years,
before settling in Portland, he made do with beggarly facilities (by today's
standards) as he and Mrs. Word and their growing family "house trailered" in a
homemade contrivance that was generally parked in back of the church. Privation,
not privacy, would best describe the accomodations. But never did I hear him so
much as suggest that he was thereby "suffering hardship for the gospel as a good
soldier of Jesus Christ. " Neither did Sister Word ever so much as speak one
word of self-pity. Demure, but not self-effacing, she was a perfect helpmate for
Archie Word.
Dedicated! If ever I knew a man
dedicated to the work of evangelism, Archie Word was that man. "Woe is me if I
preach not the gospel, " epitomized A. Word as he preached The Word. He was (and
is) a man to be remembered. We are debtors to him, and debtors also to Victor
Knowles for his years of research and writing that have resulted in the book
awaiting your reading and reflection.
Permit me to add a memorable anecdote
that deserves recording. The opening night of the Wichita revival Archie arrived
early enough to "decorate" the auditorium with his far from subtle posters. The
first elder to appear on the scene, upon observing the gaudy display, commented
in a disapproving tone obviously intended to be heard: "This looks like a
Safeway store!" Archie quietly stepped to his side and, taking hold of his
elbow, marched him out onto the front steps. Across the street was a grocery
store with scarcely a customer to be seen. Down the street, a block away, was a
Safeway store with drivers lined up waiting for a place to park. At that point
Archie asked: "Who's got the business?" Safeway did! And we did! What a man! A
man's man, and God's man in one.
—Russell Boatman
INTRODUCTION
The year before Archie Word was born
(1901), they hung a horse thief on Gallows Hollow Hill, just a mile from his
birthplace, near Glasgow, Kentucky.
When he was only a freshman in high
school, he ran away from his home in Lindsay, California, and lied his way into
the U. S. Navy. Although the young tough never made it "over there" to fight in
France, he fought many a night on board the ill-fated ship, the U. S. S.
South Dakota, becoming an undefeated light-heavywight boxer. One dark night
a German torpedo took Archie's ship right in the boiler room. Archie found
himself in the icy Atlantic, praying "the first real prayer" of his life. All
around him men were screaming and dying.
(For clarification of the ship's name, see note on this link.)
After his stint in the Navy, Archie
returned to California and finished high school, graduating at age 21. He became
notorious as a bootlegger in the San Joaquin Valley. Soon he was running three
dance halls and saloons in Fresno; singing, playing the violin and acting as his
own "bouncer. " For three years he lived hard, drank hard, fought hard. He saw
the inside of many a jailhouse. By his own testimony, he was
"hard as nails. "
One night in 1925 he was nearly killed
in a grisly automobile accident. One of his drinking buddies was killed, while
another wound up in San Quentin on manslaughter charges. Chastened somewhat by
his brush with death, Archie decided to try education. The burly ex-boxer and
bootlegger tried business college — twice — but was expelled from school both
times. Discouraged, he returned to his home town of Lindsay. One day, while he
was pumping gas at a local service station, a man named W. S. Lemmon pulled up
to the pumps. He listened in amazement as Archie sang while filling his gas
tank. Lemmon, a preacher at nearby Porterville, asked Archie if he would like to
sing at his church. At first Archie guffawed, but when he went home that night,
he thought, "Why not?"
Archie had lived on booze so long,
however, that he fortified himself before he went to the church. The elders were
horrified — even threatening Lemmon with his job if he allowed Archie to sing.
But Lemmon, an ex-cowboy and professional baseball player himself, saw a
diamond-in the-rough in Archie Word. "I'm going to let him sing, " he told the
elders. "If that young man is ever converted to Christ, he will be a power for
God!"
It was not just fate or chance that the
president of Eugene Bible University happened to be
present the night Archie sang. He offered Archie a full music scholarship, on
the spot. Archie, who had tried college twice and been expelled twice, decided
that the third time might be the charm he was looking for.
The rest is history. After two months
at the Oregon Bible college, the ex-tough's heart was broken in an upper room
prayer meeting and he surrendered his life to Christ. After two years of music
ministry he entered the full-time preaching ministry in 1930. Three thousand
were converted during his storied evangelistic career on the West Coast
(1930-1935). A veteran California newspaperman (who had covered the revivals of
D. L. Moody and Gipsy Smith) dubbed him "America's foremost evangelist. "
Eventually, Archie's revival slogan, "Hear A. Word Preach The Word, " wound up
in Ripley's 'Believe It or Not'.
From 1935 to 1968 Archie Word served as
minister of the Montavilla church in Portland, Oregon (a church which helped
start nine other churches in the Portland-Vancouver area). During this 33-year
ministry he was recognized by the Christian Standard as having sent more
men into the ministry than any other preacher in the fellowship of Christian
Churches/ Churches of Christ.
The last 20 years of his life were
spent criss-crossing the U. S. in old-fashioned revival meetings. One newspaper
reporter said that he preached "with a voice full of thunder and a fist full of
punch. " Those who knew him best, however, could never forget the tears in his
eyes and the tremble in his voice whenever he would tell sinners how Christ had
rescued him from a life of sin.
He always said he wanted to die in the
pulpit and he came close. He died November 17,
1988, a new half-finished sermon outline on his desk.
—Victor Knowles
Link to Part 1.
