Dudley

Dudley is a member of our church. He is 94 years old. Each Sunday as I have been here he has come to the church and put out flowers on our church sign. He also is our Sunday School Superintendent. In that job he faithfully transcribes who is attending, what the offerings in Sunday School are, and then returns to his class.

Dudley does many other unofficial things for our church. He trims our bushes that face main street. He fixes the doors in the bathrooms. Dudley is the most active 90 something person I know.

Dudley is tender heated. He has been widowed twice, and each time a memory of either of his wives comes to mind in my visits with him or our bible studies his eyes well up with tears. He misses them a lot. Dudley loves the company of women in general I think. He is the only man to come to our Wednesday Night Bible Studies since I began to attend. He has attempted to date a few of these ladies at one time or another.

Several times Dudley has told me about his work building the Pueblo Mountain Camp by the civilian conservation corps, as well as his military service in San Francisco. A couple of weeks ago he came into my office after working on a couple of projects. He sat down and we started visiting about several things. At one point, he started talking about the elections that were coming up. "What do you think about the elections coming up?," he asked me.

"I have not figured it out yet," I responded.

"I think we need to give the young man a chance," he said "I think he has got some good ideas. He needs a chance to try them out. We need to give the young fella a chance. I remember when Hoover was wanting to do all these things oversees and telling us everything was going to be alright. Then Roosevelt came along and helped us through the depression. He had a lot of good ideas. He got us to work. We had hard times. He had some good ideas. He got a chance to try them out. I think he did good."

I smiled. "Maybe," I said, "You realize you are probably in the minority of folks in town about that."

"In town. At the senior center. At the church. In this county..." he said with a little laughter and a mischeivious grin.

I laughed and grinned with him.

I like Dudley. Dudley is one of the reasons I like small town ministry in the West. People with stubborn independent streaks. People who think for themselves and live life on their own terms. And, people who Christ somehow, despite their peculiarities God calls to himself.