Resolution of Respect:
By CHARLES RICHARDS
Marsha Crain Hardisty, 61, oldest of five children of Elder Hylton Crain and Sister Neva Jo Crain, died on June 16, 2002, at Arlington Memorial Hospital in Arlington, Texas, from a series of heart attacks that ended her years-long struggle with severe migraine headaches, pneumonia, diabetes and finally pulmonary fibrosis.
She was born on Nov. 5, 1940, in Lawton, Okla.
“On that day, Neva Jo was in hard labor from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” Brother Crain recalled recently. “At four in the afternoon, I fell down on my knees and offered my first prayer and request to the God of heaven, and he heard my voice!”
When Marsha was 18 months old, the family moved to San Francisco, where Brother Crain worked for Bethlehem Steel during World War II.
“When she was 3 years old, she was a witness to my baptism,” Brother Crain remembered. “She stood up in the pew and yelled, `He’s getting my daddy wet!’ ”
Later, the family moved back to the Oklahoma and Texas area. Brother Crain was a young Primitive Baptist preacher, and on many weekends, they traveled hundreds of miles.
“We used to sing, all of us, in the car as we were driving to and from church meetings – hymns of praise and other songs,” he said.
Marsha was the oldest of five children. She had two brothers -- John and Garland -- and two sisters, Neycia and Gayla. I grew up with them. My father and Brother Crain were close friends, as were my mother and Sister Crain. In the 1950s, we lived in Anton, where Brother Crain had a preaching appointment every second Sunday morning and Saturday night before. At one point in time, the Crains lived only 12 miles away, in Littlefield. Most of the time when Marsha and I were growing up, the Crains lived about 250 miles away, in Altus, Okla.
In the summer of 1956, when Marsha and I were both 15, she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of my sister, Mary Beth. It was also about the time she joined the Primitive Baptist Church at an association and was baptized by her father.
Primitive Baptists all over Texas and Oklahoma knew and loved Marsha. In the 1950s and 1960s, each summer at associations hundreds of miles apart, from the first week in July until the last week in August, faces lit up when the Crains, with Marsha, arrived. Marsha had a zest for life, and people around her were happy because she was happy. Her joy was contagious. She was pretty, and one of the things that made her pretty was that she always had a smile on her face and a gleam in her eye.
Associations are special to Primitive Baptists for a lot of reasons, but Marsha herself was a reason that many young people enjoyed going to them. On Saturday nights, after the evening service was over, it was fairly common at associations for about 15 or 20 of us teenagers to pile into three or four cars and gather at a city park in whatever town that happened to be hosting the association. Parents seldom worried or complained if the group included kids like Marsha Crain and Larry Hausenfluke.
Once, at the Mount Zion-Unity Association at Cisco, a couple of police cars came racing into a park where we were jammed around several picnic tables. I guess someone had seen us and called the cops. Nowadays, the expectation might be a bunch of kids getting high on drugs. What these police discovered was a bunch of Primitive Baptist kids, who after disposing of two or three watermelons were singing hymns at the top of our voices.
As I recall, the police officers just smiled, got back into their cars and pulled away again, content that nothing bad was going to come from this group on that night.
Marsha loved to sing. Oh, how she loved to sing. She was so very talented at it. Not in a showy way, but in a totally joyous way. Some might say she was talented enough to become a professional singer if she were so inclined.
“When Marsha sang, people listened,” Brother Crain said at a memorial service for her on June 19 at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery in southwest Dallas. “When she sang, `They who wait upon the Lord,’ people listened. And when she sang `The Lord’s Prayer,’ people listened. There’s an old saying, `If this don’t light your fire, your wood is wet!’ And that’s the way it was when Marsha sang.”
News of Marsha’s death circulated quickly by e-mail and telephone, for she had many friends among the Primitive Baptists.
Lona Cook, oldest daughter of the late Elder Jimmie Bass, got the news of Marsha’s death when her husband, Allen Cook, checked their phone messages on the afternoon of that third Sunday in June. Lona and Allen had attended church in Muleshoe that morning and they and other church members had gone to a nursing home that afternoon to sing with and for those who lived there.
In Marsha’s memory, they sang, “Oh, how sweet to die.”
“I looked over at Darrene Collins, and she had tears running down her cheeks,” Lona said. “She told me she was remembering how Marsha loved to sing, and what a beautiful voice she had.”
Darrene, one of three daughters of Morris Nowlin, a deacon in the Muleshoe church, recalled that Marsha “was in our home at Muleshoe many times as we were growing up. I always loved hearing her sing. One time when we were at her Grandma and Grandpa Crain’s in Amherst – I think it was for their anniversary – Marsha and I were asked to sing `Broad is the Road.’ It was an honor to sing with her.”
Darrene called Karen Winchester, a sister of Larry Hausenfluke, “and we had a good conversation remembering Marsha. Karen said that Marsha was her pattern when we were younger. She had wanted to be just like Marsha.”
Geraldine Gentry, daughter of the late Elder Sylvester Gowens, grew up in Lubbock and also had memories of Marsha.
“Marsha was in my `crowd’ at the West Texas Associations back in the ‘50s. We had many good times together. She indeed was a very vibrant person, and I was always in awe of her. I wished I could have had a personality like hers,” Geraldine said.
Lona Cook laughed when she recalled her favorite memory of Marsha.
“Once, for some reason, I asked Marsha what she would do if she found herself in a strange town where she was lost and didn’t know anyone. She said she’d just start singing `Amazing Grace’ at the top of her lungs, for surely there’d be an Old Baptist somewhere around who would hear her and then she wouldn’t be lost anymore.”
About two years after she graduated from high school, Marsha married Claire Wilson, son of a Primitive Baptist minister in Iowa, where they also lived. They had three children, and at some period of time, after the third child, Marsha went into deep depression, and recovery was a long, hard process. Marsha could handle many things well, but among the things she couldn’t handle well was pain. She became addicted to pain medication.
“Probably many mistakes were made by all concerned in attempts to assist her,” Marsha’s father said at the memorial service.
There was a divorce, and Marsha “moved to Arlington in 1976, in dire need of help. The following years, she found healing in trying to help others,” Brother Crain said.
“She became active in Alcoholics Anonymous and became a well-known speaker in Texas and Oklahoma for those troubled by addiction to alcohol and other drugs,” he said.
At a visitation for family and friends at an Arlington funeral home on the second night after her death, a Hispanic man walked in and, after a while, walked over to Brother and Sister Crain and introduced himself.
“I’m alive and you see me here today because of your daughter,” the man said. “She assisted me to get off of alcohol and drugs.”
Marsha may not have been able to save herself from addictions, but she saved some others.
She had a quick wit about her. One day, Brother Crain recalled, he made the mistake of visiting her with a sad countenance.
Marsha smiled and said, “After all, Dad, why pray when you can worry?”
She had a plaque in her bedroom with the saying, “God seems so far away today. I wonder who moved?”
Billie Chandler, another who grew up in the Muleshoe church as the daughter of another deacon, Charlie Watson, recalled attending church in Arlington about 20 years ago with her husband, Orbie Chandler. Marsha, who at this point in her life had been through many troubled times already, was there.
“In the kitchen, after church, someone asked Marsha to sing `The Lord’s Prayer,’ which she did. That’s the last time I remember seeing her. Her voice was so pretty,” Billie said.
In 1987, Marsha married Gordon Hardisty of Arlington, a war veteran. With his loving assistance and patience, she grew in many respects, although her recovery from the problems that beset her was not without slips and falls.
She became an accomplished gardener, and Brother Crain remembered how she would talk to her flowers, telling them, “Grow where you’re planted.”
Brother Crain recalled: “There were times it was so refreshing, just to go over and visit, to look at the well-kept yard, and go through the lovely little house, where from each room walls gave testimony of happiness, love and devotion.”
Marsha is survived by her parents, of Arlington, Texas; her husband; a son, Trenton Wilson of Wheelock, Texas; two daughters, Jana Cooper of Beverton, Ore., and Valarie Terry of Delaware, Ohio; a stepson, Mel Stacy Collins of Lake Fork, Texas; two brothers, John Crain of Round Rock, Texas, and Garland Crain of Altus, Okla.; and two sisters, Neycia Boen of Arlington and Gayla Files of Euless, Texas.
Marsha’s mother recalled that she and Brother Crain had a good visit with Marsha on the Friday night before she died on Sunday.
“At one point, after a couple of hours, Hylton and I made a move to go home, and Marsha said, `Do you HAVE to go?’ We said, no, we could stay a while longer, and I guess we stayed for an hour or two more. In a way, I guess we got to say goodbye,” Sister Crain said.
Late that night, around midnight or later, Marsha began having trouble breathing. Over her protests, an ambulance was summoned to take her to the emergency room of the hospital.
“She was almost gone at that point,” Brother Crain said. Doctors placed her on life support almost immediately, but her vital signs began dropping and she never regained consciousness. Doctors gave the family no assurance of improvement.
She is believed to have suffered one heart attack late Friday night, another heart attack on Saturday and then a third heart attack on Sunday morning that claimed her life about 9:30 a.m.
As Brother Crain stood at his daughter’s bedside at the hospital, watching each reading of the monitor go to zero, the spirit of Marsha Crain Hardisty flew away to glory.
“She just turned loose,” he said, “and her spirit flew away.”