Willie Lee Darter – Eulogy

I am saddened to report that our wonderful Willie Lee Darter has passed away.  I think her to be the only truly good person I have ever known.

Only about three weeks ago, I posted a blog celebrating her 98th birthday; I did not anticipate this follow on.  Before she died, she asked me to do the eulogy at her funeral.  I took some of the prior material from that blog and enlarged upon it.  I include the full text here.  I regret that words cannot do her justice nor can they convey my sadness.

I realize that many readers will think 98 years sufficient. Those readers did not know Ms. Darter.

In 1888, Ola Lee Scales was born the second of what would be seven children to Hammond Bouldin Scales and Fannie Tennessee Brown. Ola was 19-years old when the township of Electra, Texas opened in 1907.  The Scales family farm was a few miles north of the town, near the Red River.  A local boy by the name of Hugh McClure came a courtin’ to the Scales house and Ola and Hugh were married.

In the hot summer, Willie Lee McClure was born July 7, 1913 to Ola Lee (Scales) McClure and Hugh Edward McClure.

Clayco #1, the oil well that started the Electra oil boom, was two years old and the town was growing by leaps and bounds.  Hugh tried his hand at sharecropper farming.  Now, Electra does have some of the finest dirt in the state, but rain to water it is a risky commodity.  Family farming in Electra is not for the faint hearted.

Several years ago, I ran across an old photograph.  I took it to Willie Lee and said, “Can you identify anyone in this old family picture I found?”  It was one of the most forlorn scenes you can imagine.  Four old tin buildings, sheet metal hanging loose, out in the middle of nowhere, dust blowing, and broom weeds the only vegetation.  One of the buildings has two large exhaust pipes exhausting steam up the stacks.  Willie Lee said, “Yes. I know this picture.  That woman is my mother, Ola.  Standing beside her is Grandma Scales.  Beside her is your grandmother, Lucian, and this person is Papa.”  She handed the picture back to me and laughed, “I’m in the picture, too.”  I examined the photo again and asked, “Where?”  She said, “I’m a little baby in that carriage there.”  [In the photograph, the entire carriage was no larger than a BB].  She said, “This is the water plant where Papa worked and we lived.”

When she was four years old, the family of two adults and three children moved to Branson, Colorado where they lived in a half-dugout and washed clothes in the river while Hugh attempted to “live out a claim.”  The government had advertised land in Branson, free for the taking, if you “lived out your claim.”  The attractive brochures that lured them to Branson failed to remark on the unfitness of the terrain for any sustenance.  Today, a full ninety years later, the city of Branson, Colorado boasts a total population of 45 women and 32 men.  Evidently, it’s still hard to “live out a claim” there.

Willie Lee said that one day she and Roxie, her sister two years younger, were out playing while their mom washed clothes in the small stream.  They told their mom that two big cats were looking at them from across the riverbed.  They were mountain lions seeking prey.  Hugh grabbed them all up and began to fortify the dugout.  Willie Lee said they never got to play near the river again.  She laughed and said, “We would be eating in the dugout.  Papa had a tow sack hanging above our eating table to keep the dust off our food.  I remember a centipede and a tarantula dropping from the tarp onto our eating table.  Mother hated those things.”

Needless to say, the hard Colorado winters and scarcely arable land forced them back to Electra.  They loaded up the covered wagon, just like in the movies, Hugh hitched the two horses and the family started back to Electra.  “We planned to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Scales until Papa could find a job, Willie Lee told me.  “I don’t know how happy Grandma and Grandpa were to have a whole wagonload of family settling in on them.”

Half-way home, in Amarillo, Texas, they met a man in a Model-T who was chugging up to Colorado.  Afraid his car could not pull the steep grade of Raton Pass, the man desired a wagon.  In Willie Lee’s words, “He showed Papa how to drive the car.  They probably went about 3-4 blocks.  They got out, and the trade was made.  Our family had a car.  Everything we owned went in, under, and on top of that car.  Mamma cried to see the horses go, but she had to do what Papa said, I imagine.”

“We arrived in Electra around midnight.  Papa drove up to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and kept honking the horn until they came out.”  “Why did he do that,” I asked?  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said.  “I think he just wanted to show off that he owned a car.”

She continued, “It wasn’t long after that that Papa took a job with the Electra Water Works and later, the Electra gasoline plant.”

At the age of twelve, Willie Lee attended a cottage prayer meeting with her Aunt Jewel Scales,  That event changed her life, forever.  In her own words, “the Spirit of God began to move in my heart and I was gloriously saved.”  She would spend the rest of her life focused on service for the Lord.

In 1930, when Willie Lee was only sixteen year old, her mother died, leaving six children, Roxie, Rusty, Henry, Virginia, and Willie Lee the oldest – Avril Jay, the youngest, was only nine months old.  The next few years were tumultuous for the family.  Willie Lee finished Electra High School.  It was customary then when you walked across the stage to have your friends and family “stand up for you” as you were awarded your diploma.  Willie Lee said that not a single person attended her graduation to “stand up for her.”  She supported herself by keeping children for a family in Wichita Falls.  Two years later, her beloved Aunt Jewel died, her mother’s sister who had witnessed to Willie Lee and invited her to that first prayer meeting.

The Church of God began to evangelize in the Electra area.  Willie Lee heard about their Bible School in Cleveland, Tennessee.  There was an older couple in Electra who planned to drive to Cleveland.  Willie Lee asked if she could ride with them and they agreed.  She would go to college.  Her aunt, Lucian Givens, made her a few dresses and gave her $1.50 to “buy stamps and write home.”  “Little did she know that was every penny I had,”  Willie Lee told me.

Arriving in Cleveland, she supported herself in college by living with a family, keeping their children, working the night shift at the Cleveland Hosiery Mills, and, later, working the day shift at the Pathway Press Publishing House.  Everyone she worked with fell in love with her, as they would the rest of her life.

She returned to Electra and, at age 21, married Edgar C. Darter on June 14, 1934.  At that time, Ed owned the Electra Mattress and Furniture Company.  Willie Lee took courses at what would later become Midwestern State University.  In 1938, she and Ed established Darter Furniture in Electra.  Hundreds of people attended the opening where a carnation was given to every lady who attended.  That furniture business would last for the next 29 years.

In the 1940’s, during the war, Ed bought an airplane.  Willie Lee learned how to navigate.  She would plot all the courses and update Ed, as needed.  She said that one time she fell asleep and when she woke up they had flown past Electra and were almost to Oklahoma City.  Ed was just flying along, obliviously happy, waiting for the next cue from Willie Lee.  That vignette stands out as exemplary of their relatonship; they made a great team.

Willie Lee wanted to be a pilot, herself, and earned her private pilot license, a milestone event for a woman of that era in the Midwest.   Her first solo flight lasted a full seven hours and 15 minutes.

They began to use the airplane and their business profits to perform mission work for the Church of God.  Her thinking was years ahead of the times.  While other churches were training pastors in the US as missionaries to go into foreign countries, she felt the most effective way was to bring the native workers to the US, train them here, and send them back as missionaries in their own countries.  It is the common theme, today, but was a novel ideal then.  So, Ed and Willie Lee became integral in creating and funding the International Preparatory Institute in San Antonio, a training ground for Latin American missionaries.

Locally, Ed became a pillar in the Business Men’s Fellowship.  They supported missionaries world-wide with their own resources and energized others for the mission fields.

In 1967, a customer, leaving late from the furniture store, failed to extinguish a lighted cigarette in the balcony.  During the night, the store and its contents burned, damaging the building and destroying all the contents.  That was the year I graduated from High School and I got a job cleaning and sanding down the tin panels in the ceiling, trying to restore the building.  I recall Ed talking with another gentleman and saying, “I don’t know if I will start it back up or not.”

A lesser individual might have been daunted by this setback, but the Lord had more work for Willie Lee and Ed Darter.  A year later, at age 55, Willie Lee was asked to fill the vacancy of the Women’s Ministries Department as Executive Secretary for the Church of God, its highest position for a woman.  She and Ed moved to Cleveland, Tennessee where she produced what she later considered her crowning life’s achievement, an international Christian training program for young girls.  She also modernized the women’s movement within the Church of God and, with help from Janice Givens of Electra, and others, published a book with illustrative Bible lessons for young children.

In 1978, while Willie Lee and Ed were on a holiday visit to Electra, on Christmas Day, Ed suffered a fatal heart attack.  This hastened Willie Lee’s decision to retire as Executive Secretary for the Church of God, after fulfilling ten noteworthy years.  Willie Lee stayed seven more years in Cleveland and moved to Iowa Park at the age of 72-years.

By that time, her work had taken her across the US numerous times and to many international destinations, including Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Israel, England, Germany, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Argentina, and Venezuela – always with the same message – the glorious saving power of Jesus Christ, the same message she had received as a young girl in Electra

I asked her once, “How is it that in all of your adversity, your mother dying young, your having to make your own way, the furniture store burning, your husband dying suddenly, “How is it you were able to keep going.”  She, of course said it was only with the help of the Lord, but when I pressured her she did concede, “I guess it’s true I’m not easily discouraged.”

And yet, in her mid-seventies, there was more work to do.  At Iowa Park, she became instrumental in setting up a ministry for the Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico.  She garnered the support of local churches and shipped truckloads and tons of clothing, supplies, Bibles, and Christian literature to help the Indians, both materially and spiritually.  She made her last trip, personally, to the reservation at the age of 90-years, but continued to garner support, encourage others, and champion the cause of Jesus Christ when she could no longer travel to the reservation, herself.

She died at her battle station some three weeks after celebrating her 98^th birthday.

She was preceded in death by a dear son and daughter, Benford Lawson of Sonora and Lee Ola Able of Electra, two granddaughters, Kami and Jana Lawson of Sonora, and one great granddaughter, Shanea Curry of Electra.  She was preceded by two sisters, Roxie Hugh Lawson and Virginia Ruth Eakin, and one brother, Ira Andrew (Rusty) McClure, all of Electra.

She is survived by two brothers, Henry Edward McClure of Electra and Avril Jay McClure of Kaufman, along with two granddaughters, Lee Ann Ray and Tracey Able, and many great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

On July 26, 2011, the Lord called for a servant.

Willie Lee Darter answered and said, “Here am I.”

Now the Lord shall give his angels charge over you, to keep you.  With long life He will satisfy you and show you his salvation.  His angels, they shall bear you up in their hands …

(Paraphrase of Psalms 91)