Chapter 2

BEGINNINGS

I was born in Denton, Maryland, the fourth child of G. Lindley and Jennie Helsby. From what we can learn of our ancestors, the Helsbys migrated from Scandinavia to Normandy, France, and then finally to England in the 12th century. Today a town near Birmingham still bears the name Helsby. My forbears may have been beekeepers, since the family coat of arms depicts a beehive surrounded by 12 bees.

The stream of divine blessing which came to us as a sweet legacy from our parents can be traced to a tent meeting near the village of Trappe, Maryland, held by evangelist, T. F. Tabler, in 1900. Dad, a farm boy in his mid-teens, attended the meeting and was soundly converted. The next night he found his friend A. E. Blann seated at the rear of the tent. Putting his arms around his shoulder he said, "Elwood, you've got to get in on this," and accompanied him to the altar. Lindley and Elwood later enrolled in God's Bible School in Cincinnati and there met H. J. Olsen, who had come to the school from Michigan. The three boys were bonded together in a special friendship, and all served a lifetime in the Pilgrim Holiness Church.

Dad courted and won the hand of Jennie Blanche Davis, who lived nearby on the Waterloo Farm near Trappe. The Davises were devout Quakers, among the earliest settlers on the state's eastern shore. The meeting house in which they worshipped remains one of the oldest churches in North America. Though Jennie also attended God's Bible School for a time, family circumstances prevented her from completing the course of study.

My parents were married August 27, 1905. Dad accepted the pastorate of a small church in Salisbury, Maryland, and there their first child, Hannah Esther, destined to one day be a missionary in China and India was born.

Two years later the Helsbys moved to Denton, to assume the pastorate of the Apostolic Holiness Church (later renamed the Pilgrim Holiness Church). Here their remaining four children were born — William Thawley (who died of cholera at age two); George Phillip, myself, Willard Meredith; and Robert Davis.

The Pilgrim Holiness community had roots in a pietistic tradition, which called for strict separation from the world and a manner of life which sets one apart as indeed a "peculiar people." Worldly fashion, bright colors and adornment of any kind was eschewed, including, to my dismay, a class ring which I truly coveted. Participation on school athletic teams was likewise banned as bordering on familiarity with the world.

In the home, unquestioned obedience was the order of the day, and any foolishness or infraction of family strictures met with stern and immediate discipline.

"As long as you put your feet under this dining room table," Dad would say with emphasis, "you are going to obey what I say."

On one occasion, when I was causing some mischief in the Sunday morning worship service, Dad paused, looked straight at me and shook his head in solemn, unspoken reproof. Judging my position fairly safe, with me in the audience and Dad behind the pulpit, I gave him a small insolent smile and shook my head back. Forsaking the pulpit, Dad strode down from the platform, seized me by the arm and took me out of the church for a sudden "meeting of the board." Sniffling and quite subdued, I was returned to my seat to endure the remainder of the service.

That this catalogue of restrictions did not turn us from our parents' faith (as happened with regrettable frequency in many families of the denomination), I attribute to the fact that discipline was always mixed with a large measure of parental love.

Under Dad's leadership, the church in Denton grew and prospered. He was elected president of nearby Denton Camp and here we became familiar with "leading lights" in the holiness movement, including Joseph Smith; Seth Rees and his gifted son, Paul; the Fleming brothers; E. E. Shelhammer; C. W. Butler and Martin Wells Knapp, founder of God's Bible School.

Both of my parents had a special fondness for missionaries. At Bible school Mother had roomed with Stella Wood, who would later be called to Central America and spent many years in the San Blass Islands off the eastern coast of Panama. So missionaries were often entertained in the Helsby parsonage, among them Charles and Lettie Cowman. The Cowmans came regularly to Denton Camp, to tell of the work of the Oriental Missionary Society, and particularly, the Great Village Campaign which was putting the Gospel in every home in Japan, a feat never before attempted. Thus, I early formed ties with the society under which we would one day go to China.

In the spring of 1924 Dad received a call to the Pilgrim Holiness Church in Milton, Pennsylvania. We came to love this beautiful area of the state with its rolling hills bordering the Susquehanna River. My brothers and I gained a measure of freedom when we took paper routes and began earning our first pocket money. Before long, Phil was working as a box boy at the local American Stores Market, the company in which he would one day rise to the rank of vice-president.

When I was 14, revival services were conducted in our church by the Reverend William Dean. As the evangelist described the prospects of coming judgment, my heart came under deep conviction. At the invitation I went to the altar to weep over my sins and seek God's forgiveness. There, I opened my heart to Christ and experienced the joys of the new birth.

Public schools in Pennsylvania were, at that time, superior to those in Maryland and, as a result, I received an excellent middle school and high school education. I graduated eighth among 102 students in the class of 1932, a satisfactory enough record but well short of my distinguished older brother, Phillip, who was not only salutatorian but voted best all-around student, an honor which earned him a beautiful gold watch at the graduation ceremony!

The Depression was at its worst and prospects of a college education looked bleak when I attended the Sunbury Holiness Camp Meeting following my graduation, the summer of 1932. In the course of his preaching, one of the evangelists, Dr. Walter Surbrook, made a pointed remark that grabbed my attention. "A young man who is unwilling to work his way through college," he said, "isn't worth the salt in his bread." This remark kindled in me a fierce determination to enter college and at the same time find work to pay for my tuition. That fall I enrolled in God's Bible School, which had just inaugurated a liberal arts course. While I took 16 credit hours, a full academic load, I also worked 30 hours a week in the school's publishing office. I had arrived on campus with the sum total of $10 in my pocket, feeling very much alone in the big city of Cincinnati, yet possessing a strong determination to accept Dr. Surbrook's challenge and prove myself "worth the salt in my bread."

In my second year, a course in the history of missions required the reading of a number of missionary biographies. One book, Goforth of China, touched me deeply. By this time my sister, Esther, was serving her second term with the OMS in China, and I felt my heart drawn to that vast nation with almost a quarter of the world's population. After weeks of seeking God's will for my life, I felt that He was, indeed, calling me to China as a missionary teacher.

The summer of my junior year I traveled in meetings with the GBS quartet, "The Celestial Singers." A high point of these months was singing in one of Billy Sunday's last campaigns held on the Tjador Estate in Milbrook, New York. Billy Sunday had recently under-gone major surgery and preached only part of the time. I remember his saying, "The hardest thing I've had to do is sit in the congregation and listen to someone else preach."

Since God's Bible School was still not accredited I thought it wise to choose an accredited college for my senior year. In 1935, I, along with three classmates, transferred to Alfred Holbrook College in Manchester, Ohio. By the end of the next year I had completed all the requirements and graduated with a B.A. degree.

To properly qualify for teaching in a Bible school in China, I felt the need for seminary training. So, returning that fall to Gloversville, New York, where Dad was now pastoring, I found a job in a Sears-Roebuck store. Still, the prospect of saving enough money to enter seminary seemed dim indeed. In God's providence the well-known song evangelist, J. Byron Crouse, was holding revival services at Dad's church. Byron was a graduate of Asbury College and with two other Asburians, Virgil Kirkpatrick and Esther's husband, Eugene Erny, had formed the now-famous Asbury Missionary Trio, which had traveled around the world. Learning of my desire to go to seminary, as well as the regrettable state of my finances, Byron went with Dad to a Christian business-man, Mr. Gangle, who owned a glove factory in town. As a result, Mr. Gangle not only gave me $75 for a new top coat, but promised to supply $25 a month toward my seminary tuition. This was clearly God's seal of approval on my next step of faith. And since both Eugene and Byron were Asbury graduates, it did not take me long to decide that Asbury Seminary was the place for me.

That February of 1937 I hitchhiked from Gloversville to Wilmore where Asbury College and Seminary are located. One of the required courses that first year was Rural Sociology, a class that met in the basement of Hughes Auditorium (at this time Asbury College and Seminary shared the same campus). Students sat on long benches with only a writing arm dividing them. The professor, a substitute for Dr. Boyd MaCrory, was somewhat less than inspiring. Much more inspiring was a beautiful coed, Christine Camden, who was seated right next to me. [As a Social Science major this class was also on her requirement list. However, neither of us were very interested in such facts as the number of mules-sold in Texas last year."] Since she is right-handed and I am left-handed, we survived many a boring lecture playing tic-tac-toe. Our friendship began to flourish and soon we were dating regularly. She was a college junior at that time. So at the end of the school year, I had all summer to think about her, send letters off to Richmond, Virginia, and hope that we would continue dating upon our return to campus the following fall. And we did. By then I so wanted to believe that she was the one God had chosen for my life. But a gnawing doubt always intruded into my beautiful dream, for I knew that although she had many wonderful aspirations, going to China was not one of them!

On June 4, 1939, I received my diploma from our distinguished president, Dr. Henry Clay Morrison. This granted me a B.D. degree.

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