Last updated on August 8, 2023

Introduction

Welcome to the Hooser.com website! Around the year 2000, I was delighted to learn that this Internet domain of hooser.com was available to lease, so I immediately leased it.

Ever since, I have pondered the question of how to use hooser.com. At last, in the year 2023, I’ve decided to use this website to tell my “story”—to use my website to share my autobiography. This is a condensed version as I have a much lengthier version. I have also written biographies of several members of my family. They include my parents—I’m thankful I asked them lots of questions.

This bio offers the highlights of my life and some lessons I’ve learned. I’m posting this for the interest of my family and friends, but I’m also sharing it with the hope that parts of it will benefit other readers. I have many times enjoyed and benefitted by reading biographies. A knowledge of history is valuable and reading biographies is one of the best ways to learn history. Some of you might be reading this after I’ve left this mortal life. I feel happy to think that some people will benefit from the lessons I’ve learned even after I’m gone.

I earnestly thank a dear friend who is doing the necessary work required to design and occasionally update this website with additions and edits.

The spelling and pronunciation of my name is often confused with the name Hoosier, which is pronounced hoo-zher. My name has no letter i and is pronounced hoo-zer. It rhymes with cruiser.

Who am I? What am I? I’m so thankful to be a human being made in the “image and likeness of God”! (Genesis 1:26-27). Amazingly, God created us humans as His initial step toward making a family, to share His joy and glory forever with billions of children! I am greatly excited that God wants us to be His sons and daughters forever in His Kingdom!

So, God, the Creator God, the God of the Bible, along with His Son Jesus Christ, must always be number one in my life. And since I married Judith Kay (“Judy”) on January 1, 2022, she is definitely number two in my life! (Of course, when I was married to Elsie Marie until she died on August 21, 2020, she was number two in my life.)

Thankfully, God thoroughly reveals Himself to us with His two “books.” The first “book” is His Word, His written revelation to us, the Bible (Psalm 119:105; John 17:17). The second is His awesome creation (Psalm 19:1-4). “His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made…” (Romans 1:17-25).

I’ve had quite an eventful and meaningful and relatively happy life. I’m not narcissistic, so when I relate an accomplishment in my life, I don’t mean it as bragging. I give full credit to the countless good influences in my life, including my wise and loving parents, my many teachers, living in America with its Judeo-Christian values and awesome opportunities, and especially to God who has greatly blessed me.

The photos were taken during the time when my wife Elsie and I lived in Bellingham, Washington, from 2004 to 2010.  Bellingham is next to the Pacific Ocean and close to the picturesque Cascade Mountains
where I skied and frequently hiked.

A Table of Contents of this Bio 

• A brief summary of my life
• Our families
• History of my experience in the Church of God
• “Churchquake” and my transition to United Church of God
• My growing up years
• My college years
• Some of our family trials, tragedies, and heartaches
• My work with the Breaking Free Journal
• My love and concerns for America
• Some final thoughts

A brief summary of my life

I was born in Dallas, Texas, December 28, 1940, the firstborn of five sons. (More about my family later.) There is some indication that the most dominant ethnicity in my makeup is Scottish. From the second grade on, I grew up in Hughes Springs, a small town in northeast Texas. As a family, we were members of the Methodist Church. We’ve always loved America and have been very patriotic.

I loved the outdoors and spent a lot of time in the woods. I was very active in the Boy Scouts and became an Eagle Scout (more about my Scouting experiences later). I especially loved aquatic sports—swimming, water skiing, and snorkeling. My experience with water skiing helped me later to learn and enjoy snow skiing.

In grade school, I thought I might like to be a forest ranger or a doctor. But starting in high school, my dream was to spend my life pursuing a great cause. Until I found my “great cause”, I decided my cause would be to try to make a lot of money. So, after graduation from high school in 1958, I attended SMU (Southern Methodist University) in Dallas pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering. My dad was an engineer—a very good one—and I liked science and math, so engineering seemed a logical path to pursue.

But in my third year at SMU, I became increasingly interested in the Bible and learning about the original Church of God that Jesus founded. I soon began praying that God would lead me to a Church organization that held to the same teachings and practices as the original New Testament Church.

Those prayers were soon answered! God led me to a church organization that I believed was the strongest branch of the Church of God and “body of Christ” (Romans 12:5; Ephesians4:12). At that time, its name was Radio Church of God (RCG), named so because of its reliance on its radio broadcast. Years later, it changed its name to Worldwide Church of God (WCG).

In the summer before my last year at SMU, I began attending the weekly church services each Sabbath of RCG in Dallas. The church members were talking about their plans to attend the fall “Feast of Tabernacles”, something I had never heard of since I had not read much of the Bible. The nearest site for the Feast observance was at Big Sandy, Texas, which was near my home, and I was scheduled to be there while working at my co-op job. So, I managed to attend several of the church services during that 8-day festival. It was exciting because much of what I heard in the sermons was new knowledge for me!

I also attended the singles picnic and made it a point to meet the prettiest lady there—my future wife—Elsie Marie Hanson! We really hit it off. We wrote letters to each other during the next two years, and then we were together on the same Ambassador College campus the following two years. (We married two days after my graduation.)

I became very committed to the Bible and the Church of God and was baptized on February 24, 1963. Later in this bio, I’ll relate some church history and why I switched to United Church of God in 1995. Its website is www.ucg.org.

I was so inspired by what I was learning about the Bible and biblical Christianity that during my last semester at SMU, I decided to apply to become a theology student at the church’s college, Ambassador College (AC). I knew that I had finally found the “great cause” for my life! When I decided to enroll in AC, I was well aware that I was giving up a high-paying future engineering career to become involved in church ministry in some way, but I’ve never regretted that decision in the least.

Because I had another college degree, I was able to graduate from AC in three years. During my first year, 1963-1964, there was much planning for the start of another college campus the next year, at Big Sandy, Texas. I was chosen to be a pioneer student at that campus. And in 1964, Elsie applied to be a student at AC. She did not state a preference for either the Pasadena or Big Sandy campus, and she was accepted for the Big Sandy campus. So, from the fall of 1964 to the spring of 1966, we were students together on the same campus! We always thought that God orchestrated that as she increasingly became my sweetheart during those two years.

AC had strict rules about dating. One rule was no “steady” dating until a couple got engaged to be married, and there was a strong recommendation that an engagement should not be longer than six months. So, since Elsie and I wanted to get married immediately after my graduation in June, 1966, I officially proposed marriage to her on January 1, 1966. My graduation was on Friday, June 3^rd, and our wedding was on Sunday, June 5^th.

Shortly before graduation, the Church offered to hire me as a ministerial trainee. Our honeymoon was primarily our trip to Akron, Ohio, to begin serving as a ministerial trainee under the mentorship of David Antion. I’ve served in the ministry ever since.

My parents, who were Methodists, were very upset for a few years over my changes. My mom was quite upset about my changing my church and theology, and my dad was very upset about my giving up an engineering career. My parents became further astonished and disappointed when all three of my younger brothers eventually became members of the same Church I was in! But, eventually, our parents saw that we all had good values, were happy, and were good parents, so they became more and more at peace with our beliefs and decisions.

Elsie’s convictions and godly example so influenced her mother, Eunice Hanson, that Eunice began to seriously study the Bible and soon became a member of our same Church! Elsie’s father, Rudy Hanson, attended the church services for a while but then lost interest.

In early 1967, I was ordained as an elder (minister), and I joyfully served in the full-time ministry of the Church until I finally retired on March 1, 2021. For much of that time, I served as a church pastor, pastoring churches in Ohio, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington. More about the Church in the next section.

In due time, Elsie and I were blessed with three delightful children, a daughter and two sons—Amy, Randy, and Danny.

Elsie and I had lived in rented apartments and homes, but after I began working primarily on the east side of Cincinnati, we decided to build a home in the Mt. Carmel suburb. Seeing it being built, and then living in it was exciting and joyful! But, sadly, we were able to live in it for only one year because then I was transferred to another location (Nebraska).

As time went along, we appreciated more and more the benefits of living in Nebraska–good, conservative schools, conservative people, low crime rate, healthful food, clean air, etc. We got to stay there 11 years, so Amy and Randy mostly grew up there. It was wonderful that they didn’t have to move a lot while they were growing up. And we had a lot of fun experiences. Almost every winter, we would take a bunch of church kids to Colorado to go skiing.

Our biggest event in Nebraska was having our third child! Daniel Shawn was born in the snowy night of February 7, 1982. 

Elsie, my beloved wife, was a little shy, but she very willingly and cheerfully served as a diligent and compassionate minister’s wife for her whole married life. She was a loving wife and mother.

I was transferred from Nebraska to Oklahoma in 1985. There, we had a home built on a two-acre wooded lot in the town of Ada. I designed the floor plan. We were there until I was transferred to Dallas in 1991 to pastor the Dallas South congregation for 10 years. While we were in Ada, both Amy and Randy started college at Ambassador College.

In Dallas, I was finally back in my home town near my parents, brothers and their families, and near many other relatives. Dallas was the perfect place for us to be at this time in our lives, because the health of my parents was failing and they were going to need more help and moral support. And Elsie loved it too, as she was very close to all my family.

We chose to live in the suburb of DeSoto, and we were blessed to live there for ten years. My brothers and I provided more and more help to my parents during the last years and months of their lives. And Elsie was giving almost daily help to her mom during the last year of her life. My mom died in 1994, my dad died in 1997, and Elsie’s mom, Eunice Hanson, died in 1998.

I was transferred to Austin, Texas, in 2001, and then to NW Washington in 2004. We lived in Bellingham WA, about 20 miles from the Canadian border, two miles from the Pacific Ocean, about a half hour from the Cascade Mountains, and about one and a half hours from the Mt. Baker ski resort! I loved hiking in the Cascades and skiing at Mt. Baker! It was also very gratifying to assist with the congregations at Vancouver B.C. and on Vancouver Island.

We were able to move back to Texas in 2010. We bought a home in the Dallas suburb of McKinney. That is still my home as of this writing.

Sadly, Elsie was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer in January, 2016, but after several months of chemo treatment, it went into remission. The next year, she suffered with bronchiectasis, a lung disease that caused almost constant coughing. But she quit coughing and got well from that soon after she had infusions of embryonic stem cell therapy! Then in 2020, she relapsed with the lymphoma. This time, the chemotherapy did not restore her health and her vital organs became weak. So, after our 54+ years of marriage, she died on August 21, 2020. This was heartbreaking for me, my children, and all our family. (I discuss this some more later in the section on “Family Trials.” Starting on page 22.)

After Elsie’s death, I did a study of the subject of grieving and mourning. I gave a sermon on the subject and wrote an article on the subject, each with the title, “Weep With Those Who Weep,” from Romans 12:15. Both of them are posted on our church website, www.ucg.org.

In January, 2021, Judy Resler listened online to the recording of that sermon and contacted me to further discuss the subject of grieving because her beloved husband of 55+ years, Tom, had just died on November 16, 2020.

Judy and I continued to communicate, first to comfort one another and to discuss the subject of grieving. Then we started discussing many other subjects and became true friends. Then we fell in love! By the fall of 2021, I became convinced that I wanted to marry Judy. I proposed and she accepted and we were married on January 1, 2022, at our church in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Our “story” of how we came to know each other fell in love is at the wedding website of www.theknot.com/don-judy. The password is love.

Judy and I became “snowbirds.” In most years, our plan is to live at Judy’s home in Wisconsin from May through October and to live at my home in Texas from November through April. I’m very happy with this arrangement—this way we enjoy relatively mild weather year-round!

Our Family

In a later section, I’ll tell about my growing up years.

My parents were Donald B. Hooser and Lois Elizabeth Ray Hooser.

Dad was born 8/28/1912 and died 9/27/1997, at age 85.

Mom was born 2/11/1917 and died 8/9/1994, at age 77.

They married 5/1/1936. They chose May 1 for their wedding because it was the birthday of both of her parents!

I was the firstborn of five sons:

• Donald B Jr. Don was born 12/28/1940.
• Randall Ray. Randy was born 6/18/1944, and died 1/7/2018.
• Rodger Alan. Roddy was born early 1949 and died at age 3 ½ on 7/10/1952.
• James Robert. Jim was born 8/5/1951.
• Jeffrey Michael. Jeff was born 1/22/1954, and died 11/16/2008 of cancer.

My wife, Elsie Marie Hanson, was born 9/17/1939. Elsie grew up in Detroit MI, the firstborn of four children born to Rudy and Eunice Hanson. We married on 6/5/1966. She died on 8/21/2020.

My wife, Judy Abbas Resler, was the firstborn of two children, and grew up in Iowa. She was married to Tom Resler who died on 11/16/2020. They have three children.

Amy was born in 1967 and is married to Don Wuerfel. Randy was born in 1969. His wife is Natalie and they have a daughter named Rylie. Danny was born in 1982. Very sadly, he was only age 40 when he died in 2022. His wife was Aimee. More about Danny later.

History of my experience in the Church of God

Around 1960, while a student at SMU, I began to frequently listen to the “World Tomorrow” radio program produced by Ambassador College and Radio Church of God [RCG]. (Several years later, the church changed its name to Worldwide Church of God [WCG].)

In the summer of 1962, between my junior and senior years at SMU, I began attending the weekly Sabbath services of RCG in Dallas. I was baptized on February 24, 1963, in an outdoor pool on the church’s property at Big Sandy, Texas.

As mentioned before, I attended the church’s college, Ambassador College, from 1963 to 1966 (one year at Pasadena CA and two years at Big Sandy TX) and graduated with a degree in theology and was immediately hired to be a ministerial trainee. I was ordained as an elder (minister) in February, 1967, and served as an assistant pastor until I was promoted to be a pastor in January, 1972.

WCG was experiencing phenomenal numerical growth in those years. During the six years that we were in Cincinnati, it was an exciting place to be. The Church chose Cincinnati for some experimental programs for preaching the gospel to the public, including a dramatic “America Listen” campaign.

In the Cincinnati area, first there was one congregation on the west side, then two congregations, then one in northern Kentucky, and then in late 1971, the decision was made to start a fourth congregation—Cincinnati East—and I was appointed to be its first pastor. That congregation began with about 400 in attendance! In addition, I was appointed to be the pastor of the Portsmouth, Ohio, congregation. On most Sabbaths, I conducted the service in Portsmouth in the morning and in Cincinnati East in the afternoon.

Naturally, it has been nostalgic for me that ultimately Cincinnati was chosen by United Church of God to be the location of its world headquarters. In fact, the Church’s Home Office building is used for the Sabbath services for the Cincinnati East congregation.

Ministers in our Church have been subject to fairly frequent transfers. I served as a church pastor of congregations in Cincinnati and Portsmouth, Ohio, from 1972 to 1974; then in Grand Island and North Platte, Nebraska, from 1974 to 1985; then in Ada and Lawton, Oklahoma, from 1985 t 1991; then in Dallas and Waco, Texas, from 1991 to 2001; then in Austin, Waco, and Coleman, Texas, from 2001 to 2004; then in Sedro Wooley, Washington, from 2004 to 2010.

The exciting highlight of each year has been attending the 8-day fall Feast of Tabernacles services and activities at one of the many chosen sites around the world. In most years, we enjoyed attending one of the scenic sites in the US, but while living in NW Washington, we usually attended a Feast site in Canada. In addition, we went one time each to a site in Jordan, Italy, Mexico, Tobago, St. Lucia, and Hawaii. When we went to Jordan, we spent the week following the Feast touring Israel!

Once every few years, Worldwide Church of God asked the full-time ministers to come to the church headquarters at Pasadena for a two-week Refresher Program. Those employees had no out-of-pocket expense and the experience was educational, motivational, and enjoyable.

As time went by, I did more and more writing of articles for our church publications, so in 2007, our UCG administration asked me to become a full-time writer for the church’s publications. From then on, I also assisted the pastor in whatever ways he desired.

In 2023, being curious as to how many of my articles had been published, I put my name in the search bar of www.ucg.org, which showed over 120 articles and blogs by me. The search also showed hundreds of recorded sermons by me. Anyone can go to that website and read my articles and listen to my sermons.

For several years, I served on the UCG Doctrinal Advisory Committee. Six times I served on the staffs of six summer camps (in six different states).

“Churchquake” and the transition to United Church of God

Herbert W. Armstrong was the “pastor general” of WCG until he died in 1986. Before he died, he appointed Joseph Tkach to be his successor since Mr. Armstrong believed that Mr. Tkach would follow in Mr. Armstrong’s footsteps and continue to teach the same doctrines and practices that Mr. Armstrong had taught. But as time went along, Mr. Tkach (partly because of the influence of others) radically changed those teachings.

Then the bombshell occurred on the last Sabbath of 1994 when Tkach announced that WCG was altering its teachings to largely match the teachings of mainstream Protestant theology. A video tape of his sermon was sent to all congregations to be played on the first Sabbath of 1995.

I and my wife were devastated by this apostasy from the teachings of the Bible, and later called it “churchquake.” I remained in WCG for several weeks, but resigned from employment on March 19, 1995, because I could no longer represent a church that was not teaching the truths of the Bible. I resigned not knowing what my occupation would be, but knew that I must please God and rely on Him to take care of our needs.

So, I was relieved and thrilled a few weeks later to learn that many ex-WCG ministers were planning to meet near Indianapolis, Indiana, to establish a new church organization that would be a continuation of the WCG that we had known and loved. Elsie and I were blessed to be able to attend those meetings. The name chosen for this new church organization was and is United Church of God (UCG). Along with many other ex-ministers, I was hired to be a full-time church pastor. I’ve been very pleased and contented overall ever since with United Church of God!

As it turned out, I was the WCG pastor of the Dallas South congregation from 1991 to 1995, and then the UCG pastor of Dallas South from 1995 to 2001.

In 1998, UCG had a financial crisis. To alleviate the crisis, I and about one hundred other church employees were asked to get by on half salary for over a year—from August 1998 to November 1999. So, while continuing to pastor two churches, I also had to have another job to have enough income. I got a job as a reporter for a regional newspaper. It was a stressful year, but I enjoyed that job and it gave me a lot of valuable experience as a writer. I wrote 2 or 3 articles a week. I wrote about a hundred articles within that year.

After becoming a full-time writer, it no longer mattered to the Church where I lived. Elsie’s and my plan was for my eventual retirement to be in my “home town” of Dallas where our children and my brothers and other family members lived. United Church of God anticipated a split by the end of 2010 and knew that we would lose several ministers in Texas, so Elsie and I were asked in the summer of 2010 to move to Texas as soon as possible. So, we rushed to buy a home in McKinney, a suburb of Dallas, and managed to move in December. Thankfully, we arrived before the split occurred so the Dallas/Fort Worth area was not as short on ministers as it would have been.

From 2011 to my retirement in 2021 my primary responsibility was replying to the many letters which are written to our Church. Each year, I wrote almost a thousand personal letters replying to people’s questions, inquiries and problems. Since retiring, I have still occasionally written an article or blog for our church’s publications.

My growing up years

I was born in St. Paul Hospital in Dallas, Texas, in late December, 1940. My parents were relieved to get the tax benefit of my being born before the end of the year.

My birth was breach. I have joked that I’ve been doing things backwards my whole life.

My dad’s name was Donald Bedney Hooser, so my name is Donald Bedney Hooser Jr. While growing up, I was embarrassed by that odd middle name even though that name had been passed down through three generations before me. Finally, while I was in college, my paternal grandmother told me the origin of the name. It is a short form of Abed-Nego who is prominently featured in the first three chapters of the book of Daniel. After learning that, I was very pleased with my name.

My parents married in 1936 and wanted to start a family right away, but my mom was unable to get pregnant until 1940. The way God has blessed my life and has used me in His service, I have wondered if God divinely healed whatever had been wrong so I could be born. After that, Mom had no difficulty in getting pregnant, as she had four more children.

My parents had five sons and no daughters. After having me, Mom kept hoping that the next child would be a daughter. The last three children were born in the small clinic in Hughes Springs, Texas, with Dr. Steed doing the delivery each time. He knew how much Mom wanted that last baby to be a girl. So, after the baby came out, Dr. Steed announced, “Dammit, Lois, another boy!” I’ve occasionally kidded my brothers, saying I was the only boy my mother ever wanted. Of course, my parents dearly loved all their sons.

I’ve been kidded my whole life for being so thin. My weight has stayed at about 140 pounds since about age 15. When I was a teen and a young adult, I tried my best to gain weight, but to no avail. I inherited this genetic trait from my mother. She and her sister and brother could never gain much weight. So many people struggle with being overweight, so as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been thankful to have this genetic trait.

My mom grew up as one of three children in Dallas and my dad grew up as one of six children on a cotton farm between Italy and Frost, Texas. My dad worked his way through Texas A&M when it was a university only for men, and he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. My mom had a remarkable aptitude for language and planned to be a French teacher. However, after one year of college at SMU (Southern Methodist University), she married my dad and never went back to college.

When Dad graduated from Texas A&M, most graduates were in the Army Reserve. As you know, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. As a result, Dad was called to active duty the U.S. Army in 1942. Because he was an engineer, he was assigned to the Army Ordnance Dept with the responsibility of designing military vehicles with diesel engines. (The word ordnance refers to military weaponry.)

Dad was first assigned to work in the Pentagon, so we moved from Dallas to Washington, D.C. and lived in Alexandria VA. For a while, Mom worked as a file clerk in the FBI.

One of Dad’s first responsibilities during the war was to help to improve the efficiency and dependability of our nation’s railroad system since railroads had become vitally important for transporting military supplies. So, Dad spent a lot of time travelling around the country to inspect locomotives, train facilities, and depots in order to make recommendations for improvement.

On Jan. 16, 1943, Dad was promoted to the rank of Captain. When he was being discharged at the end of the war, he was promoted to the rank of Major.

In August 1943, Dad was transferred to an office in New York City. Then in November, he was transferred to Detroit, Michigan, which had become a major Army town. (The automobile factories were partly transformed to produce military vehicles including trucks, jeeps, and tanks.) He ended up being in charge of a staff of 20 men responsible for writing operating and maintenance manuals for tanks.

During his last year in the Army, two special secret projects were assigned to him, the 33-ton Sherman duplex-drive (DD) amphibious tank and the T10 Shop Tractor. The DD “swimming” tank was used in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day.

It seems that my first memories are of when I was about 3 ½ while living in Detroit. One of my most vivid memories was of my excitement when Dad came home from a trip and brought me a gift—a folding army shovel!

That war dominated much of our thinking. Many items were strictly rationed, so life was pretty hard. The first song I learned to sing beside kiddie songs was an Army song—The Cason Song! And my first doodling was drawing fighter planes in aerial dogfights—American planes fighting Jap and Nazi planes.

In 1944, a couple of weeks before my brother Randy was due to be born, Mom went to live for a while with her parents in Dallas so Randy would be a Texan from birth (and not a yankee!).

After Dad was released from active duty on the day before Thanksgiving in l945, he took a job in Ohio. For one year, we lived in Dover, Ohio, and I went through the first grade there. The law in Ohio stated that a child could start in the first grade as long as he turned six before the end of the year, so I started when I was only about five years and eight months old. So, all through grade school, high school, and college, I was usually the youngest person in my class.

While in Dover, my parents delighted me by buying me a dog that we named Smoky.

My parents were homesick for Texas, so in 1947, Dad quit his job and we moved to Texas even though Dad did not yet have any job prospect. We stayed with Mom’s parents in Dallas while Dad looked for a job.

The timing of this move worked well. The US government had been building Lone Star Steel Company in northeast Texas to make iron and steel for the war efforts. With the war over, the government sold the new mill to private investors. Dad applied for a job there, was hired as the first engineer, and went to work on June 16, 1947. By the time Dad quit Lone Star, he was the chief engineer over approximately 15 engineers plus he was Division Superintendent of Engineering, Maintenance & Services, which included about a thousand employees.

The town that grew up around the steel mill was named Lone Star, Texas. However, my parents chose to rent a house in the nearby town of Hughes Springs. Later they bought that house, and that is where we lived until my parents and brothers moved to near Cleveland, Ohio, while I was a freshman student at SMU.

Regarding Dad, he resigned from Lone Star Steel in 1954 to become a consultant and manufacturer’s representative. Then in 1958, he was hired to be a sales engineer for Cleveland Crane, so my parents and brothers moved to near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1959.

I love trees including tall pine trees, so I’ve always loved the scenery of east Texas, and I loved climbing trees. We lived in a small house on the main highway through town, but there was a huge wooded area behind our house. I never knew who owned that land, but I spent a lot of time wandering through those woods. For years, I often was plunking with my BB gun and later with my 22 rifle.

In the small Hughes Springs grade school and high school, there was only one class for each grade. So, it was nice that I had mostly the same classmates from the second grade all the way through high school. The mascot for both the Hughes Springs schools and SMU is the Mustang (horse), so all through my schooling, I was a Mustang!

Shortly after my dad went to work for Lone Star Steel, my parents had the opportunity to buy six acres of wooded land on the shore of Lone Star Lake. We thought it was the loveliest location on the lake! A few years later, they bought some adjoining land to make it ten acres. Because it was situated across the lake from “the plant” (Lone Star Steel), we called our place “the Plantation.” We loved spending many weekend days there whenever the weather was nice. In the summers, we did a lot of swimming, boating, fishing off the boat dock, and water skiing!

I think I was in the fifth grade when I joined the school marching and concert band. I chose to play the saxophone because I love the sound of sax music. Later I wished I had chosen drums since I can’t play music by ear but I have a natural sense of rhythm.

I’ve always been totally pleased that I was born when I was. America was a great place to live in the post-war years through the 1950’s! I loved most of the 50’s songs and still do. There were many great songs, melodies, rhythms, and singers—a relatively wholesome and romantic time. I also loved the new rock-n-roll music and enjoyed dancing including jitterbug dancing.

Beginning at age 11, I was very active in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). I always loved the outdoors and learning things and achieving things. And Hughes Springs always had a good Scoutmaster. I had many great experiences. I attended Philmont Scout Camp every summer, first as a camper and later as a junior staff member. At some point, I was chosen to be in the Order of the Arrow, which is an honorary branch of the Boy Scouts. About halfway through high school, I became an Eagle Scout. The major prerequisite for achieving the Eagle rank was to earn 21 merit badges. I ended up earning 34 merit badges. Partly by working with my church congregation and its pastor, I also earned the BSA God and Country Award.

It was a tradition for each Scout Council to choose one Scout each year to go to the state capital to “report to” the state governor. I think it was in 1956 that my Caddo Council (representing northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas) chose me to go to our state capital in Austin, Texas, to meet and briefly chat with Governor Shivers. That weekend also included some nice entertainment for the Scouts

In the summer of 1956, I spent a couple of weeks hiking and camping at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico! In the summer of 1957, I got to travel with a busload of Scouts to the BSA National Jamboree in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The Jamboree takes place once every four years. That year there were 52,580 Scouts there camped in tents!

It is terribly sad to me that the Boy Scouts of America has lost some of its traditions, its great reputation, and its popularity.

Now for my little joke about being a Boy Scout. When I got to be a teenager and became more attracted to females, I often said: “I was a Boy Scout and when I became a teenager, I also became a girl scout.”

During the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked as a lifeguard at the swimming area of the lake at Daingerfield State Park. That park had a very nice open-air pavilion where people—mostly teenagers—would gather on summer evenings to meet other teens, listen to music, and dance.

At the end of my senior year in high school, I was the valedictorian. However, there were only 34 in my graduation class, so my honor was not quite the same as being the valedictorian in a class of 400. Also, during that senior year, Nita Ryle and I were the co-editors of the school yearbook.

My College Years

When I left home to start my college years, my parents gave me one of their cars—a light blue 1956 Mainline Ford. It was so plain and basic, it didn’t even have a radio. I soon bought an after-market radio for it. But that car was dependable. I drove it all during the SMU years. When I arrived at Ambassador College, I had to sell it as AC did not allow a student to own a car.

In high school, I chose the career goal of becoming a mechanical engineer. Regarding which university to attend, why did I choose SMU (Southern Methodist University)? I had grown up as a Methodist, but that fact had almost nothing to do with my decision. I chose SMU because it was the only university in Texas that offered a co-op plan for engineering students. How did that co-op plan work? After the first year (two semesters) and during the next four years, I was in classes for eight weeks, then working full-time for eight weeks, then back in classes for eight weeks, etc. That explains why it took five years to get the degree. I loved this plan! And I graduated from this expensive university with no college debt!

Furthermore, for my co-op job, I got hired to work at Lone Star Steel, the same company my dad had worked at for many years! It not only was great place to work, but when I was working, I got to live in my parents’ home on “the Plantation” just on the other side of Lone Star Lake!

My parents built that home as their future retirement home—built right before they moved to Ohio. So, the house was usually vacant when I was not living there. My parents did not charge me any rent for living in their home, but I also benefitted them by taking care of the home and the 10 acres.

It was so very nice that my maternal grandparents lived only about two miles from the SMU campus so I got to see them occasionally. And it was so very nice that Bob McCauley, the husband of my first cousin Lou, was also an SMU student, and they lived very near the campus.

At the start of my freshman year at SMU, I joined the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. The Phi Gam brothers have the nickname Fijis. The fellowship of that brotherhood was quite enjoyable and gratifying. To become a full member required going through an initiation for the first few months. The initiation concluded with “Hell Weekend”! It was challenging and exhausting! For one thing, we were not allowed to get any sleep from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. I and most of the pledges stuck it out!

My first cousin, Carroll Hooser Jr., was an SMU student part of the time while I was at SMU, and he was a star basketball player for SMU.

I hated the evil of communism, and in my third year of college, I learned that some of the SMU faculty were “pinkos.” They were not Communists but they were Communist sympathizers which is why they earned the label of pinkos. That alarmed me. Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) had just been founded in 1960, so I decided I wanted to help establish a chapter of YAF on the SMU campus. When I learned that YAF would not accept a group until it had been a similar organization for a year, I managed to start an independent student organization, Young Conservatives for Freedom. But then I lost interest in that when I became focused on learning about the Bible and the Church of God. However, I have always been strongly conservative in my political views.

I graduated from SMU with “high honors,” the equivalent of magna cum laude.

Upon graduation, I was hired by York Corporation to begin their training program to become a sales engineer for its commercial air conditioning systems. So, I moved to York, Pennsylvania, and began is training program. Halfway through the summer, I finally received an answer to my application to Ambassador College—I had been accepted to be a student at Pasadena for that fall. I shocked my boss at York when I told him I would be quitting to go back to college. Thankfully, York let me work there during the remaining weeks before I left to drive to California.

Upon leaving York, I first drove to see my parents and then to Detroit to visit Elsie for a couple of days. I drove all the way to Pasadena in three days. I never stayed in a motel—I just slept in the car. The Pasadena area was beautiful, but I was shocked at the heavy smog much of the time.

Every AC student had to work on campus 20 hours a week. That both benefitted the campus and paid most of the students’ college costs. Because I had an engineering degree, I was assigned to the Buildings and Grounds Dept. I spent much of my freshman year drawing a map of the campus. That required my making a lot of measurements to determine the exact location of each feature on the campus.

Of all the students scheduled to transfer to the Texas campus, I had had the most aquatic experience. Because of a lake (Lake Loma) on the Texas campus, the college appointed me to be in charge of all the lake activities there. So, after my freshman year, the college paid for me to attend the Red Cross’s National Aquatics School to be trained not only in life guarding, but even in teaching swimming and life guarding. With that training, I earned the Red Cross WSI—Water Safety Instructor.

In early summer, a fellow student and I drove to the new Big Sandy, Texas, campus, where we worked during that summer. In the fall, my 20-hour-per-week job was working at Lake Loma. When the weather became too cool for swimming, I was assigned to teach math to third and fourth graders in Imperial School, the grade school that was primarily for the children of the faculty and staff of the college. Then during my senior year, my job was in LAD, the Letter Answering Dept., helping to reply to the many letters written to our Church.

During my first year at Big Sandy, I lived in a “booth,” a small metal building just large enough for either two beds or four beds. During my second year at Big Sandy, I was able to live in a newly-built dorm.

In 1965, in the summer between my junior and senior years, Bill Cowan and I were appointed to teach canoeing at our new summer camp, the Summer Educational Program (SEP), at Orr, Minnesota. This was on land along Pelican Lake that had been donated to the Church. We spent most of the summer leading 4-day canoe trips in the Boundary Waters, so part of the time we were in the USA and part of the time in Canada. We camped in tents each night, so we also were teaching camping and outdoor cooking. On each trip, we used seven canoes, so I had with me 13 boys. I love the outdoors, canoeing and teaching kids, so that summer was a delightful dream for me!

I thoroughly appreciated all that I learned in my Ambassador College classes about the Bible and other subjects, and the camaraderie with my fellow students.

After our children Amy and Randy finished high school, they also attended and graduated from Ambassador College. Elsie and I were delighted about that!

Some of our family trials, tragedies, and heartaches 

By far the greatest personal loss in my life was the death of my beloved wife, Elsie, on August 21, 2020. We had a very good marriage for 54 ½ years. It was deeply sad seeing her having increasing health problems beginning toward the end of 2015. From then on, I was increasingly a caregiver for her and I gladly served her in whatever way she needed. (I relate her declining health and death earlier in the section, “A Summary of My Life,” starting on page 3.)

The first crisis in my life, when I was age 11, was devastating to our family. It was when my little brother, Roddy, died when he was only about 3 ½ years old. Although my mom made delicious meals, our family didn’t understand much about nutrition and we had never taken any vitamin supplements. Roddy’s sickness began as a sore throat. Mom primarily fed him ice cream, thinking that would make his throat feel better. Mom promptly took him to our doctor to get a penicillin shot and he improved enough that our whole family spent the July 4^th weekend at the lake swimming, etc. Within days, Roddy got sick again and on July 9^th he went into shock. Our doctor called for an ambulance to take him to the nearest hospital which was in the city of Longview, about 30 minutes away. It took the doctors the whole night to determine the diagnosis, which turned out to be sepsis. The poisonous germs had gotten into his bloodstream and he died that morning of July 10^th.

As I said, this was devastating to our family. One good result is that we all took more interest in good nutrition and vitamin supplements. Another good result was that my mom became more spiritual and our family became more active in our Methodist Church. One bad result was my dad began to drink more which led to his eventual alcoholism.

For me, a good result was my thinking much more seriously about life. My dominant thought was: “How can I gain life after death so I can be with my brother Roddy again?!” Because of the major and lasting impact on my thinking, I’ve thought maybe that was when God decided to call me into His Church someday.

Another heartache was my niece Ellie Hooser being born in 1972 with spina bifida and being paralyzed from the waste down. At the time, doctors said she would likely not live more than a few years. Well, at the time of this writing, she is very healthy in most ways! Many thanks to modern medical science but especially many thanks to God’s interventions in her life!

As I explained earlier, after building our first home in Mt. Carmel, a suburb of Cincinnati, we only got to live in it one year because the church transferred me to pastor two congregations in Nebraska.

Furthermore, during that last year in Ohio, our stress level went up because Elsie’s dad, Rudy, suddenly left his wife, Eunice Hanson, largely over his objections to her religious beliefs and his immature desire for complete independence. (He spent his last few years in Hawaii, dying in 1987.) So, in January, 1974, I brought Mom Hanson from Springfield, Missouri, to our new home to live with us, as she was too devastated to contemplate living alone. I pulled a trailer with all her remaining belongings.

“Mom Hanson”, “Grandma”, lived with us for several years, first in Ohio and then in Nebraska. During those years, Amy and Randy would each have had their separate bedrooms, but while Mom Hanson was living with us, they had to share a bedroom. We all dearly loved Mom but having an extra adult in the home naturally added some stress at times. After several years, she felt able to live alone in a nearby apartment. When we moved to Oklahoma and later to Texas, she followed us to live near us but continued to live in an apartment.

A real tragedy was my dad becoming an alcoholic after I was in college and the rest of the family moved to near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1959. He did quite well in his sales engineering job during the week, but more and more he stayed drunk much of the time on the weekends. When drunk, he became very short-tempered and angry. That was very hard on my mom and my brothers. He also endangered the family by insisting on driving even when he was drunk. So, my mom finally filed for divorce in September in September, 1969, and the divorce was final in March 1970. Dad quickly remarried and worked a few more years before retiring to his house on the “Plantation” near Lone Star, Texas. Mom lived and worked in the Cleveland area for a while and then moved to her home town of Dallas, Texas.

Years later, Dad suddenly totally quit drinking! That was a giant blessing, but it was so sad that he didn’t do it sooner to preserve his first marriage and to avoid the great stress on his sons.

I think two of my dad’s brothers ended up being alcoholics.

One relative was using cocaine for a while.

My dad smoked cigars but never seemed to be addicted to them. Very sadly, my mom was addicted to cigarettes. Amazingly, she quit them completely each time she was pregnant—which was a wonderful thing—but she immediately started smoking again as soon as the baby was born. Not surprisingly, she ended up dying of emphysema. My paternal grandfather and an aunt also died of emphysema as a result of smoking. Many years ago, I wrote an article for one of our church publication on the dangers of smoking. That article was reprinted and is still being offered when someone enquires about smoking.

Next to losing my wife Elsie, the greatest heartache of my life was the failing health and premature death of my son Danny. Parents hope that their children will greatly outlive them. It is devastating to parents to lose a child and devastating to the siblings as well. My son Danny was having increasingly serious health problems which were becoming obvious in 2021 and then he died on November 12, 2022 from liver and kidney failure. Our family and even his wife Aimee did not realize he was drinking so much and becoming an alcoholic until months before he died. Danny has been out of work for a good while and was depressed. A lot of his drinking was during the day when Aimee was away at work. After we realized the seriousness of the problem, we all begged him to get help, to start going to AA, etc. Aimee even arranged for him to go to a rehab hospital in New York for about three weeks beginning on September 28, 2022. He responded well to the instruction and therapy, but when he got home, he could not bring himself to start attending AA meetings. He died at home on November 12, 2022 while his wife was away from the house. I’m glad his mother was not alive to know about this tragedy.

Danny was a baptized and dedicated Christian. So, the good news—the spectacular news—is that God’s promise is for life after death—glorious everlasting life in the Kingdom of God! In 1 Thessalonians 4:13, the apostle Paul wrote, “I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.” Paul goes on to remind the readers of the promise of the resurrection! The family and friends of Danny sorrow, but that sorrow is diminished because of the hope and promise of resurrection to eternal life!

An ongoing burden for me is my autoimmune disease of dermatitis herpetiformis that I’ve had ever since 1997. It is commonly abbreviated as DH, so I am DH with DH. It is related to celiac disease, which is commonly abbreviated as CD. With both diseases, the person is highly intolerant of gluten, which is found in wheat, rye, and barley. With CD, ingestion of gluten leads to the person feeling sick in his intestinal tract. With DH, ingestion of gluten leads to sores breaking out on one’s skin on various parts of one’s body, sores that are extremely itchy and are often painful. Sometimes they sting, feeling almost like a bee sting. It took three years to get my symptoms diagnosed! I went to various doctors including five dermatologists! None of their diagnoses and prescriptions helped until the fifth dermatologist correctly diagnosed my affliction in the year 2000. I was sad to learn that I would have to abstain from gluten for the rest of my life, but I was so relieved to learn what I should do to minimize the awful sores!

Being on a strict gluten-free diet has greatly reduced the frequency of sores, but my immune system is so confused that I still frequently have itchy and painful sores. I experiment with eliminating other things from my diet, but, so far, I have not found what causes the sores besides gluten.

I am, however, deeply thankful that my health has been pretty good otherwise. Another blessing is that my overall diet has become healthier. For example, I bypass many sugary desserts because most of them contain gluten.

Possibly my good overall health is partly due to my blood type being O- (O Negative). Incidentally, partly because my blood type is considered the most valuable to use for many blood transfusions, I have donated blood regularly for about 30 years. I like to think of this analogy: Jesus Christ shed His blood for my spiritual benefit and now I can regularly shed a little of my blood for a lot of people’s physical benefit.

I have been anointed for divine healing of my DH a few times, each time by an elder in the Church according to the instructions in James 5:14-15, plus I’ve asked God countless times for His healing of the DH, but so far, His answer has been no. So, I often think of my “affliction” as a “thorn in the flesh” and remember how God answered “no” to Paul’s request for healing, as recorded in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. I’m highly conscious of the fact that staying spiritually faithful to God until the end of our lives is infinitely more important than favors God gives us during our human lifetimes. All of our physical and mental problems will be healed when we are resurrected as immortal sons of God into the glorious Kingdom of God!

My work with Breaking Free Journal 

The many addictions and other sad problems I’ve seen among my extended family and in my church congregations have helped to prepare me for a special ministry of trying to help people with their problems and challenges. In addition to offering pastoral counseling and writing articles for our church publications, I ended up helping to manage an online publication called Breaking Free Journal (BFJ). We usually refer to it simply as Breaking Free (BF).

As the name implies, our goal is to help people to break free from any problem that has enslaved them or hampered them. When a person can’t completely overcome or solve a problem, at least our articles offer added understanding, motivation, empathy, and encouragement. So, some articles are about breaking free from the problem, some are about learning to cope with a problem, and others are about understanding and helping a family member with a problem.

Around 2004, I discovered Breaking Free Journal and soon began assisting Melvin Rhodes with his role as the managing editor of BFJ. In 2010, Melvin became very busy and asked me to take over as the managing editor for Breaking Free, and in 2023, I’m still in that position.

The articles are posted at https://www.ucg.org/blogs/breaking-free.

We invite any member of United Church of God to write one or more articles for BF. Our policy is that we only accept and publish articles written by members of our church. Countless professional articles and books are offered in our society. Breaking Free is something different—it is members sympathizing with, helping, and encouraging other members, their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Many people have no experience in writing articles and many are not very knowledgeable about English grammar and punctuation rules. No problem. Just send me your article and I’ll edit if for you so it will end up being a polished article. After I make my edits, I send the article back to the author to see if he or she approves of the edits. We can send the article back and forth until we are both satisfied with the wording, etc.

If you prefer your article to be anonymous, that’s perfectly okay. If that is your preference, no one will know the identity of the author except me.

My Love and Concern for America

America’s Declaration of Independence states this truth: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This paragraph emphasizes how America’s founders understood that all human beings are of precious value in God’s sight, and that God’s desire is for all people to have great freedom and liberty within the boundaries of God’s Ten Commandments.

I believe wholeheartedly that we should be dedicated to safeguarding these God-given rights. (Many people don’t understand the full meaning of “pursuit of happiness.” The founders meant that every human being should be free to pursue whatever occupations and goals that he thinks will bring him satisfaction and happiness.)

God has miraculously intervened over and over again to fulfill His promises to the biblical patriarchs to bring about in the end time a great nation for very special purposes. God’s profound oversight is exemplified in the brilliant U.S. Constitution!

I recommend our United Church of God booklet, America and Britain in Bible Prophecy, available here: The United States and Britain in Bible Prophecy | United Church of God (ucg.org). And I recommend a blog I wrote in 2014, which can be viewed at this link: The 7 Reasons – no, 8 Reasons – America Became a Great Power | United Church of God (ucg.org)

In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln summed up America’s system of government as government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” This was revolutionary! All previous national governments had been more or less monarchies or oligarchies. Government “by the people” means government by the voters. Some of the founding fathers acknowledged that the USA would not last long if the majority of voters are not motivated by biblical values. In America, we end up with the kind of government that the majority have voted for. If you are a person with Judeo-Christian (biblical) values, I surely hope you will vote in all civic elections.

Bible prophecies reveal that in the end time, more and more people will reject God’s authority and the Bible. As a result, we will eventually lose our freedoms, including our freedom of speech and our freedom to practice our religious beliefs and to preach the gospel that Jesus commanded His Church to preach. However, I hope and pray that we can enjoy and properly use those freedoms for as long as God permits.

Some final thoughts 

I’ve been blessed to have a fairly long life, but it is like one second compared to all eternity. I want to live forever!

God wants every one of us to end up in His Family, the Kingdom of God. He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). My great hope and expectation is that Christ will resurrect me to everlasting life when He returns to earth.

Of course, that hope includes my great hope of being reunited with all my loved ones. And I have a great hope that by far most people will end up receiving eternal life in the Kingdom of God. That includes you, the reader.

Just think: Someday almost everyone will end up being in one gigantic family, the FAMILY OF GOD! And we will LIVE FOREVER AND EVER!