Frank Sinatra, in 1965, recorded a beautiful song titled The September of My Years, which lent its name to the cover of an album he released that year. In an emotionally rich song, Frank wistfully reflects back on his life, “smiling gently as I near September, the golden warm September of my years.”
Late that year, he turned 50. If 50 was “September” of Frank’s years, then what is 75 – which I am “nearing” (75 arrives in March 2026) – for me? It’s at least November, maybe late November!
In the song, Frank laments that “now I’m reaching back for yesterdays.”
So am I. Today, as we reach the end of August 2025, I find myself reflecting on the Augusts of my years. For some reason, it seems, in my 74½ years, that there have been more occurrences in August that have stuck in my memory than in any other month.
This post is more for my family than for anyone else. However, if you’re a friend, you might find some of this interesting, just in hopes that you might learn some things about me that you haven’t known before. So here goes, a personal reflection, a rundown – with summaries where appropriate – of a few of my August memories. They vary in significance, but all are memorable – to me, anyway.
Significant milestones of family & friends
They’re all on the 28th. August 28 is the birthday of my sister, Patsy McCown; my best friend, Bob Morris (who passed away in September 2022, barely over a week after turning 72); Patsy’s mother-in-law, Laverne McCown (who passed away many years ago); and Angela Hudson, sister of our son-in-law, Adam Clements.
Besides all those birthdays, it was the wedding day – in 1971 – of one of my dearest friends, Ron Russey and his wife Carol. I attended the wedding. Ron was tragically killed in a car accident in October 1979. When I called Ron on August 28, 1979, to arrange what turned out to be our last visit with him, Ron was surprised I remembered to wish him and Carol a happy anniversary, but it was easy to remember – August 28 held a lot of milestones for family and friends.
1965
There are 9½ years between Patsy and me. She was born a few months before America’s entrance into World War II. Daddy wound up enlisting as chaplain in the Army and spent over 2 years in the European Theatre of Operations – under General Patton’s command – from early 1943 until victory in Europe in May 1945.
So, by the time Mother, Daddy, and I moved from Dallas to Kansas City, MO, in July 1962, Patsy was graduated from college and married. Over the next few years, as I was growing up, I would take either the bus or train down to Texas every summer, where I would spend a week with Patsy & Palmer in Dallas and a week with our Aunt Elsie & Uncle Lonnie in Denton.
In early 1965, Uncle Lonnie was diagnosed with cancer. By August, when I took my annual trip to Texas, he was seriously ill, so my visit was limited to Dallas. However, during my time with Patsy & Palmer, we went to Denton together, aware that our visit with Uncle Lonnie would likely be our last one in this life. I remember that Patsy was able to tell Uncle Lonnie that she was expecting her and Palmer’s first child (Stephanie was born the following January). He beamed at the news.
On the morning of Tuesday, August 24, Patsy & Palmer put me on the bus, bound for home in KC. It was an all-day trip, about 500 miles from Dallas to KC. I remember a young man, sitting across from me, who – seeing the pro football season preview magazine I was reading – struck up a conversation by asking what the magazine said about the Minnesota Vikings. Turned out he was on his way home to Minnesota. I don’t remember the circumstances, whether he was a college student or just what. Anyway, he told me that he hadn’t told his parents he was coming home, and that he planned to surprise them that Wednesday night at their church’s weekly prayer meeting. That led into a discussion of our respective religious convictions – he was a Congregationalist, I was a Baptist. We had a good talk.
I arrived home in KC late that night, and Daddy picked me up at the bus station. The following evening (Wednesday), the phone rang. It was Uncle “Speedy” Dodson in Dallas, the husband of Mother’s sister, Eleanor. He told Daddy that Uncle Lonnie had just passed away and that the funeral was already set for Friday morning. So the next morning, barely 48 hours after I had boarded the bus in Dallas bound for KC, Mother, Daddy, & I piled into the car for the 500-mile trip back down to Texas.
My only strong memory of Uncle Lonnie’s funeral is from the limo ride from the funeral to the graveside. Daddy and I were in the same car with my Uncle Frank Head, husband of Mother’s sister, Betsy. Uncle Frank told Daddy and me about a movie he had just seen – Cat Ballou, starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin. He said it was the funniest movie he had seen in years. It has since become one of my favorites, and I agree – even 60 years later, it’s hilarious!
1966
This may well be my most memorable August of all!
On August 1, I arrived in Dallas for my annual trip to visit Patsy & Palmer. Palmer picked me up at the bus station. We arrived at their apartment around noon, as I recall. It wasn’t long before Patsy and I saw one of the TV networks break into regular programming with a news bulletin – a sniper was on the roof of the University of Texas Tower in Austin and was indiscriminately shooting people who were running frantically on the campus below. We later learned his name: Charles Whitman.
Many years later, after Mother and Daddy had moved to Austin (where they had originally met and courted), Daddy was showing a visiting friend around Austin. They were across the street from the UT Tower, when Daddy pointed to the top of the Tower and said, “You see where that man is standing? That’s about where Whitman was when he shot all those people.” Later that day, Daddy saw a report on the local TV news that a man had jumped to his death from the roof of the Tower, around the time that Daddy had pointed out “that man” to his friend.
But back to August 1966. Palmer had recently completed his degree studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and was looking for a place to minister. On Wednesday, August 3 – just two days after my arrival – he had an interview scheduled, at Sul Ross State College (now University) in Alpine, in far west Texas, for a position as director of the Baptist Student Union (today such a director is called “Baptist student minister”). They had to fly out early that morning and would not return home until late that night. In a rather fateful decision, they decided that, instead of subjecting their 6-month old daughter, Stephanie, to the rigors of such a trip, they would subject her – and I use the term advisedly – to the “care” of her 15-year-old Uncle Bill.
I had never cared for a baby before; in fact, until Stephanie, I had never held a baby before! To call the day a disaster would be an understatement. These were the days of cloth diapers and safety pins, as well as Gerber’s baby foods, which would more properly be called green mush, orange mush, and so forth. So I spent the day trying my best to change her diapers, feed her, and keep her generally happy. I didn’t begin to succeed! By the end of the day, I don’t think that either one of us wanted to ever set eyes on the other one again. However, I can happily report that this day came and went, and she soon came to love her Uncle Bill, and I was fully enamored of my niece.
The day could have been much worse except for the grace of God and Sandra Barnett – or, more accurately, the grace of God in providing us with Sandra Barnett. Sandra was Patsy & Palmer’s next-door neighbor and good friend, along with her husband, Max, who had been Palmer’s best man in his and Patsy’s wedding in 1961. Somehow, every time I was struggling with Stephanie, and Stephanie was wailing up a storm, Sandra came knocking on the door.
“Can I help?” Oh, yes you can help! Sandra was an angel sent by God. No matter how hard I tried to get those diapers pinned on a wriggling, writhing Stephanie, I wasn’t getting it done, but Sandra would come in and take over and get the job done, quickly and easily, and get Stephanie calmed down.
That day took a toll – the next morning, I was physically sick. But I survived, and, thankfully, so did Stephanie.
Before the debacle with Stephanie, however, my day began with a funny moment. As I mentioned, Patsy and Palmer had left early that morning for their flight to Alpine. I woke up – around 6:30 or so, I’d say – to the ringing of the phone in their bedroom. So I got up and groggily made my way from my bedroom to theirs, meaning that the phone was ringing “off the hook,” as we used to say. I finally got in there and picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Whaddya think this is, your birthday?” came the response.
“Huh? What?”
Then came the sheepish apology when the caller realized he wasn’t talking to Palmer.
“Oh, Bill, I’m so sorry.” It was Palmer’s dad, Hooper. I had already come to know Hooper and Laverne – who still lived in Littlefield, where Palmer grew up – very well and loved them. Hooper was a gentle man with a delightful sense of humor. I assured him that no apology was needed.
1971
On August 28, 1971, just before the beginning of my junior year at OBU, I attended the wedding of Ron Russey and Carol Power at University Baptist Church, across the street from campus. Little did I imagine that I would be married in that same church, just 5 years and 1 week later. I had met Ron my first day at OBU 2 years earlier. My roommate, Cary Wood, and I had shared a suite with Ron and his roommate, Tim Richardson. Ron was resident assistant for our section of Brotherhood Dorm.
By this day in 1971, Ron had become one of the strongest influences in my life, the first person I had told of my religious epiphany in November 1970, the day I lost my faith and started a new journey of religious searching and struggling. Ron was the one who pointed me to University Baptist Church, which I joined in February 1971, and its pastor, Jerry Barnes, who also became a major influence in my life and a lifelong friend until his passing in 2017.
Ron and Carol’s wedding recalls two specific memories to my mind: (1) the longest, most passionate kiss I’ve ever seen from a new husband after being told by the minister, “Now you may kiss your bride” – I didn’t think they would ever come up for air!; and (2) the orange hot pants (those were the thing back then) that Carol wore as she and Ron emerged, after the reception, from the side door of the church and got into their car; and Carol definitely had the legs for those hot pants. I’d better quit there.
1975
Here’s where, if you’re not family, you may learn a couple of things you never knew about me.
After graduating from OBU in 1973, I had stuck around Oklahoma. Joanna and I had begun dating during the last semester of my senior year and had gotten pretty serious. Besides that, my parents moved back to Texas in the spring of 1974, so I didn’t have a home in KC anymore.
My religious struggle had forced me to switch my degree from Church Music. I didn’t know anything but music, had never considered any career outside of music. So I switched to a Music Education degree, which is what I received upon graduation. However, I had never had any strong desire to teach, so after graduation I was left trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.
In 1974 and early 1975, I went back to OBU and took some business courses, but I didn’t have a passion for business. Then, for some strange reason I can hardly fathom in retrospect, I decided to give law school a try. I took the Law School Admission Test and did quite well, scoring in the 96th percentile overall and in the 98th percentile on the essay portion, as I recall. I applied to the University of Oklahoma Law School in Norman and was accepted for the fall 1975 term.
In the meantime, I had taken a job – in March 1974 – at Southwestern Bell in Shawnee as a telephone operator. This is where I met Bob Morris, who quickly became my best friend (we bonded when we discovered that we had both voted for George McGovern in 1972) – and remained so for 48 years until his passing in 2022 – and was best man in our wedding in 1976.
Well – and this next part was a point of dispute between Joanna and me until her passing in 2021 – I say that it was Joanna who suggested I quit Southwestern Bell in June 1975 and go to Reno, Nevada, where several of our Chinese friends from OBU were working for the summer. I could work two jobs there – Reno was a 24-hour town – and make more money for law school than I could make at one job in Shawnee. Joanna contended that this was NOT her suggestion.
Regardless, I wound up going to Reno. Sure enough, within 48 hours I had two jobs. I worked 88 hours a week that summer in Reno. I worked in two casinos/clubs that were right next door to each other on Virginia Street, where a sign overhead has proclaimed – for decade upon decade – RENO: THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WORLD. I worked six days a week, from 3 p.m.-11 p.m., in the kitchen of the Nevada Club, where I washed dishes, made salads, breaded prawns (shrimp) – which included slicing them open and removing the poop, and anything else they needed me to do.
I worked five days a week on the graveyard shift, from midnight-8 a.m., making change for the slot machine customers in a section at the back of Harold’s Club. (Both the Nevada Club and Harold’s Club were razed many years ago.)
I would get off work at the Nevada Club at 11 p.m., then walk next door to Harold’s Club and pick up my tips from the night before (all tips were divided between the employees), and prepare for my shift.
That was 50 years ago this summer! I left Reno about a week into August.
I was working 88 hours a week, so I didn’t have time to get around Reno much. I had left my car with my parents in Texas. It was a 10-block walk from the apartment I shared with several of our Chinese friends from OBU to the casinos where I worked. It was all steeply uphill one way and steeply downhill the other way. My calves were sore all summer!
I have a few particularly special memories of Reno:
(1) Jack Park, a very sweet man, probably in his 50s or so, who worked with me in the kitchen of the Nevada Club. Jack had Parkinson’s Disease, and I remember he shook uncontrollably all the time. I once mentioned that I had been panhandled at least once a week in Reno and had learned to just keep walking and ignore them; Jack replied, “Well, I usually walk with them over to a restaurant and buy them something to eat. It doesn’t hurt me to help them out a little.” People like Jack can humble you and teach you a thing or two. What a wonderful spirit he had.
(2) Chef Paul, the Nevada Club chef, was an interesting character. He wore the typical tall white chef’s hat. My strongest memory of him, though, was his singing. He often walked through the kitchen, singing the wonderful old song, “Once I had a secret love, that lived within the heart of me. . . .” and so on, at the top of his voice. Since 2007, when we bought her Hyundai Santa Fe, Joanna and I have listened to the Siriusly Sinatra channel on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. That song – Secret Love – often comes on Siriusly Sinatra, and I told Joanna that I never hear that song without thinking of Chef Paul. She finally heard me tell that so often that she would tell me my own story before I could get the words out!
(3) A young man – I never got his name – who often played the slot machines in my section of Harold’s Club; my section was at the back and in the wee hours of the night – from, say, 2 a.m. on – was pretty dead. As with all of the sections, there was a bar there. He would play the machines some, then go sit at the bar and have a drink. There were times, in those wee hours, when he was the only one back there, and he liked to talk, so we occasionally struck up a conversation.
His story was a sad one – and, I fear, typical of many who spent time in Reno. He had an uncle who owned a ranch in Montana. When he needed money, he would go up to Montana and work on his uncle’s ranch. Then he would come back to Reno and gamble and drink that money away. It was a vicious, seemingly neverending, cycle. He was a nice guy, probably not much older than I was (24) at the time. I felt sorry for him – he seemed to have no hope, no ambition. He was stuck in this cycle and didn’t seem to see a way out, if he wanted one.
Finally, the first week of August, it came time to go home and get ready to enter law school. That’s another story for another time. Suffice it to say that you don’t want to start law school when you’re dead tired from working 88 hours a week! Anyway, I decided to surprise Joanna. There was a pay phone at a 7-11, where I usually stopped, on my way home from work, to call her. She was staying that summer with some married friends, John Mark and Maisy Ho, who lived in an apartment above a coin-operated laundry on Kickapoo Street, across the street from the OBU campus. She took my phone calls at the pay phone in that laundry.
I didn’t tell Joanna exactly when I would be coming home – or maybe I gave her a date several days after my actual planned arrival. I called her the day before and told her a time to be waiting at the phone for my call the next day. So I flew home, and Bob picked me up at the airport in Oklahoma City. When we got to Shawnee, he let me out by the laundry, and then he drove off to a pay phone down the street. Joanna had not yet met Bob so didn’t know his voice; and keep in mind – Bob was an experienced telephone operator, which was the role he was to play in our little surprise. He called Joanna’s pay phone, she answered, and he asked if she would accept a call from Bill Jones. She said yes, and then I walked in behind her and said, “Hello? Hello?” She turned around and got the surprise of her life!
I do NOT have a poker face – or voice – so throughout our years together I was rarely able to surprise or fool Joanna. However, this time – with Bob’s help – worked like a charm. There are only two other surprises I can remember pulling off with such success – 1996, when I surprised her with a 20th-anniversary trip to San Francisco; and 2013, when I surprised her with a 60th birthday gathering at her favorite restaurant, JS Chen’s in Plano.
1977
Joanna and I had married on September 4, 1976, at University Baptist Church in Shawnee. I was in OU Law School at the time, and we moved into married student housing on the OU campus. Two months after our wedding, Joanna got a job as a financial analyst with the Oklahoma City office of Mobil Oil.
In January 1977, after starting my fourth semester, I realized that the law wasn’t the life for me. I had struggled from the beginning in law school and had decided that I just wasn’t cut out for it. So I withdrew.
I soon had a job as an assistant manager with 7-Eleven, still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.
That spring, or early that summer, Mobil Oil announced that it was moving its Oklahoma City accounting office to Denver, Colorado. So Joanna and I had a decision to make. Then one Saturday morning, as I was fixing breakfast in the kitchen, I walked to the door of our bedroom, where Joanna was still in bed. I said, “What are we trying to decide? You have a career, I don’t. It’s Oklahoma City or Denver! Is there really any question here?” I mean, regardless of how many times I’ve heard Nat King Cole, in his hit song Route 66, sing, “Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty,” I don’t buy it – especially when you compare it with Denver and those beautiful Rocky Mountains!
So that was it – we were going to Denver. On August 29, 1977, we arrived at Waterside Apartments in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, beginning what turned out to be a most wonderful and significant 10 years of our marriage (both of our children were born there). Last October, I spent a weekend in Denver, driving around to places that were special to Joanna and me, and recalling one memory after another. Those 10 years were so full of special times, special people, and special memories, that my blog series on that weekend stretched to 15 blog posts. Click here for the first of that series.
1981
In 1979, I had joined University Hills Baptist Church in Denver. Joanna attended church and Sunday School with me there, but she had never been baptized so wasn’t a member. In August 1981, she professed her faith in Christ and was baptized by our pastor, Rev. Davis Cooper. Joanna was about 5 months pregnant with Alison at the time, so Dave Cooper joked that this was the first “infant baptism” he had ever performed.
1987
In early 1987, Mobil Oil announced that it was moving its Denver accounting office to Dallas. At the time, I was an accounting manager with Mountain Bell Telephone in Denver. However, soon after Mobil’s announcement came Mountain Bell’s announcement of what came to be known as the “Baby Boomer Buyout.” In 1984, Mountain Bell – along with the other local & regional Bell companies across the nation – had divested from AT&T in accordance with the order handed down by Judge Greene in 1982. So now these companies were finding ways to downsize. Mountain Bell offered employees who had been in management for 5 years or more – it was targeted at people like me, Baby Boomers in their 30s – a year’s salary if they would leave the payroll by April 1, 1987.
This came at the perfect time for Joanna and me. I was able to leave Mountain Bell, yet continue to draw a salary until April 1988. In addition, Mountain Bell would aid those who accepted the buyout in finding and establishing a new career. I wanted to write, so this was something to think about.
In June, Joanna and I traveled to Texas, left the kids with my parents in Austin, and drove up to the DFW area to look for a house. We decided to build a new house in Plano. Joanna began work in Dallas in July, if I recall correctly. Our house was to be ready on August 7, so we tearfully left Denver – where we had so many friends and memories – on August 5 and arrived in DFW on August 7. It was the beginning of yet another chapter in our married life.
That Baby Boomer Buyout continued to pay dividends. I cashed in on Mountain Bell’s offer to help with a new career. As I mentioned, I knew I wanted to write, and a writer needs a place for his library of books. I had a contractor come build floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in my study in our new home in Plano – and sent the bill to Mountain Bell. I needed a new printer for my computer, and a couple of file cabinets for the closet in my study. Mountain Bell paid for all of this!
1996
In 1996, Joanna was still working for Mobil Oil in Dallas, and I was working part-time – usually 20 to 30 hours a week – as a technical editor for PRC Environmental Management in Dallas. I was ahead of everyone in working remotely. I rarely went to the office. The office usually sent my work by courier or fax machine. In this way, I was able to get the kids to and from school, etc.
Joanna and I would be celebrating our 20th anniversary on September 4, and I got to thinking that I would like to do something big for her, even surprise her if possible.
Labor Day was on September 2, and I planned a 20th-anniversary trip to San Francisco for that weekend. I went to a travel agency and made all the arrangements. In the meantime, I grabbed whatever hours I could from PRC’s Dallas office and called around to our other offices around the country to get additional hours from them. I wanted to pay for this trip all by myself. It was to be my anniversary gift to Joanna, and I didn’t want her to have to pay a cent. Ultimately, I was able to do exactly that.
I also arranged with the kids’ best friends and their parents for Alison and Travis to stay with them while we were gone. Amazingly, not only I – but the kids as well – kept all of this secret from Joanna!
Finally, a couple of days before we were to fly to San Francisco, the kids and I surprised Joanna with the news of our trip. I did it the cheesiest way possible – with a video I had made of a “Jeopardy” quiz show in which I awarded “prizes” to first, the kids – their prizes, of course, were “all-expense-paid trips” to their friends’ homes; and then, Joanna, who was happily stunned with the news of her “prize” – the trip to San Francisco. I’ll never forget the smile on her face. She was so happy to learn that I had done this for her.
An awkward postscript: We flew into San Francisco a little after midnight. I had asked for a hotel near Fisherman’s Wharf, and the travel agent had accommodated me. However, we drove down there and couldn’t find the hotel. I finally stopped at a pay phone and called them. Turns out there’s ANOTHER Fisherman’s Wharf – in Monterrey, about an hour-and-a-half south of San Francisco. Blessedly, at that hour of the night, we were able to find a hotel close by that had an opening. The next morning, I called the travel agent in Plano and gave her holy hell, and got a refund. Click here for the video.
2004
The last week of August 2004 was a significant one in the life of our family, for a couple of reasons:
(1) After spending 17 frustrating years at a church in Plano where we felt like fish out of water, where historic Baptist principles had been jettisoned like so much excess baggage, where God’s house had become a Republican political precinct, where worship of Jesus had been replaced by worship of nationalism, Joanna and I found a home at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. We had visited there throughout the summer of 2004 and finally joined on August 29, when the church was celebrating the 15th anniversary of George Mason’s pastorate. Our dear friend, Phil Strickland – who had been the key person responsible for our finding Wilshire – was on the chancel that day and gave us a smile and a wink when he saw us walking down the aisle.
We found a home at Wilshire and have never looked back. A few weeks after joining, we found another home – in Epiphany Sunday School class. They are still home and family to me today. On Easter Sunday 2021, we inurned Joanna’s cremains in Wilshire’s Columbarium, in a niche where mine will someday join hers.
(2) Two days later, on August 31, I received word that Countrywide Home Loans was offering me a contract job as a technical writer and editor. I had been looking for a writing/editing position ever since being laid off from my last such position in July 2001. As soon as I got word of the job with Countrywide, I went to Barnes & Noble, where I had worked for the past year, and gladly gave my notice. That December, Countrywide changed my status from contractor to full-time employee.
2008
After 21 years at 3808 Parkmont Drive in Plano, Joanna and I made a move. We built a house in Allen, about 15 minutes from our house in Plano. Joanna was excited, because she finally got the kitchen of her dreams, with a huge island. Joanna was a superb cook and made great use of that kitchen over the next few years. I got the study of my dreams. Joanna found a company called Closets by Design and worked with them to design my study – built-in desk with cabinets & shelving, and built-in bookshelves for my large library.
On August 29, we walked out of the Parkmont house for the last time, and were on our way to our new house in Allen. Before we left, however, we took a little video tour of the house where our kids had grown up. Joanna led the tour as we reminisced about the memories we had made there. Click here to view the video of that tour.
2018
Beginning in January 2011, I served as executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, a nonprofit that had fought fundamentalism in Texas since the 1980s. I had succeeded my dear friend David Currie, who was responsible more than anyone for keeping the Baptist General Convention of Texas free from fundamentalist control.
In 2017, I recommended to our board that we cease operation. We simply didn’t have the funds to sustain our operation any longer. The board accepted my recommendation, and – on August 1, 2017, Texas Baptists Committed ceased to exist.
On August 17, 2018, the Texas Baptists Committed board and Wilshire Baptist Church joined to honor my service with TBC by way of a retirement dinner in Wilshire’s Community Hall. Close to 100 people attended. It was a wonderful night. I was feted by people whom I considered the cream of the Baptist crop; besides that, they were all treasured friends of mine: George Mason, Suzii Paynter, David Currie, Charlie Johnson, Babs Baugh, Marv Knox, and Lance Currie, the last chair of our TBC board, who emceed the evening. The icing on the cake was a song written and performed by my dear friend, George Gagliardi, the legendary musician who styled himself “poet and pilgrim.”
My remarks that night were an opportunity to thank many people who had been instrumental in my life, my work, and my ministry (yes, I’m a layperson, but I’ve considered my work a ministry). I closed my remarks by paying tribute to the one person most instrumental in my life: Joanna. Hers was the only name that caused me to choke up, and with good reason – she was the love of my life. I’m so glad I said those things publicly with her sitting there listening. She’s in heaven now – for over 4½ years – but our love is forever, and Joanna is forever the love of my life.
Click here to view the video of my retirement dinner. Click here for the text of my remarks.
As you’ve seen, she’s in many of the August memories I’ve recounted here.
So as we say goodbye to August 2025, I remember a few of the Augusts of my years.