My sister, Patsy McCown, turned 85 on August 28.
Why has it taken me this long to pay tribute to her in a blog post?
That’s what I’ve been asking myself, and here’s what I’ve concluded. First, Patsy and I haven’t lived in the same house in almost 68 years! Hard to fathom, but it’s true. Oh, I guess she came home occasionally during the summers following her freshman & sophomore years in college (she was married at the end of her junior year), but she spent much of those summers traveling on Southern Baptist college missionary teams. As the smart child in our family, she skipped a grade or two in school, entering Hardin-Simmons University only a few days after turning 17 in 1958. I was just going into 2nd grade at that time.
Second, we have lived far enough apart throughout these years that our time together – with few exceptions – has been limited to family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Third, even our phone conversations through those decades were usually little more than updates on what had been happening in our lives lately, those kinds of things.
Well, that explains it for the most part.
But I guess there’s really no good excuse, for – despite the physical separation through the years – Patsy has always been a loving, caring sister, whom I’ve admired for her gracious spirit toward all people and the way her life and character have exemplified the presence of Christ within her.
“Meeting” my sister for the first time
It’s hard to imagine, but when I first “met” Patsy, her age could still be written with ONE digit. She was 9½ when I was born in March 1951. Patsy and I were born in the same hospital, Harris Methodist in Fort Worth, Texas, 9½ years apart. Our births were separated by World War II, in which Daddy served as an Army chaplain in the European Theatre under General Patton’s command. He was gone from March 1943 until victory in Europe in the late spring of 1945. His regiment, the 398th Engineers, after enjoying a few weeks of “R&R” back home in the States, was scheduled to ship out to the Pacific, but Harry Truman’s action in bringing about Japan’s surrender (signed on September 2, Daddy’s 32nd birthday) freed Daddy to resume life with his wife and daughter – now 4 years old.
My birth, however, wouldn’t come for another 5½ years. I’m sure that, for one thing, Daddy wanted to get reacquainted with his daughter, who was only 1½ when he left for Europe, and “catch up” on all he had missed during his absence. Besides that, he needed to focus on his seminary studies, as well as working to put food on the family table. Mother worked full-time, too, and it took everything they had to feed three mouths. The fourth would have to wait awhile.
I’ve heard this story through the years, mainly from Mother, but Patsy has “fessed up” to it as well. As my birth was approaching – and, back in those days, there was no ultrasound to reveal the baby’s gender in advance – Patsy grew excited about getting a baby sister. Yes, she wanted a sister! Then I was born, and I’m told that the first time she saw me, she exclaimed, “No little girl could be that cute!”
Early 1950s – Fort Worth & Montague
I remember little of those first few years. I have a vague memory of driving on family vacations, with Daddy singing the 398th Engineers’ song, which named all of the different places they had been stationed, and Daddy offering us Life Savers from the rolls that he always carried (a habit I picked up from him). As memory serves, he would give us a choice between the blue wrapper (peppermint) and the green (wintergreen), and Patsy and I both had a preference for the green.
When I was little, Patsy would tease me, calling me “birdbrain.” Mother loved telling the story of the time, on one of these trips as Patsy & I sat in the backseat, that Patsy called me “stupid,” and I replied, “Patsy, don’t call me ‘tupid, call me biwdbwain.”
In the fall of 1952, after resigning as pastor of a church in the Fort Worth area, Daddy was called to pastor the First Baptist Church of Montague, in north-central Texas near Wichita Falls. We spent a little over 4 years in Montague. In the early 2000s, Joanna and I took our kids, along with Daddy, and Patsy and her husband, Palmer, to Montague, where Patsy and Daddy gave us background (having been not quite 6 when we left Montague, I didn’t remember much) of Montague and its people. This included a tour around town to see the four places where we lived during those 4 years. We also stopped at the church, where the pianist was practicing in the sanctuary. She graciously invited us in, and we got a picture of Daddy behind the pulpit where he preached 50 years earlier.
Late 1950s-early 1960s – Dallas & Hardin-Simmons
Daddy’s seminary studies – which had begun in the early 1940s, before he left for Europe – came to a close in 1956, when he received his Th.D. in Christian Ethics and became DOCTOR Jones. A few months later, he was invited to join the staff of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board as an area director of evangelism to the Jewish people. This work was to be co-sponsored by the Dallas and Tarrant (Fort Worth) Baptist Associations, as well as the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
So we moved to Dallas in January 1957. However, being right on the outskirts of the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Patsy and I were enrolled in the Richardson School District. Patsy was finishing up her junior year in high school that spring. In the fall, I entered 1st grade at Richardson Heights Elementary School, and Patsy began her senior year at Richardson High School. I usually rode the bus to and from school. However, I remember many afternoons when Patsy picked me up after school and took me to an ice cream parlor located in Richardson Heights Shopping Center. Since Joanna and I moved from Colorado to this area in 1987, I’ve often driven by that shopping center, and on more than one occasion have driven over, where I can still pinpoint the location of that ice cream parlor back in 1957-58.
It was a sweet big sister, who – as a senior in high school – would thoughtfully go out of her way after school to pick up her little brother and take him for ice cream.
As I mentioned, Patsy went off to college in the fall of 1958. I’m not sure exactly when she introduced us to Palmer, but I do remember one visit to Hardin-Simmons when we were all in the car together, parked on campus, and Palmer said to Mother and Daddy – and this is to the best of my memory – “I want to marry your little girl.” That was Palmer’s way of “asking for her hand,” as we used to say. I don’t remember exactly what Mother and Daddy said, but my best guess is that they trusted Patsy enough to immediately say yes.
For that matter, we had all come to love Palmer and we welcomed him into our family.
They were married in June 1961, at the end of Patsy’s junior year. Palmer had just graduated.
But back up just a moment – to a visit they made to our house in Dallas while they were engaged. They went out for a date one evening, and I – being a mischievous kid brother (for those of you of a certain age, think DENNIS THE MENACE) – had hidden on the floor in the back. They got about a mile down the road when up I popped – surprise!!! I don’t think they thought it as funny as I did. They drove me back home and, if I remember correctly, pretended that I had completely ruined their date and that they were calling it off. Talk about guilting a guy – but I deserved it!
There was also the day – this might have been in 1960, her last summer before getting married – that Patsy took me down to a laundromat, a few blocks from our home in Dallas, and taught me how to do the washing, fold the laundry, and so forth. Little did I imagine what I was getting into! I soon was doing my own laundry every week, as well as Mother and Daddy’s.
After we moved to Kansas City, I actually found my Saturday afternoon at the laundromat to be a nice diversion from chores at the house. The laundromat was in the Antioch Shopping Center. While the clothes were washing, I could walk up to the Rexall Drug Store, maybe buy a sports magazine or two, and then sit at the laundromat, leisurely reading my magazines.
By the time Joanna and I got married, I had spent 15 years doing laundry and couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it. So I did our laundry for the rest of our marriage – EXCEPT for the first 5 months or so of 1999. Two days before Christmas 1998, I fell on the ice, suffering a brain bleed and concussion, and spending two days in the hospital. For the first 5 months or so of 1999, I suffered terrible chronic head pain and was unable to drive or do much of anything else, including the laundry. For Joanna, those were about the toughest 5 months of our marriage, because she had to do our laundry!
Anyway, a lifetime doing laundry can all be traced back to that day in 1960, when – for some unfathomable reason – Patsy decided to train me at the laundromat.
1960s – Visits with Patsy & Palmer
After they married, I spent a week or two visiting them every summer, even after 1962, when we moved to Kansas City, MO, and they moved from Abilene to Dallas after Patsy’s graduation. Those were special times. Palmer treated me more like a brother than a brother-in-law, even if he did make me bait my own hook when he took me fishing! Kinda ruined fishing for me once and for all.
Those were truly wonderful times, to get to spend a couple of weeks with my big sister every summer. She took me to Six Flags Over Texas, which had just opened in 1961, every summer. Those are special memories for me.
In 1964, Patsy visited us in Kansas City. I have two special memories of that visit.
- One, she took me out to the Antioch Shopping Center, near my house, to see Betty White and her husband, Allen Ludden, who were in town to perform in a play at the Starlight Theatre. We got autographed pictures of them, which I still have. I was a fan of Betty White, but really even more a fan of Allen Ludden, who I enjoyed watching host both the GE College Bowl and Password quiz shows.
- Two, she took me to the Harry S Truman Presidential Library in Independence, MO, just outside KC, to watch President Truman take Lady Bird and Lynda Johnson on a personal tour of the Library.
January 1966 saw the birth of Patsy and Palmer’s first child, Stephanie Lynn. Daddy took the call from Palmer around 1:30 that Sunday morning, January 23. He came downstairs, where I was sleeping in the basement (I alternated between my main bedroom upstairs and the second “bedroom” we had fixed up in one quadrant of that huge basement), rustled me out of my sleep (I had gone to bed at 1 a.m. after watching a movie, so had barely gotten to sleep), and hustled me up the stairs to get ready to go. We drove to Kansas City Municipal Airport, where we put Mother on a plane headed for Dallas. Then Daddy and I began the 500-mile drive to Dallas. Unfortunately for him, I was only 14, not yet of driving age. To the day he passed away in 2007, Daddy complained about my enjoying a leisurely sleep, my head pressed against the passenger window, while he drove all of those 500 miles.
Stephanie was born at 8:43 that morning. Mother had made it to the hospital in time. Daddy and I arrived at the hospital around 1 p.m., called the house, and learned from Mother that the baby had been born, that Patsy was doing well, and that we should come on to the house. That evening, the family went up to see Patsy, but the nurses said I couldn’t go to the Maternity Ward because of my age – I think you had to be 16. I cried and cried, because I was anxious to see my big sister. Palmer, always with the big heart, stayed downstairs with me and consoled me.
On the lighter side – or lighter, at least, 60 years later – was my trip to see Patsy and Palmer in Dallas in August 1966. I arrived on Monday, August 1 (just in time, by the way, to watch with Patsy as TV news reported the horrific shooting of students and others by Charles Whitman from the top of the University of Texas tower in Austin). Palmer had been approached by Sul Ross State University in Alpine, way out in west Texas, to interview for the position of director of the Baptist Student Union. Stephanie was just a little over 6 months old. Patsy and Palmer left early Wednesday morning to fly to Alpine, leaving 15-year-old Uncle Bill to care for Stephanie for the day.
It was a disaster, yet it could have been even worse! I had never cared for a baby. I’m sure that Patsy gave me some brief instructions on feeding, diapering, etc., but until you’ve been left with a fidgety baby – on your own at 15 – well, any instructions or preparation flew right out of my head! Those were the days of cloth diapers and safety pins. Every time I tried to change Stephanie’s diaper, she screamed and howled – we’re lucky I didn’t accidentally stick her with one of those safety pins!
By the grace of God, though, there was an angel next door. Patsy and Palmer’s neighbors in the next apartment were the Barnetts. Max had grown up with Palmer in Littlefield and had been Best Man in their wedding. His wife, Sandra, was the guardian angel I needed that day. Every time Stephanie needed changing, there would come a knock at the door. It was Sandra – “Can I help?” Though I always gave it an initial effort, it was Sandra who changed Stephanie’s diaper every time that day, and it was Sandra who helped both Stephanie and me survive that day!
As it turned out, not everything was a disaster – Palmer’s interview was a rousing success, and he and Patsy soon moved to Alpine, beginning what turned out to be long, wonderful journey as a minister to Texas Baptist college students. So I guess I played a small part in helping make that happen – or so I’d like to think.
In the summer of 1968, Patsy and Palmer included me in their trip, with a group of Palmer’s students at Sul Ross, to Glorieta Baptist Assembly in New Mexico for Student Week. As a high school student (rising senior), I was a little bit out-of-place among all those college students, but it was an interesting week and an enjoyable experience.
1970s – OBU . . . Texas BSU . . . Michael . . . and marrying Joanna
I entered Oklahoma Baptist University in the fall of 1969. During my 4 years at OBU, I occasionally received gifts from Patsy that she called “care packages.” As I recall, they usually consisted of popcorn and other goodies for me to enjoy. What a thoughtful, caring sister!
In the fall of 1971, by now a junior at Oklahoma Baptist University, I drove down to Fort Worth with two other OBU students, where I met Patsy and Palmer (and 5-year-old Stephanie) for the annual Texas Baptist Student Union Conference at Travis Avenue Baptist Church. It was during that weekend, as I recall, that I first told them of my religious search & struggle that had begun at OBU almost a year earlier. This turned out to be a part of that journey, as I struggled with being in a decidedly evangelistic atmosphere when I didn’t feel the excitement that most of those hundreds of students there seemed to be feeling. God was at work in my life, though I’m not sure I realized it at the time, but uncomfortable situations like this were a necessary part of this struggle.
The fall of 1973 brought both joy and worry for our family. Beginning in July, Daddy took a six-month sabbatical from the Home Mission Board to study in Israel. Besides his studies, Mother and Daddy had a wonderful time together seeing scripture come alive as they visited significant places in the Holy Land. However, October brought war between Israel and Egypt, now known as the Yom Kippur War for the Jewish holy day on which the war began with a surprise attack by Egyptian forces. For several weeks, we were unable to get calls through to Mother and Daddy or to receive calls from them. It was a nervous time for our family.
Joy, however, came on October 8. I was living in Shawnee with an old OBU friend, Chris Hansen, for a couple of months before finding my own apartment. That Monday evening, I was watching Monday Night Football, which happened to be featuring the Dallas Cowboys vs. the Washington Redskins at RFK Stadium in D.C. At halftime of the game, the phone rang. It was Palmer, telling me that I had a nephew, Michael Sean McCown, born only moments before at Fairfax County Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia, just a few miles from where that game was being played. Just before Christmas, Mother and Daddy arrived home safely from Israel, and we all met at Patsy and Palmer’s house, where we got to meet Michael for the first time.
On September 4, 1976, Joanna and I were married at University Baptist Church in Shawnee, across from the OBU campus. My family had long since fallen in love with Joanna, and she with them. Joanna had traveled with my parents and me to Patsy and Palmer’s home in Virginia for our 1975 Christmas celebration. It was a special opportunity for Joanna to get to know my family better, and vice-versa. It was a wonderful time.
Patsy has always reminded me that the “best day’s work” I ever did was marrying Joanna. Never was a truer word spoken!
Patsy and I combine forces to honor and care for our parents
- Honoring and celebrating
Our parents were married on January 30, 1938. Somewhere in the early 1980s, Patsy and I started talking with each other about giving them a special celebration honoring their marriage. Fearing that these two OLD parents (from our vantage point now, well into our 70s and 80s, they don’t seem so old anymore) might not live to see their 50th, we decided to give them a big 45th-anniversary celebration. As it turned out, they not only lived to see their 50th, but several years past that. When Mother passed away in March 1997, they had passed their 59th wedding anniversary.
However, it’s a good thing we decided on celebrating their 45th. If we had waited until their 50th, several family members present that day would not have been with us. Between Mother and Daddy’s 45th and 50th anniversaries, we lost Uncle Levert Geren, husband of Daddy’s sister, Beulah; Uncle Frank Head, husband of Mother’s sister Betsy; and Kathy Anderson, wife of Daddy’s cousin, James Earl.
We decided the best time to celebrate would be around Thanksgiving 1982, a couple of months before their 45th anniversary, because more people would likely be able to attend over a holiday. Sure enough, we had a wonderful group show up on Sunday, November 21, 1982, at Mother and Daddy’s house in Marble Falls, Texas. It was a beautiful example of the way my sister and I could work together toward an event that was so important to both of us. Of course, we didn’t do it by ourselves – we put a few other family members to work as well. Mother and Daddy were so pleased with the day, especially that so many family members showed up to let them know how much they loved them, and Patsy and I took great satisfaction from that.
- Providing care
Until 1992, Mother and Daddy had both enjoyed relatively good health. Then Mother began to experience problems – a bursitis attack in September 1992, a stroke just before Thanksgiving 1992, and a bacterial infection just before Christmas 1993. She returned home from the hospital in early January, but she was never the same. She was virtually bedridden for the next 3 years. When Daddy could coax her out of her bed, he would use the wheelchair to bring her up to the front of the house to eat, see family and friends who were visiting, and even occasionally go out to eat. Doctors wanted her to do physical therapy, but she was approaching her 88th birthday, and who wants to do physical therapy at that age? She didn’t, and I can’t blame her.
Mother was the love of Daddy’s life, and he was determined to take care of her. Perhaps a nursing facility could have given her care that he was unequipped to give, but he knew that no one would give her the love and attention that he would, so he kept her at home.
Patsy and I had collaborated on that 45th anniversary celebration a decade earlier, but that was nothing compared to our new partnership. We agreed that we would rotate, with one of us at Mother and Daddy’s house every other weekend – and this eventually changed to EVERY weekend – to give Daddy some rest while we helped care for Mother, and also to enable him to attend church on Sunday mornings while we stayed with Mother; besides this, to give him “moral support,” someone to talk with and to care for him. So Patsy and I did this for over 3 years until Mother’s passing on March 4, 1997, just 12 days short of turning 91. It was truly our best moments as sister and brother – caring for the parents who had cared for us all our lives.
Patsy and Palmer – forever loving and supportive of family
Patsy and Palmer have always been present and supportive at difficult times. After Travis suffered a stroke late on April 1, 2013, Patsy and Palmer drove in from Abilene the next day to spend time at the hospital with us. They didn’t have to do that, but their presence meant a lot to Joanna, Alison, and me.
In April 2021, when we inurned Joanna’s cremains in the Columbarium at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, our home church, Patsy and Palmer were there with us. Again, it meant a lot to Alison, Travis, and me, and I know it would mean a lot to Joanna. By 2021, both of them had suffered serious health challenges in recent years, and I knew that drive from Abilene wasn’t an easy one for them, but it was important to them to be there to show their love for Joanna and for us.
2022 brings a big move . . . and Palmer’s passing
On Christmas Day, 2022, Palmer passed away. He had battled cancer for the better part of a decade, and in his last years had begun to experience dementia. I recall sitting with him at breakfast one spring day, shortly after he had first been diagnosed with cancer. It was just Palmer and me, sitting at the table together in the kitchen of their home in Abilene. Palmer said, “I’m realizing that I might be spending this Christmas with Jesus.”
Well, with the help of Patsy, their children, and the wonderful medical personnel at M. D. Anderson in Houston, Palmer survived past that Christmas and several more. Nevertheless, when Patsy told me that he had passed away that Christmas morning (and it was late on a Sunday morning, as God would have it, at the very time that Palmer spent – for so many years – in the choir loft during worship at First Baptist, Abilene), those words of Palmer’s from years ago came flashing through my memory – “I might be spending this Christmas with Jesus” – and here he was, on Christmas Day 2022, being greeted by Jesus as he entered his heavenly home.
Earlier that year, Patsy and Palmer had left the home they loved in Abilene – not only the house in which they had lived for over 40 years, but the church family who meant so much to them, and the town where they had met and fallen in love as students at Hardin-Simmons University. Aging and health challenges bring about unwanted – but necessary – goodbyes to those we love. So they moved into an assisted living facility in Midland to be near their daughter, Stephanie, and son-in-law, Jim.
In May 2023, I visited her in Midland, and we spent a wonderful weekend reminiscing. Unfortunately, Midland is on one side of Texas, and Allen is on another, and Texas is a BIG state – the drive from one to the other is over 5 hours! Neither one of us travels very much anymore – a concession to age, health, and family concerns. So in recent years we’ve enjoyed visiting by phone call, text message, and email. We reminisce about family members who have gone on before us, wonderful family times through the years. We share pictures and videos back-and-forth.
A loving bond between sister and brother
So, I guess I had more to write about Patsy than I realized, didn’t I? Even though we lived in the same household for only a few brief years, we share a lifelong bond that is special to both of us. We are the last surviving members of that family of four that became complete with my birth in March 1951, and even our longtime beloved spouses have gone on before us. We have much for which to be thankful, and I can’t express enough how thankful I am that Patsy is my sister. I am blessed.