Dancing with Baptists

Chapter 4

Shepherd Air Force Base

Wichita Falls, Texas

July 1966

Greg and Chap met for the first time at Shepherd AFB. Greg had been assigned there after basic for medic training. After graduating, many of the other medics were sent on to duty stations including Vietnam. Because Greg had shown a certain aptitude he was kept at Shepherd for additional training to become a surgical tech and work in the operating room.

None of this meant much to Greg because he thought he would soon be behind a camera covering the victims of war, not caring for them.

Saturdays during this second phase of training, airman were allowed to go into town. Town held a lot for young men away from home and girlfriends for the last six months. Greg was sure the people of Wichita Falls were decent people but they did not act like it during his time there.

That summer it was close to or over 100 degrees every day. Being from Houston, Greg preferred the heat to the bone chilling winters he heard about from others stationed there year round. He also heard of airmen on Saturday leave who had gotten "off base" and spent their Saturday nights in the Wichita County jail. Parents with daughters were rightly concerned. However, just because each airman wore a uniform did not mean every airman acted in uniformity. But still, it was Saturday and it was off base. A double-dipped cone from a cute, unparented daughter with great eyes and a sweet smile was plenty to combat a couple of harsh looks from residents on the street.

Sundays were a different story all together. During basic they marched to services on Sunday. For the first few at Shepherd, Greg took a sabbatical from the Christian Sabbath in church. He was free to do whatever he wanted as long as what he wanted was inside the fence of the base. But there were a lot of choices. Instead of a barracks full of guys, at Shepherd Greg was assigned a two-man room. Greg's roomie was there for one full day and then got heatstroke from playing basketball in the afternoon Texas sun. A replacement roommate was not assigned for several weeks so for a brief time, far unlike the experience of anyone in any service under the rank of captain, Greg had his own private room. He was even able to rent a small TV. Life was as good as it gets for a young man who was being trained to stop the hurting in a world of hurt.

But as Greg would find, old habits and new friends die hard. Come Sunday he began thinking about Trinity Street Baptist, Mountainview, and Melinda.

Not knowing the chapel schedule the first time he went, Greg walked in on a Greek Orthodox service with four others and the priest. Greg was surprised by the beauty and solemnity of the service. He wondered if Mrs. Dehartman was looking down thinking he was going to hell for not being in a Baptist service. This thought was followed by Well, if she's looking down after having looked around up there, she's probably seen a lot that surprised her. But he did check out the schedule for the Baptist's services for the following week.

The next Sunday Greg did come back for the Baptist service. He was surprised that the preacher conducting the service was a Black man not much older than himself. Greg had never worshipped with anyone Black, let alone been led by one. The guy could sing and not surprisingly, his congregation was almost a hundred times the size of the Greek Orthodox service. The mostly young, Black airmen jumped to their feet and begun clapping and singing along as soon as the music started. These were uncomfortable activities for Greg. An up-tempo "I'll Fly Away" was about as "getting down" as Trinity Street got. And a member had to just have had their one-hundredth birthday for applause to ever happen during a service. Clapping in church was about as hell-bent as, heaven forbid, drums.

Greg stayed seated for the first song but then got up and tried to clap in rhythm with the others. He soon gave up and tried Jack the Baptist's old trick of mouthing "Watermelon, watermelon" for a bit until he realized that wasn't the best fake lyrics at this moment.