I’m sitting down for this chat with you because we printed something in an obituary that wasn’t true and I knew I had a way to check it. And to tell you where my sister’s middle name, Ellen, came from.
In the June 25, 2026, issue, we published the obituary of Gary Wayne Henry, a member of the EHS class of 1964, my class. His parents, Lee and Mabel, owned and operated the store at Olympia, MO, on Hwy. 97 south of El Dorado Springs.
The obituary said that in 1960 Gary “accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and was saved by the Grace of God.” I talked with Brother David Benham, the Pleasant Ridge Missionary Baptist at Pacetown church clerk, who told me that Brother Gary was really saved and joined the church in 1960 when he would have been 14.
I was saved on Friday evening June 23, 1961, at age 14 1⁄2 in the altar at Grace Missionary Baptist church in El Dorado Springs which later closed.
What did it feel like to be saved? Instantly I felt a perfect peace. For months I had laid awake for hours after I went to bed because I knew that if I died in my sleep I’d wake up in hell. Now that fear is gone. I get a blessing out of hell fire and brimstone preaching that used to bother me.
The wooden mourners’ bench Dad and Mom built with white oak lumber donated by Brother A. D. and SisterDora Belisle, and where I was saved, is now at the front of El Dorado Springs Missionary Baptist church.
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