Two Billy's

While I was born in in Dade County, the most populous of Florida’s counties, at the age of 5 my parents moved their little family to Polk County; one which vied for the former’s geographical size, but with a comparatively smaller population.

The county seat is located in the 3rd largest (but original) city; Bartow. It was in this environment that I grew up, and (as I have reflected upon it) experienced what I consider to have been an almost idyllic life. I attended elementary school at one of the two primary schools in our little town, and went on to attend junior high and high school at one of its two secondary schools. 

I suppose the most prominent developments of the mid to late 50’s and decade of the 60’s, during which period I moved through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood were the Vietnam War, the inauguration and subsequent assassination of President Kennedy, and the first manned lunar landing.

I recall watching a black & white television set in Mr. Ball’s 6th grade classroom as President John Kennedy took the oath of office, and just two years later having heard the dreadful news that this same man’s life was snuffed out by a lone gunman in Dallas. And there was Walter Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley; who night after night described the awful events at that time transpiring in South Vietnam; half a world away from the tranquility of my hometown. Who among us who lived, and breathed and moved at the time will ever forget Neil Armstrong’s, “One small step for man…?”


And yet, there were two local events, long since overshadowed by these more recent national and international ones, which set the spiritual tone for my little community, and (little known or appreciated by me at the time), as an individual.

For you see, exactly 30 years before yours truly was ushered into the world, and just short of four decades before I slapped the tether ball or ran the bases on my elementary playground, a momentous gathering occurred on that same dusty field. In 1919, 8,000 strong, the residents of our sleepy little town gathered there to listen to a former National League ballplayer turned evangelist; Billy Sunday. Not having been around at the time, I turned to a few archival videos to get a flavor for this good man’s preaching style. What I saw and heard did not disappoint. He could shake his fist and kick his leg ‘with the best of them.’ Though born in Iowa, his tenor and accent seems almost southern. More crucially, of course, his message of sin and salvation. 

And four and a half decades after Rev. Sunday graced our little community with his presence, another evangelist by the name of ‘Billy’ challenged the people of Bartow in much the same manner as his predecessor. I think there must have been some in the local area who sat under the ministry of both Billy’s. 

Interestingly enough, (at least to me) Rev. Graham had not committed to an Easter sunrise service that year, and a last minute inquiry by the city mayor was affirmatively received by the intinerant preacher. And even more interesting, (at least to me) the event was scheduled for an outdoor amphitheater; almost within ‘shouting distance’ of my boyhood home. And while my mother attended that memorable Easter sunrise service, I chose to stay home. (Something I still regret to this day).

Almost a century has come and gone since Billy Sunday visited our fair city, and a full half century since the other Billy retraced his footsteps; both paradoxically having wound up in an hamlet hardly befitting their respective national notoriety. The first in a field in which I would ultimately play kickball and learn to square dance. The second; half a mile from my childhood home.

Who can know and who can say what sort of spiritual dynamic the two evangelists of the same first name, almost five decades separating them, and the crowds who accompanied them set in place in my ‘little neck of the woods’ and which had exercised some lingering, ethereal influence over my peers and me? At least in my mind’s eye, I can imagine the two Billy’s having prayed not only for those whom they could see round about them, but for them whom they could presently not, but whom would come after.

And in like fashion, I pray for those who are not yet, but who are yet to be; for my descendants, and those whom God will set along their pathway. For all the Billy's (my own name) and Susie’s and Joseph’s and Annie’s which God has destined to live, and move and breathe, and realize impact on the same good earth.

 By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 40. Copyright pending

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