Unexpected events have momentous, life altering consequences--and such was the case of the town of Pryor getting blown away by the tornado in late April of 1942.  We were still living in Tulsa, and my dad was commuting with five other men to the powder plant, because there was nowhere in Pryor for us to live.  We were waiting on housing when the tornado took out the entire main street of the town.  Dupont, who ran the powder plant, had my dad organize a crew with Dupont equipment to clear the streets.  Which were a mess.  Bricks, metal girders, cars, telephone poles, injured, and bodies blocked highway 20 from the West end of town to the East--death and destruction everywhere.

Pryor had been such a small town, that almost every business and family was devastated.  Almost every thing that keeps a town running was blown away.  Food, medical facilities, gas stations and every other necessity were crippled for months.  In addition, the First Baptist Church was blown to pieces, left without a pastor.  It was a small congregation, not much money, and had to find a way to rebuild.  They needed a particular kind of pastor.  One that knew about constructing large buildings.

His name was E. R. Jacks.  He had been a brickmason by trade, working alongside his father from the time he was 12 years old, laying brick in the town of Carnigee, where he married the daughter of a local lawyer, Mary Jane Amis, straightened up his life and became a Christian.  He had never finished high-school, but feeling that God wanted something more from him, he got his high school degree and headed to the seminary.  He had pastored a number of churches when Pryor called him, asking him to come and help them rebuild the church.  A brick laying preacher.  God's man for the job.

The people who would help him do that were the powder plant workers.  The newcomers to town.  Men who knew how to work with their hands.  Within the next year, he taught them construction, built a church with beautiful stained glass windows, led them to Christ and baptized them.  He promised them that if they could get 700 people to be there on a certain Sunday, that he would roll an orange down main street with his nose.  Which he did.  I have a picture of him on his knees pushing that orange down main street.  I was five years old, and my mom and dad were attending the church along with hundreds of other people looking for a place to call home.   But there was a problem.  The town folk didn't want these newcomers to become permanent members of the congregation....            (Continued tomorrow.)