I am Grady Cathey, and I’m giving the memory moment for today. Jerry Smith said I could have as much time as I wanted – just make sure I did not go as long as Sam McCord, so I’ve still got 19 more minutes to go. Actually if I talk too much about my family, there will be one less Cathey in this church.
This is quite an honor to be giving the memory moment on Homecoming Day in our 200th celebration. It’s not easy going in October – a lot of the good memories have been taken. For many of you this is a homecoming, a chance to come back and see old friends and come back to a special place. For others like myself, it is quite simply “home” – and has been for quite a while. This place is as much a part of me as my brown eyes or my brown hair or my receding hairline.
When this church is called a “family” church, the Catheys are always mentioned, and I always wonder why that is. Besides my mom, my sister and my family there aren’t many Catheys around here, until I went back to the graveyard for the dedication of the slave graves – and then saw what seemed like hundreds of headstones with my name on it – and realized how much home this is for the Cathey family. I didn’t think I was kin to all of them until I started searching the internet on my family tree, and I am kin to most of them – they had big families back in the day.
I am fairly certain that my great-grandfather William Franklin Cathey and his wife Margaret Allen Hipp were lifelong members. Both they and their children are buried down there. They had 7 children, one of which was Alvin Cook Cathey, my grandfather, who married Hattie Ardella Hoover, both of whom were lifelong members. Both my grandfather and great grandfather were dairy farmers, as was my grandfather on my mother’s side of the family. In fact my grandmother, Hattie’s mother, was a Davenport, which was another lifelong family in this church – Plato Davenport Senior, Dottie Cathey and Rillma Huffstickler, etc. Hattie’s parents, Amzy Hoover and Elizabeth Davenport Hoover are also buried in the cemetery. If I am wrong on this, please wait until after the service to correct me. So it is true about everyone being kin to everyone if you grew up in the church.
I have a bulletin from February 1925, given to me by Steve Mewborn, a former member, which shows my grandmother Hattie was a Circle Leader.
My mother tells me that when my grandfather was getting older, he started having difficulty seeing, and one Sunday he saw a lady and told her “morning Miss Minnie” – he thought it was Ms. Minnie Campbell and admitted later that “danged if it wasn’t the madam”, which was his affectionate word for my grandmother.
Three of their children were lifelong members: Adrian Cathey, who was chairman of Sunday School for 32 years, Elsie Cox, Willis’s mother, and my dad, Blair Cathey. I have many memories of my father and nearly all of them center on his life in the church, because they were intertwined. His best friend was Paul McCord and both grew up at this church. Paul’s father was the church caretaker for years. Each Sunday night my dad studied his Sunday School lesson at the table with great intensity. Once he went to a cub scout organizational meeting and my mom asked him not to take on more responsibilities. He told her he wouldn’t, that he was just going to help them get organized. He came back as the Pack leader. I also remember that one week he spent countless hours parked at the church counting the number of cars coming through Kenstead Circle – I think the city was trying to make Kenstead a thoroughfare.
As a child my life centered around the church…Cub Scouts, Sunday School, pre-school here. Guess what? My best friend growing up was Phillip McCord and we spent a lot of time up here.
The boy scouts program was discontinued about the time I was old enough to join which was about 12, and a new program was created which was called BeeGee crafters – it was really Boy Scouts lite. When we camped, the adults would cook the meals and set up tents. We just played – it was a great time. I don’t think we were equipped to handle the outdoors like today’s scouts but we had a lot of fun. We painted ceramics with Vickie Joy and Teresa Painter. My future father-in-law, Harold Caudill ”helped” me make a lamp when I could not come to the meeting – maybe that’s why I married his daughter.
As teenagers my best friends were my church buddies. We started the Haunted House, led by Chad McArver. The boys turned Jerry and Joan Neal’s carport on Kinderway into a Haunted House, and scared the junior high girls over and over again. We also turned the church bell over one day, while Hoyt Johnston watched us running from our “crime”. As young adults, our best friends were people at this church.
Just like my grandfather, I found someone special right here at church. I’m talking about Karen not Gary, but I think it is true that Gary married my grandparents. Karen Caudill and I were married here, had our kids baptized here and have raised our family here. I think this is a picture of our children at the annual Easter Egg hunt, and that’s Roger McNeill, the big rabbit and forever a child. I didn’t know that when we named our son William that he was sharing that name with both my great grandfather, William Franklin Cathey, and my great great grandfather, William Sample Cathey. And as maturing adults, this church is our home. Most of our best friends and most of our family, both the Caudills and Catheys, remain active or at least connected to this church. It is a place where our family looks for spiritual guidance in this crazy world. And this church has been good to the Catheys, even if there is only a few of us left, and to all of the other old and new families as well. If I get a little nostalgic I know where they’re at.
In February of 1925, the church bulletin stated the Mission of this church is to bring people to Christ, to build people up in Christ, to send people out for Christ. Because this church is Christ’s church it has a right to your time, your abilities, your fellowship, your service, your money. Loyalty to Christ demands that you consecrate all of these to Him and use them through the church, presenting them as living sacrifices. And today in 2009, our church has the same mission.
Happy 200th anniversary from the Catheys, Davenports, Hoovers, Caudills and all the families of this church. Amen.
