Our family started out with just mom and dad, of course. Joe and Enid.
Joe was a Methodist/United Methodist minister for nearly 40 years, serving in the Nebraska Conference. Enid was active in the churches dad served, with a heart for mission and justice work. She became a special ed teacher and diaconal minister later in life.
Here's a family photo at their 25th Wedding Anniversary:
Left to Right: Joe, Ben, Deb, Rebecca, Enid, Phyllis
My sister Rebecca attended Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, made banners and large macrame pieces, had systemic lupus, and died in 1978 from an aortic aneurysm. My sister Phyllis wrote about Rebecca, in a sermon and article from 1978. My sister Deb also wrote about Rebecca's "Prayer of Easter" poem.
My sister Deb attended Kearney State College in Kearney, Nebraska. She was an avid science fiction fan and met her future husband, Dan Stratmann, at a St. Louis sci fi convention. They were married in St. Louis. Dan studied at Eden Theological Seminary and was ordained in the United Methodist Missouri East Conference and served churches there before his death in 2013. Deb has worked as a chaplain's office manager. They adopted a son Andrew, who died in his sleep at the young age of 27. Deb became a single mom when she adopted his daughter Adriana.
My father Joe served Methodist preaching circuits in Arkansas, Methodist churches in Bayard, Big Springs, and Ainsworth, Nebraska, and United Methodist Churches in Elmwood, Lincoln, Shelton, and Arapahoe, Nebraska. He retired from Arapahoe and he and mom moved to Norton, Kansas, where she continued to teach special ed. He died in 1987 from an aortic aneurysm. Here is his service and obituary.
My mother Enid was a diaconal minister in the United Methodist Church, and served as a special education teacher in Norton, KS. She died in 2002 from non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Read her obituary here.
My sister Phyllis attended Nebraska Wesleyan, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and Candler Seminary in Atlanta. She and her husband Michael Anderson were the first executive directors of the Samaritan Counseling Center of Hawai`i. She died in 2001 during surgery on an aortic aneurysm.
Phyllis and I were ordained United Methodist Elders in the same ordination ceremony in 1976, at the session of Nebraska Conference.
I graduated from Ainsworth High School in 1964, Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1969, and the School of Theology at Claremont, now Claremont School of Theology, in 1975. I served churches and ministry in the Nebraska Conference until 1996. See my Curriculum Vitae for much more detail.