It was a typically cold winter morning, that first week of February, 1981. The children were all settled into their classrooms, and moms and dads were at their workplaces. That’s about where the word typical will have to cease in describing that fatal February morning.
At my desk in the office at Thompson Road Baptist Church, I received a call that Gerald “Butch” Doss, one of the deacons of our church, working on railroad tracks as an employee of Conrail, had been tragically and instantly killed as he and a fellow worker, dressed in warm winter parkas, had been cutting railroad ties on a track that was supposed to have been “dormant.” Butch had a huge chain saw in his hands as he was working a section of the track, and he never saw or heard the speeding train that swept by the two men, killing the young father of two.
It suddenly became a day of shock, weeping, and for a time stunned silence. Ellen and I immediately went to visit Butch’s wife, Brenda, who then lived just a few minutes from our church. There were no words—just hugs, tears, and pain. Butch and Brenda had taken our family in when we had moved to Indianapolis in the fall of 1979 to assume the pastorate here; as we were trying to find housing, they graciously kept our three children for I think two or three weeks, giving us time to find a house and get moved in.
Butch was the kind of deacon any pastor would love to serve alongside of! He was an encourager and a vibrant, growing believer who modeled godliness. Both he and Brenda soaked up the Word of God. Butch began a ministry of taping the services at our church, and his ministry was not limited to our local church; he had expanded it, making duplicated messages available to a wider audience. Back then, as I recall, the cassette-tape ministry was just starting to replace the old, cumbersome reel-to-reel tapes. Butch was zealous about sharing God’s Word with whomever would want to hear a taped version of the services.
My last memory of this good deacon was of the service he attended just before being called to glory. His face was beaming; he was excited about what God was doing in our church and was hopeful about what he believed God was going to do. His enthusiasm shone through with a big smile and a caring pat on his preacher’s back. He would not long thereafter be looking into the face of His living, loving Savior.
Having received the call that shattered our morning, and in a real sense our lives, Ellen and I made our way to the Doss home, where I would leave Ellen while I made my way to the school where the two Doss children, Sonnie and Eric, were in their classes. I conveyed to the principal what my mission was, and the children were quickly dismissed to my care. I drew deeply upon God’s grace and strength in sharing with them that their daddy had been killed by a train that morning. It was one of those moments you would have hoped would never come; one that you could never blot from your memory. I could not even imagine what was going through the hearts of those precious little ones.
Meanwhile, Ellen was with Brenda, and they were in each other’s arms. In a recent prayer meeting, our Pastor, Joel Stevens, taught a lesson from II Corinthians 1 about “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.” Ellen shared a testimony that when she arrived at the Doss home that morning, Brenda told her that God had already been preparing her for this day, as early that very morning she had just been reading this passage in II Corinthians. Brenda’s words 43 years ago—words from God’s Word at the darkest moment of her life—still ring in Ellen’s heart and memory as words of comfort, yet reminders that He is one ”Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” (II Cor. 1:4). God’s Word, first and last, really does work, and it works for a lifetime.
This is not to say that there was not anguished suffering; there was! Physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual agonies of body, mind and soul were to assault Brenda and her family for an indefinite period of time. The aftershocks will never fully fade away this side of glory; but neither will God’s sustaining grace and comforting consolations.
Brenda taught English in a local Christian academy for several decades after Butch’s homegoing. For more than 50 years, she has faithfully attended and served her Lord at Thompson Road Baptist Church in many capacities including church secretary, women’s Sunday School class teacher, and member of the choir. In time, God gave her a wonderful husband in the person of Donald Harris—a Vietnam veteran who, saved out of a religious background that majored on works, has been a caring and devoted husband and, for 47 years now, a stalwart and faithful servant of God here at TRBC.
Some near-crippling physical issues have taken a toll on Brenda, so that mobility challenges now limit her church attendance. But no one who knows her doubts that when the church gathers for worship, she is in their midst, either in body and spirit or in spirit—singing, praising, bowing in her Savior’s presence, all the while looking forward to that day when our faith will be made sight; and that grand reunion of the church, the rapture, will be called at the sound of the trumpet to summon our meeting with the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord.
“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (I Thess. 4:17,18)
YOU and GOD 