Picture taken by my sister Gwyn Pennebaker.
Forty years ago, as we were winding up our day, we got a phone call from my brother-in-law John. Since we were in Germany and John was in Virginia, phone calls were both expensive and rare. The call was to tell us that Daddy had died of a massive heart attack with no forewarning. As a rule, I don’t mark the anniversaries of dark days in my life, but as this significant anniversary decade has approached, Daddy has been on my mind. The snippets that have come to me have brought a smile, which I’m sure would meet with his approval. My memories have been much like the variety shared with us as people brought words of comfort when he died. Some are meaningful ways he influenced my life balanced by an equal number of the ways he brought a laugh.
I’ve remembered a time when he broke a family rule he had enforced. The rule was that no family member could read a letter addressed to any other family member without permission. That included parents. I always felt a security that my mail would be respected even if I left it carelessly lying around until the day I got off the school bus to find a letter addressed to me already open. I had done well enough on the first exam given to three seniors in our school to go to Memphis and take the SAT as a semi-finalist for the first National Merit Scholarship Exam. The day the letter with my results came, Daddy had to leave on a trip before I got home. I still remember every word of the note on the envelope. “I’m sorry. I just had to know.” I still puzzle over whether the “sorry” was sympathy that I did not make the last cut or an apology for opening my mail. In either case, the act and the note told me how much he cared.
Since he was my pastor as well as my father, much of my theology and Biblical understanding came from hearing his preaching. I teach a ladies’ Sunday school class and found myself reaching back to his teachings this last Sunday to add to my lessons as I often do.
I’ve thought about his love of word play with atrocious puns. I gloated a bit when I brought home the news from my high school English teacher that puns were the lowest from of humor. He retorted, “Yes, but they taste really good with hamburgers.”
He loved taking conversations into word twists – especially if he was the target of the twist. Consequently, he used his initials to verify that he would never be a “big shot.” After all, BB is a little shot. B. B. McGee may have been a “little shot,” but he has four daughters and a number of grandchildren who still smile when his name comes up.