Louise Carter-Ping - A Blessing to All

Louise Carter-Ping          

This morning, August 10, Vicki and I attended the memorial service for a long-time friend. We knew her best as Louise Carter, even though later in life she remarried and became Louise Carter-Ping. Today is our 46^th wedding anniversary and we have known Louise (and her first husband Myron) for 43 of those 46 years!

We first met Myron and Louise Carter at Westside Christian Church, which back in 1976 was a thriving neighborhood church on the corner of Dodson Drive and Ben Hill Road in East Point, adjacent to the campus of Atlanta Christian College where Vicki and I had come to teach after completing advanced degrees in Cincinnati.

My professor-hero Jim Evans had become the pastor of Westside Christian Church and I knew I could be encouraged by the “meat of the gospel” that one experienced when Jim preached. Vicki and I both grew up going to Sunday School so we accepted the invitation of Dr. Bob Weaver, at that time on the administrative staff of ACC, to attend his class. Myron and Louise and a host of other great, seasoned disciples were a part of that class. That’s where we met them.

Little did I know that Dr. Weaver’s real motive for inviting us to the class had something to do with wanting me to help him in the teaching rotation. I was honored to be asked by such an outstanding preacher and honored to be accepted by such an incredible group of believers. Many people in that class have been life-long friends and influencers in our lives.

Myron and Louise sort of adopted Vicki and me as a young married couple starting a new venture in life. They invited us to dinner in their home. They invited us to go to all kinds of events with them. Myron was a lover of organ music (as am I) and of course that was right down Vicki’s world of preferences. We went to more than a few concerts with them. They treated us as though they had raised us.

Louise invited Vicki to become a part of the East Point Women’s Club, which at the time was a pretty influential group of women learning to deal with and address the changing landscape of southside suburbs in metro-Atlanta. It was a great experience for Vicki and I was privileged to attend some pretty good dinners myself.

When our daughter Sarah was born, Louise went out of her way to be helpful. When our daughter Bethany was born, Louise insisted that we call her when we were headed to the hospital and she would take care of Sarah. That we would trust Louise with Sarah says all that needs to be said about how much we valued our friendship. So one morning around 4:00, I called Louise and said, “Can you come get Sarah?” She did. We headed to Northside Hospital and soon Sarah had a sister!

Louise was always very interested in our children. Any of you reading this who are parents know that when other adults, especially not related to you by blood, show the kind of affection for your children that Myron and Louise showed for our children, you have a friend beyond measure.

Life of course moves on. Myron died in 1997, and Louise asked me to speak at his funeral, but I already had a commitment to speak at the funeral of Otis Burnett, our across-the-street neighbor in East Point. The Burnetts, Otis and Chris, were like another set of parents/grandparents to Vicki and me and Sarah and Bethany. In her ever-gracious way, Louise insisted that I not try and change that funeral time so I could do both.

It was a little more difficult to keep in touch with Louise once we moved to Tyrone, became so involved in First Christian of Tyrone, ACC – soon to become Point University, and a host of other things that happen as we grow older.

We attended the 90^th birthday celebration for Louise. It was a wonderful time of catching up.

To show what good taste Louise had, she and I visited the same salon. She got her hair “fixed,” I got my hair cut. On several occasions we happened to be there at the same time. I hate getting my hair cut – not sure what that’s all about – but on those occasions when Louise and I were there at the same time – it was my favorite part of the day! She did that to most people.

When we were at Westside back in the mid-to-late 1970s, various teams of ladies prepared the “Wednesday night fellowship meal” that happened before Bible study. Louise and her friend Sylvia Rice were one of those teams. Their specialty dinner was roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. That was accompanied by a nice roll and desert.  Their gravy was to die for.

I was privileged to eventually be enough of an insider to Louise that she told me about the secret ingredient to the gravy. Back in those days, that secret ingredient could get you kicked out of church! But I’m not lying when I say that few restaurants in Atlanta could match their roast beef and gravy! Glad they took the risk.

Louise lived to be 97. In those years she not only experienced the death of her parents and her parents-in-law, but her first husband, Myron, both of their children, and her second husband, Chet. Her faith was amazingly strong – and despite the hurt of losing loved ones, she never faltered in her commitment to follow Jesus.

At her service this morning, Jim Bell, minister of music at Peachtree Christian church in Atlanta, sang a beautiful hymn written and composed by Natalie Sleeth. The title of the hymn is “In the Bulb There Is a Flower.” The last stanza is especially moving:

In the end is our beginning:

In our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing,

In our life, eternity.

In our death, a resurrection;

At the last, a victory.

Unrevealed until its season,

Something God alone can see.

Bob Tyler, Louise’s long-term adopted son and pastor, along with her niece JeRei Wilson, both said some amazing things about the accomplishments of Louise’s life. It was refreshing to be reminded of the life this ordinary saint lived. Especially as a woman at the time when she had so much influence.

I cherish that such a person was our friend – and even more that despite such great accomplishments in life, she treated my family like her family!

Thank God for ordinary saints. Help us, God, to be more aware that they surround us.

Ruth Groover - She Gave Us a Song

If you have lived in metro-Atlanta in the past fifty or so years and had any relationship with Christian city, Point University, the Western District Missionary Society and a host of other kingdom-related ministries, you no doubt bumped into Ruth Groover. Mrs. Groover died the past Friday morning after a long, fruitful life of service in the kingdom of God.

I first met her (and her late husband Charles) when as a sophomore I started attending Austell Christian Church on Sunday mornings and teaching some in the high school Sunday School class. In every context - whether a local church, an institution like Christian City, and loosely bound fellowship group like the WDMS, Mrs. Groover was engaged in ministry.

Little did I know back in 1971 that her son Eddie would first be one of my professors at ACC as we knew it then, and then a colleague in ministry for decades. I was unable to attend the memorial service Sunday afternoon because of prior commitments, but in conversations (text and email of course!) with Eddie, he shared a copy of words he wrote that Paul Leslie read at the service.

If you're looking at the site, you know it was created to recognize the lives and contributions of what I call "ordinary saints." No flags were flown at half-staff this weekend because Ruth Groover died. Our culture is way too self-absorbed to recognize "the ordinary saints" among us. But like others I have written about on this site, from the view point of Kingdom of God economics and values, Ruth Groover was anything but ordinary.

While I could write some important things I noticed about her over the years - Eddie's words are perfect and he gave me permission to share them.  Here they are:


 A Tribute to Ruth Groover by her son Eddie

She gave us a song.

In fact, she gave us many songs.

My mother was a remarkable woman.

I am biased, of course, but many others tell me the same thing: she was remarkable.

As a little girl, she began singing at evangelistic meetings led by her father.

Before long, she was playing the piano and singing at the same time.

As a teenager, she sang for a time in the antiphonal choir at Peachtree Christian Church in Atlanta.

Grandpa entertained the thought that his daughter with a heavenly voice would surely qualify for a scholarship at Julliard School of Music.

As it turned out, she never sent an application to Julliard.

She went intead to Atlanta Christian College and, among other things, developed her gifts as a pianist and vocalist.

She was giving serious consideration during her college days to preparing for missionary service in Japan, though the war would have to end first.

But my Dad proposed to her.

She said yes. After a time, I was born, and 2 1/2 years later, Joe was born.

My brother and I spent our earliest years in parsonages, generally right next door to church buildings.

Mom played an upright piano at home ever day, often several times a day.

At the end of the day, she sang a lullaby, "Go to sleepy little baby, go to sleepy little baby . . ."

We grew up hearing Mom play and sing.

Dad would often be singing with her.

After a time, the duet because a quartet.

Mom played and sang at church week after week for decades.

She also taught and led youth groups and routinely worked in church camps.

She was often invoved in community groups - including choral societies.

A bust of Beethoven graced our mantle at home.

A little porcelain bust of Bach - another reminder of Mom's infectious love of music - was always somewhere in the living room.

Mom was a born leader.

She was a PTA president at least three times, as I recall.

She served as a substitute teacher at Therrell High School.

In the early days of Christian City, she became a trustee.

Later she was the director of the children's division here.

And, still later, she was doing development work and was administrative assistant of the president and CEO.

All the while, she was volunteering for projects at Atlanta Christian College, playing the piano for Western District Missionary Society meetings, and founding and leading the Georgia Christian Women's Retreat and the Seniors Retreat.

I wrote most of the obituary that you may have read.

This is one of my best lines in Mom's obituary: "She found it difficult simply to look on from the sidelines."

But she was more than a passionate advocate of good causes.

I must come back to it again . . . She gave us a song.

She never stopped.

When she became a resident of Friendship Place in Sparks Inn three years ago at the age of 91 - even until recent months - she played the piano.

Sometimes she sang the words as she played.

Other residents often sang too.

Perhaps it was five or six years ago. 

Mom went to Peachtree Christian Church with Belinda and me on the first Sunday of December to hear the Christmas portion of Handel's Messiah.

I heard Mom whisper as the choir was singing The Hallelujah Chorus.

I suspect that only Belinda and I heard Mom sing under her breath these five words: "The Lord God omnipotent reigneth!"


Yes, he does!


You gave us a song, Mom, and we're still singing it.

Belinda Lee Groover - Missionary to the ER

Early in the 1970s while Vicki and I were students at Atlanta Christian College, a new student arrived by the name of Belinda Lee. She came to ACC already having graduated as a registered nurse. She was from Tampa, Florida and had plans perhaps to become a medical missionary. I’m fairly confident I had some classes with her (assuming my memory is accurate) and think Vicki did as well.

At the same time – Vicki and I weren’t even dating yet, much less married – ACC hired a new professor by the name of Eddie Groover. He was fresh out of Emmanuel School of Religion (now Emmanuel Christian Seminary) and a refreshing new voice on the campus at ACC. I especially remember his church history, restoration history, and contemporary theology classes. They started me on a journey that continues to this day.

Fast forward a few years and Vicki and I both graduate from ACC and get married later that summer. Eddie and Belinda Groover had become an item on campus. Eddie came down to St. Petersburg with Roy McKinney for our wedding. We go off to graduate school and eventually come back to join the faculty at ACC. By now, Eddie is married to Belinda and we get to renew friendships that began years before. Both Vicki and I remember that on the wedding gift we sent them, we addressed the card “Mr. Groover and Belinda.” Eddie had not quite finished his Ph.D. yet, but because of how we were raised, neither of us felt comfortable saying “Eddie” to a former professor.

I remember lots of stories from that period in our lives. When we moved to Atlanta, Vicki was on a pretty strict regimen of week allergy preventing injections. One of the things that concerned us was finding a doctor’s office where she could go and get the injections (and we could afford). We should not have worried. Belinda was an R.N. and in her ever gracious and giving spirit, volunteered to keep the medicine in their refrigerator on Dodson Drive near the old campus and Vicki could just stop by for the injection each week. 

Those were the days of Wingo’s Steak House on Campbellton Road in Atlanta – not too far from campus. For $1.50, you could get a “small KC steak, baked potato, salad, and desert.” I have no idea how many times the Huxfords, Groovers, and Roy McKinney had dinner at Wingo’s. Even after both families started having children – we would often meet up at Wingo’s for dinner.

Over the years, Eddie would become academic dean at ACC and eventually president. He would serve with distinction in those areas – and at every step of the way, Belinda was by his side. To see Eddie and Belinda together was always a portrait of a loving couple who deeply cared about one another.

But Belinda also had a life of her own. She was, as both of her sons have written about, a great mother and ultimately grandmother. Their home in East Point and later Fayetteville was always a place of welcome and great hospitality.

Remember, though, she was a nurse! So for many, many years, if you went to the emergency room at Clayton General Hospital that is now Southern Regional Medical Center, you might very well see Belinda Groover. During the twenty years I served as minister at First Christian, I visited that emergency room many times. I saw Belinda in action on many of those visits. She was in control, attentive, concerned, empathetic, and just an all-around Jesus-like person to her patients. If you’ve ever been in a large hospital’s emergency room – especially on the weekends – you know what a chaotic place that can be. Belinda maneuvered in that world as well as anyone I’ve ever seen. 

If you read the title I gave this – Missionary to the ER – you understand where I’m going. I am pretty confident I remember hearing the “medical missionary” goal of Belinda early on in our friendship as students. In those days, that meant “going across the pond” somewhere.

But the truth is, in the emergency room at Southern Regional Hospital on the southside of metro-Atlanta, Belinda no doubt met people from dozens and dozens of backgrounds – countries of origin, ethnicities, faith groups, etc. Where else could you be more “missionary” than in an urban ER where every person you meet has deep and serious need?

At Point we constantly talk about taking faith into the workplace. We really believe in the idea of the priesthood of all believers. We believe that no matter what you do to earn a living and pay the bills, you can be Jesus to those you encounter while at work.

Truthfully that wasn’t quite a big a topic in the days that Belinda was a student at ACC as it is now. But equally truthfully she modeled what we are talking about all the time with grace and fruitfulness that is of God and God alone. 

Belinda was, in the best sense of the phrase, an ordinary saint. I am grateful that our paths in life crossed and that I can tell others through this blogsite about a great witness for the kingdom.

Her death early in the morning this past Sunday (2 December) took her away from family and friends and that of course is heartbreaking. But her victory on the other side is cause for all of us to look at and follow her example. As Paul said – adjusted a bit for gender – “imitate Belinda as she imitated Christ.” 

Hopefully there is a Wingo’s in heaven and one day we can all have a “small KC” together again!