CONNECT WITH US
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR EMAILS
The latest news and information
Bond, Beverly E.
6/1/1987
| Beverly Bond was born in Haynesville, Louisiana, on November 24, 1919, the first of six sons and daughters born to Fuller Bond and his wife, Mary Jewel Stonecipher Bond. He grew up in the Methodist Protestant Church and the public schools in Haynesville, and in the closely-knit circle of a dedicated Christian family. Early in life Beverly experienced a clear and powerful call of God and offered himself for service as a Minister of Jesus Christ. Preparation for that responsibility included education in High Point College in High Point, North Carolina and Perkins School of Theology at SMU in Dallas, Texas. Following seminary training, Beverly was appointed to the Calhoun, Downsville, Marion and Bird’s Chapel Circuit in the Ruston District of his home Conference in Louisiana. In March of 1943, he married one of his parishioners, Marie Golson, of Calhoun. In May of that same year he was accepted in and commissioned as a Chaplain in the U.S. Navy. Through the next three and one-half years of World War II he was assigned to serve with various units including the “CBs” in the continental United States and in the Pacific theater. On his return to civilian life, Beverly and Marie were again assigned to pastorates in the Louisiana Conference. Their marriage was blessed with three children, Robert, Jerry and Beverly Anne, and seven grandchildren. Forty-two years of active ministry in the Louisiana Conference included military duty and pastorates in Calhoun, Athens, Farmerville, Coushatta, North Highlands in Shreveport, Arcadia, North Baton Rouge, Crowley, Franklinton, Pineville, Henning Memorial in Sulphur, and Springhill. District and Conference level responsibilities were also carried with conscientious and constructive dedication at every opportunity. On Sunday, June 10, 1984, Beverly preached his last sermon in the Springhill pulpit, the final appointment before his retirement. By wisdom and good management he and Marie had bought and prepared their home in Baton Rouge in the same neighborhood with their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, and enjoyed a retirement filled with the rewards of satisfaction from lives well-lived and a mission faithfully served. These joys were too soon invaded by illness, and on Wednesday, June 10, 1987, three years to the day after his final sermon in Springhill, Beverly was buried on a beautiful hilltop in the Mt. Mariah Cemetery, just north of Arcadia and approximately half way between his home in Haynesville and Marie’s home in Calhoun. Beverly Bond was a devoted family man. Love and attention were the marks of his relationship with his parents through their life spans. Annual reunions with the brothers and sisters was a high point in every year, and reports from those reunions made many of us wish to observe them by any possible means. No person ever loved and enjoyed children and grandchildren more. It was a fully human relationship, with normal tensions and differences of opinion, but one in which there was the unmistakable underpinning of deep love and unchanging devotion. Beverly and Marie had a love affair that did not dim with the passing of time; it was made the richer and more beautiful by every experience from ecstatic joy to the deepest of sorrows, a love that even now reaches across the limits of eternity to hold them closely together. Beverly was a friend in the finest sense of the word. Through many years he and I shared work, play, achievement and disappointment, every facet of friendship as individual human beings, neighbor pastors and fellow workers with the Christ. When Bing Crosby died, Bob Hope was quoted as saying: “If friends could be ordered tailor-made, I would want one just like Bing.” So say those of us who know and loved Beverly as a friend of rare quality. His friendship was one of the treasurers of my life. Beverly was a faithful minister for Jesus Christ. No responsibility committed to him was consciously evaded; no opportunity for ministry to people was selfishly refused; no task assigned him was given less than his best effort and ability; no minister served with more of a sense of deep gratitude for the privilege than did Beverly Bond. Now, even as we grieve for ourselves in his absence, we rejoice in the knowledge of his having entered into that eternal heritage for which each of us was created, and his reunion with loved ones in the presence of the Christ. Our memorial shall be the lives that we now live in such a way that we, too, shall know that great reunion with him and countless others in God’s presence, there to be without further interruption forever. |
|
| Source: Journal Louisiana Conference, 1988, p.181-183……..By D. L. McGuire | |
CONNECT WITH US
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR EMAILS
The latest news and information
