Transcribed by Michael A. O’Neill in Mar/Apr 2014
Transcribers note: This is a transcription of Mabel’s book, not an upload of the original of the document she created. It was transcribed using Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software, which will result in capitalization errors; misspellings of proper names; odd usage of prepositions or common words; and incorrect homophones. For true fidelity, you can request the book via Interlibrary Loan from the Greenville College or Azusa Pacific University libraries.
Worth Wright Vinson
My father Worth Walter Vinson was the son of Cuthbert Vinson. Cuthbert was a member of a highly respected, moderately successful Iowa family. My father’s mother died when he was just a boy. Worth was the youngest of three sons. One son died when he was a teenager, and one son went out West and the family never heard from him again. For many years my father would scan telephone books when he visited Western cities, looking and hoping to find some trace of Sam Vinson, but he never did. When his wife died, Cuthbert took his sons to his father’s farm, and never did seem to keep his family together.
After his grandparents died, Worth was sent to live with relatives, many of whom were farmers. Most of the time, he stayed with his father’s sister, Laura and her husband. Thus, Worth was practically an orphan. As he grew older, he became a strong, capable young man. He wanted to go to school. His uncle told him that if he would stay and work on the farm until he was 21, he, the uncle, would give him a horse and a gold watch. They quarreled and when Worth left for the country school that day he didn’t know where he would stay that night. The word got around the neighborhood, and one farmer sent word that Worth could come to his house and go to school as long as he wanted to.
For several years, Worth Vinson worked on the farms in the spring and summer and went to school in the winter. He taught in a country school for several terms at the age of 16. Many years later he told me that had even one person encouraged him to finish college, he would’ve done so. As it was, he completed two years. I remember when I was a small child, he drove several miles to college to attend the class in New Testament Greek. As my two brothers and I were growing up, we always knew that we would go to college, the problem was always how. Father encouraged us and give us moral support, but financial help didn’t come easily.
While working his way through school as a farmhand, Worth lived for a time with a family named Brown. A man of God, Mr. Brown had a great influence on the impressionable young Worth Vinson. At the Brown home during a prayer meeting, Worth committed his life to God and not long afterward preached his first sermon. He spent 50 years in Christian ministry.
My mother and father first met on that Fourth of July, when they were both 16. He took her for a buggy ride that afternoon. He was not a free Methodist, indeed he laughed rather lightly about them. When she chided him for being a good Methodist and yet wearing gold cufflinks, with mock seriousness, he handed her the reins and said, “I’ll take them right off.” Later when his college friends made slighting remarks about the noisy FM’s he would say, “Hold on now, you know I have a FM girl down there in the country.”
It was some time before they met again, and when they did, he had become a staunch convert and was looked upon as one of the promising young men of the church. Later he spent a year in religious work with the Pentecost band in Michigan. After he came back, he talked about going to school again, but TA Allen, his district elder, whom he greatly respected, advised him to get married and get “into the work.” Allen further advised that time was short and souls needed to be saved.
At a Sunday morning Service, August 10, 1889 at Clarinda, Iowa, Rev. TH Allen, the district elder, called up at the end of the sermon: up came two young people, Worth Vinson and Belle Slough, to say their vows of matrimony. Rev. Allen not only pronounced them “man and wife”, but also commissioned them to serve together in the Master’s vineyard. Bell wore a simple white dress, her brown wavy hair framed her face. Several hundred people looked on and later crowded around to wish them well. So they had a happy wedding, and the next day left by horse and buggy to travel to their first appointment in Grand Junction, Iowa, some 200 miles away. From then on, life would be busy, sometimes frustrating, sometimes sacrificial, but always with love for each other and devotion to Christ.
Father didn’t like his name, Worth, much and didn’t care to give the name to either of their two sons. Father usually went by W.W. Vinson and mother like those initials. When the time came, some friends compiled a long list of names beginning with W. From the list, mother chose Weston. She chose the middle name, Wright, which was for a friend, Wright Williams. Mother didn’t like it when kids at school nicknamed him Wes, but the name stuck.