According to adherents.com, Paul Harvey was a Seventh-day Adventist who "regularly attends" the Camelback Adventist Church in Arizona. But according to my pastor bud Bobby McGhee, who was pastor at Camelback until 2000, neither Harvey nor his wife Angel were members there. Angel's aunt who raised her was an Adventist and that is why she went to church with her aunt and why Harvey said nice things about Adventists and occasionally attended Camelback when wintering in Scottsdale.But what about after McGhee left? So I called the Camelback church and left a voice mail on Pastor Charles White's cellphone [the pastor who took over after Bobby left] and he called me back this morning to say that yes he too knew the Harveys well, did do Angel's funeral in May 2008, and will be flying to Chicago tomorrow to do Paul's graveside service on Monday but that no, neither one ever were members at Camelback. So THAT's the rest of his story.
But other highlights include receiving numerous accolades during his 70 years in radio, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in 2005. His "The Rest of the Story" commentaries made him a mainstay of American radio journalism. Edited and adapted from a blog post by Jared Wright. Click pic to read Wright's post in its entirety or click the triangular play button below to watch one of Harvey's best anecdotes.
"Membership," like baptisms, may be less an issue on one level than on another. Paul and Angel Harvey both had an Adventist pastor do their funerals. If their 'membership' was with any other faith group, why didn't they choose to leave that legacy at their funerals? Or if they did not hold membership with any faith group, than they appeared to feel they "belonged" to the Adventists by association.
ReplyDeleteShould we see them with any less regard just because they did not attend an evangelistic meeting where baptisms were naturally the harvest-place of most Adventists of their generation?
I tend to want to think that they were Adventists just because they identified themselves with us at their most vulnerable times.
It is interesting to me to have learned that the federal Cencus lists 'zillions' of people as Adventitsts who are not on our formal "books." What's THAT about? If they are calling themselves Adventists, then the least we can do is include them as family members.
~Lucy =]
Adherents.com has all kinds of names of famous Adventists that I never knew about. Having grown up Adventist and led many youth in Magabooks for several years, surely I would have heard at least one person say that Jaci Velasquez was an Adventist before reading it on that site. But no, I'd never heard that before I found it there. This article (thank-you, Mike) makes me question the other information on their site as well.
ReplyDelete