I. Obituary
II. Roger’s Ministry to the Community
Dorisanne Cooper
III. Roger’s Ministry to Lake Shore Baptist Church
Sharlande Sledge and former pastors
I. Obituary
Roger Dawson Edens, 91, longtime Waco businessman and Baylor supporter, passed away Monday, Jan. 30, 2006, at a local care facility.Graveside services will be conducted at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 1, at the Oakwood Cemetery, followed by a Memorial Service at 11 a.m. at the Lake Shore Baptist Church, 5801 Bishop. The Rev. Dorisanne Cooper and the Rev. Sharlande Sledge will officiate.
Born in Bellmead, Mr. Edens lived in Waco all of his life except for several years with the Baytown Ordnance Works during World War II following his 1940 graduation from Baylor University. On July 3, 1941, he married the former Louise (Penny) Pennington. Returning to Waco to work at Owens-Illinois Glass Plant, he soon purchased the White Pharmacy and then joined his father-in-law, J.C. Pennington, as owners of Baylor Drug. He retired after selling his business in 1981. Mr. Edens and Baylor Drug were well-known to students before 1981 when it was torn down, serving as a gathering place before the Union Building was erected in 1996.
Mr. Edens was an ardent supporter of Baylor. While in school he served as president of the Esquire Club and worked in advertising for the Baylor Press. Since graduation he served as president of the Baylor Alumni Association in 1983-84 and was still on the executive board. He was treasurer of that association for over 25 years and was named Treasurer Emeritus. For 33 years he organized and presented the Cabaret Show for Baylor Homecoming. He was the recipient of the W.R. White Meritorious Award in 1980, was name Honorary Director of the Baylor Golden Wave Band, was given the Baylor Appreciation “Bear” in 1981, was on the board of directors of the Baylor-Waco Foundation, and served as president of the old Waco Quarterback Club.
He and his wife served as co-presidents of Heritage Club in 1995-1996. In the community, Mr. Edens led in building the original Southern Little League Ball Park and coached for five years. For several years he was presiding judge of the 21st Electoral District of McLennan County.He was Past Master and life member of the Baylor Masonic Lodge, being honored on his 50th anniversary in 1999. For several years he was a member of the E.A.O.C. executive board and a commissioner with the Boy Scouts of America. He was a charter member and deacon of Lake Shore Baptist Church.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Penny, in 2003; daughter-in-law, Virginia Edens, and grandson, Michael Walsh. He is survived by two sons, John Edens of Phoenix, Az., and David Edens and wife, Scherry of Keller; daughter, Penny Ann Parker of Waco; grandchildren, Roger Edens and wife, Kellie, Brent Edens, David Edens and wife, Julie, and Erik Edens; and great-grandchildren, Alexis Edens and Leonard Edens. Memorials may be made to the charity of your choice. You may send an email to the family at www.oakcrestwaco.com March 19, 1914 – Jan. 30, 2006
II. Roger’s Ministry to the Community
Dorisanne Cooper
It was the most beautiful gift I (as a nine year old) could ever imagine getting my parents for their anniversary. A pair of yellow milky glass salt shakers. And by some amazing miracle they were less than two dollars! I found them up on a shelf behind some other treasures at my favorite place to go on a Saturday when I was growing up—the Baylor Drug Store.
My best friend, Susan, and I would ride our bicycles from the faculty housing to explore the fantasyland that was Baylor drug, that—little did we know then—was the place Roger Edens had offered to generations of people young and old alike. In the almost forty years that he owned and operated it, it changed a bit and certain amenities came and went—a soda fountain, a coffee and sandwich counter, a pharmacy, and even a little girl’s wonderland just looking through all of that stuff—but it was always one of the many ways Roger Edens gave flavor to the world around him. Whether it was the signs up on the wall, “One for $1.50, Two for $3.00” or the Baylor Line written out in the back, a Homecoming celebration, or simply the warmth and friendliness with which you were greeted when you walked in the door, it was Roger’s domain as much as this church was.
Some of Jesus’ more cryptic words on discipleship have to do with our command to be salt and light in the world, but when I think of Roger Edens I think I understand that scripture a little more. Because if there was anyone who knew how to be salt in the world, it was Roger Edens. His presence brought out more flavor, more meaning, more everything for his participation. So much of that has already become clear in Sharlande’s words and those of the former pastors of this church. But just a glance at his resume on paper shows it in so many other places as well—in his tenure as the President and Treasurer of the Baylor Alumni Association, in his creation of Cabaret, a homecoming production he came up with when tickets to Pigskin were sold out, in his presence at most every Baylor game, win or lose and, yes, maybe even in the bets he would sometimes make with close friend, Jack Staples, about Baylor/Texas games. They weren’t about money. They were about stamina and heart.
One time when the teams played in Waco, Roger, the consummate Baylor fan, (whom you may remember had “Beat Texas” written in the concrete in front of the store) and Jack, a die-hard Texas fan, bet that the person whose team lost would have to remain in the stadium until everyone else left.
After that experience Roger said, “Did you know some people stay hours after the game? They even bring in dinner and just stay and stay and stay.” It was after dark when he finally got home, missing the gathering of folks in his home who came after every game to analyze the afternoon’s plays.
And though in some ways one could say he was happiest when Baylor won and saddest when they lost, there was so much more to Roger than that. As Roger’s friend Jim Cole says, “Roger was the model of consistency. He simply accepted the height of responsibility for what needed to be done whenever it needed to be done.”
But that didn’t mean that he was only about getting work done or making a profit at Baylor drug. No matter how much he protested, generosity was the name of the game. When students came in to the counter for coffee he would let them stay and do homework, taking as long as they wanted. When they needed him to hold a check for a few days before cashing it, he was always glad to do so. Long before there was a Student Union there was Roger Edens and Baylor Drug.
I’m told when Abner McCall was president of Baylor he used to stop by the Baylor Drug on the way home everyday for two reasons. The first was to get a candy bar, because his wife Mary wouldn’t let him have one so often at home. But the second was to find out from Roger what was really going on at Baylor. Since Roger was in the store all day and would have students and others at the counter visiting and talking about the latest—that’s what McCall wanted to know.
Students who came through school during the years of Baylor Drug have story after story after story. Just last night one of our church members called and told me about being a senior at Baylor and waiting in line one time to get his absentee voting ballot notarized and sent in. Roger, the notary public for whom they were all in line, didn’t charge a single one of them.
We can’t talk about Roger, of course, without mentioning his almost life-long partner, his wife Penny. It was when she was a freshman at Baylor that they first met. She saw him just outside the chemistry building and liked what she saw, “a football player and older” she wrote in a journal, “a good kisser too” she would add later. They went on their first date to the Baylor football banquet and subsequently began a three and a half year courtship before they married at First Baptist here in town. That was the beginning of a 62 year partnership that faced all that life brings, joyous and difficult, but that faced those things together in caring and loving devotion.
Anyone who saw Roger and Penny as a couple couldn’t help but be a little exhausted at their schedule. They simply went and did all the time. They loved to travel. They liked going to the ranch and out on the barge and to New Braunfels or just about any place with water. And they especially loved being with their friends. If you listen to stories about Roger and Penny’s life you’ll hear a lot about close friendships. You’ll hear talk of being as close as family. You’ll hear of trips taken together with other families. You’ll hear their children, John, David and Penny Ann, talk about feeling like cousins with the children of Roger and Penny’s friends to whom they were not related by blood. You’ll hear about a group of men Roger played golf with and then ate lunch with in later years. You’ll hear about a group of couples who played bridge long into the night on countless weekends. You’ll hear about a supper club that’s gone on for more than thirty years.
Grady Nutt, whom Roger once brought to perform at Cabaret, often used to use the phrase, “Friends who are family and family who are friends.” That’s the closest phrase I’ve heard that describes the rule of Roger’s life, how he tended to so many around him. It’s indicative of someone who knew how to live and love big, and who created intense flavors of care for those all around.
After she lost her first husband, Bobby, Helen Hamilton used to bring over her daughters to the Edens’ when their teeth were loose so Roger could pull them since she couldn’t bear to do it. That was before Roger played matchmaker and introduced her to his good friend Sam Hastings who had lost his wife, Mary. Sam and Helen—now married more than 30 years—were just one of the couples Roger introduced. They were also often on the receiving end of another of the ways Roger brought flavor to life, his love of practical jokes.
One time when the Hamiltons and the Edens’ next door neighbors, the Parsons, were both out of town, they came home to their dining room furniture and family pictures completely swapped. The family with three girls had pictures now of the three boys on their walls and vice versa.
As much as he loved fun, however, Roger had his priorities clear. He was the consummate gentleman and his love for his children was a constant for him. On those nights when he was scheduled to close the drug store, he would make a point to come home and eat dinner with the family before he headed back to the store to close it up for the evening.
Also, as anyone who frequented Baylor Drug could tell you, Roger didn’t like to throw anything away. That carried over to his home life as well. Not that long ago he and his daughter, Penny Ann, were cleaning out an old storage shed behind the house and they found quite a bit of leftover paint and chemicals that they knew they were not going to need. Penny tried to explain that these days you couldn’t just throw away things like that, that there were rules around these things. No matter to Roger, he had her drive him around the neighborhood and surrounding area to find any workers out working and then would offer them the paint. If they said “yes” to one can, he would make them take at least two.
Roger had many sides to him. A passion he shared with his good friend Rufus Spain was reciting poetry from memory, often while playing golf no less. And though it’s already been said, it’s just not a complete picture without again mentioning the unwavering commitment to this church and the ways his spirit and his creativity, his living out of his faith, have literally been part of the foundation here.
No life is perfect, of course. No one either. Roger had his faults just as we all do. Beyond that though the last few years were not years to delight in like so many of his previous years had been. Declining health and the terrible journey of Alzheimer’s left him much more reliant on others than he would have ever liked to be, though it also showed the fruits of the lifelong friendships he had built. In particular these last few years he has relied on his daughter, Penny Ann, for help and support and she untiringly gave it.
Before she died, Roger’s wife, Penny, requested that at her memorial we read the Romans passage with which we’re all so familiar. “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God, neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor principalities, nor heights nor depths, nor anything else in all creation.” It seemed only fitting that we read it on this day as well. It’s big language, but it it’s the truth we remind ourselves of today and it is our assurance—That this one whom we loved is now himself held safe and embraced in love. That in the mystery of heaven he is now healed and whole again and reunited with his lifelong love.
Though there is much grace in a body that suffered so much finally being at peace, those of you who knew Roger throughout much of his life probably have a hard time picturing him resting. It’s not something he did much during his life. And it’s hard sometimes not to think that we don’t just make heaven into what we hope it will be. But somehow I don’t think rest was Roger’s idea of heaven. Instead maybe he’s organizing something, tinkering with something or maybe just enjoying one of Penny’s famous plays, flavoring up the place in some way.
Whatever shape this “rest” he has found takes, one thing is certain—that the God who walked alongside him during his years of service to this church, to students at Baylor, to his friends and family, and to all of those whose paths crossed his is the God who holds him now in healing and in love. Thanks be to God.
This sermon has been taken directly from what was delivered in worship. Therefore the style of expression is more of spoken English than written.
III. The Ministry of Roger Edens to Lake Shore Baptist Church
Sharlande Sledge
One afternoon about ten years ago as I was leaving Roger and Penny’s house, Roger asked, “Anything I can do for you? If there’s anything I can do at church, let me know.” His helpfulness knew no end.
Sunday afternoon, I returned to the church after visiting Roger at Wesley Woods. When I pulled in the driveway, my eyes started playing tricks on me. I could see Roger, sitting on the ground near Bishop Drive, tinkering with the sprinkler system that always seemed to need more attention than a newborn baby. I could see Roger and Penny, Sam and Helen Hastings, and Jean and George Williams walking down the sidewalk after worship the morning I snapped their picture for the church directory. And there Roger was, shaking his head as he straightened the “no parking” sign to its standing position after I backed over it and flattened it into the ground. Roger always believed the staff should park on the street and not take up parking places in the driveway — or run over the “no parking” sign.
I walked into my office and looked back outside. Those of us with windows overlooking the front lawn, with air-conditioned offices and computers and Diet Cokes, had front-row seats for watching Roger do the hands-on work of ministry. Sunday I pictured Roger’s red truck or red car — whatever red vehicle he had at the time — pulling up to the curb, and, no more than three minutes later, Rufus Spain or Bruce Neatherlin, arriving for a high-level street-side meeting, usually about a building and grounds dilemma and likely involving the sprinkler system.
I looked out the window again and saw him loading Penny Ann’s car with Meals on Wheels lunches and filling the back of his truck with Christmas presents from our missions tree; he always asked to take the gifts to Woodland Springs Nursing Home. I saw him turning on the water after supper on Wednesday nights in July, so the children could run through the sprinklers.
There was Roger in the office, hot and dirty, taking a break from mowing the lawn and asking if we had anything sweet to eat. I pictured Roger in his Sunday best, sitting on the bench outside the sanctuary before worship, standing up on his cranky knees in the presence of female company as long he was able, giving hugs and kisses and handshakes to everyone. I thought about one Friday last spring, while Penny Ann was in the kitchen preparing Meals on Wheels, when Roger and I sat on that same bench and talked about his funeral and his being ready to go. I thought about the countless geraniums, struggling to survive in the shade outside the door, that thrived when the went home to Roger’s back porch. Every inch of this church, inside and out, is touched with Roger’s fingerprints.
What an interesting vocation it is . . . this vocation called ministry. Some of us preach and write talk about verses like “true love that shows itself in action,” verses about “love being patient and kind.” The well from which we draw would not be nearly so deep if we couldn’t look out the window and see people like Roger doing ministry, living out their faith in the practical things of daily life — with the shovels and the clay pots and Christmas gifts and parking signs and sacks of food.
Our pastors at Lake Shore knew Roger at different stages in his life. Some knew him nearly fifty years ago, when he was a charter member of Lake Shore, or when he and Sam Hastings and Bill Bellinger donned angel wings for Penny’s musical, Merry Poppins, for the 40th anniversary celebration. Those of us who came after Roger retired from Baylor Drug knew Roger as our on-site “Minister of Anything You Need Done,” always serving however he could . . . until Penny called him home to lunch.
All of Lake Shore’s former pastors had a word of gratitude for Roger’s life.
Bill Tolar
I remember Roger Edens with great fondness and appreciation for his role in starting Lake Shore Baptist Church and the wonderful times Floye and I had with the Edens family.
Rhea Gray
In a world which has an over-abundance of takers and a scarcity of givers, Roger was one of the true givers, a prolific mediator of God’s unconditional and self-giving love and a splendid illustration of what God intended human beings to be. He was a genuinely good and caring man and a dear and treasured friend to me as well as to more other pilgrims across his many years and spheres of influence than any of us can fully know. I join you and all these other fellow pilgrims in giving gratitude to God for his life and love.
Deryl Fleming
I remember Roger as a hospitality Hall-of-Famer. If class is being at ease with both kings and commoners, Roger had it. He was exceedingly generous and consistently cheerful. I am grateful my life intersected with his for almost twelve years.
Richard Groves
The memory that comes to mind comes from my graduate school days rather than my days as pastor. I recall spending many an afternoon curled up in one of the booths in Roger’s establishment on the corner next to Tidwell (where the BSU is now) reading, or perhaps talking about deep (theology) or not so deep (football) matters with classmates. Roger would come by periodically and “grumpily” ask if we wanted to buy more than the single cup of coffee we had been nursing for an hour. Years later, he told me one reason he went out of business was because “you cheap students” wouldn’t buy more than a cup of coffee. I hope that was just his way of teasing. Roger provided a human presence that is sorely missing in most institutions of higher learning that I know about.
Roger Paynter
Roger was waiting at the house for us when we brought Grayson home from Buckner’s after his adoption. He handed me a Baylor baseball cap with a $100 bill tucked in the lining and a note that said “this will be the beginning of his going ot Baylor fund.”
Nathan Stone
I think of three things about Roger. 1. I’ll always remember the twinkle in his eye. He was a jolly man, and I think of the line “His eyes how they sparkle” like Santa in “The Night Before Christmas.” 2. He didn’t love Lake Shore; he adored it. 3. Roger was ever-present. On off-hours, he’d be here doing something. If I could make magic I would bronze him riding the lawn mower on the front lawn of the church.
He was an action-man.
Brett Younger
Before we moved to Waco, my idea of a good neighbor was someone who waved when you drove past, owned no dogs, and left you alone. Shortly after we moved into our house on Charboneau Drive, a big storm knocked over a couple of trees and lots of branches in our backyard. I surveyed the damage and realized this was going to be a huge job far beyond both my capabilities and the strength of my back. I was looking in the phone book under tree removal, trying to figure out who to call, why I heard a chain saw crank up. Roger was, quite uninvited, in our back yard cutting up limbs and carrying them to the curb. He was forty-seven years older than I, but I spent the morning trying in vain to keep up.
Roger loved taking care of us and loved it when my children showed up at his back door. Some people express their love with words and some show their love by mowing a church lawn in need of cutting or fixing an oven door for a mechanically-challenged family. Roger did both. He loved hugs and smiles and with expressions of care that often led to sweat. He loved being a good neighbor.
This week in our church newsletter, Catherine Davenport told one of our favorite Roger stories. “One day the spotlights in the sanctuary needed to be replaced and Roger chased down a Waco fire truck and asked the firemen to do the job. Before we knew it, there were three fire trucks parked outside and fifteen firemen with ropes and ladders [‘I counted them!’ Catherine said] in the sanctuary. Thanks to Roger, the lights got fixed!” Last night Catherine said, “I honestly don’t know how we would survived without Roger handling all the things he did for us for those years after he retired. We couldn’t have made it.”
Catherine’s story reminds me of the time I saw a ladder standing outside the entrance to the church. I walked out the front door and didn’t see anyone, but I heard voices on the roof. I looked up to see Roger, Rufus, and George Williams. They were fixing the roof, they said. This was about seven years ago, so Roger would have been – oh, maybe eighty-five. Catherine and I went back inside because we couldn’t bear to watch them get from the roof back to the ladder which was at last three feet below them. But . . . hey . . . maybe they saved the church a little money. Penny Ann said that often in the last couple of years she’d drive her dad around the edge of the playground, and he would point out slats in the fence that needed to be fixed.
Rufus tells about the time when our lawn mower needed repairing, Roger found out it would cost $35 for the folks at John Deere to pick up it up and take it to their shop. So Rufus and Roger met at the church before daylight to load the broken mower onto Rufus’ flatbed. In the predawn hours, before Waco traffic got really hectic, ministers Spain and Edens saved the church $35 by driving our mower slowly across town to get it repaired.
Many of the responses to the e-mail we sent out about Roger’s death were from teenagers or young adults who grew up at Lake Shore and cannot imagine this church without him. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Roger was a grandfatherly presence in their lives, and they loved him and Penny. Some of the “children” I heard from were in the fifth grade when we took baskets of Easter eggs over their Sunday School teachers, Sam and Helen Hastings. But Sam and Helen weren’t home. Roger was there, taking care of the yard. He had the grand idea of floating dozens of plastic eggs on top of the pool and hiding the rest around the yard. Sam and Helen found Easter eggs for years to come!
One summer morning when our first-third grade Helping Hands needed to go the Caritas Garden to pick tomatoes, Roger offered help. His job was to transport a huge cooler of ice water to sustain the children through the morning. When our caravan arrived at garden, Roger was doubled over with laughter when he got out of his truck. Four boys popped up from the bed of the truck, covered in water. “They had a bath!” Roger told me, as excited as the children. We didn’t have any water to drink — but Don & Kristi, Brett & Carol, Gary and Beth– they really had a good time!
As active as Roger was, he recognized the times to be still. How often I saw him sitting in hospital waiting rooms for hours. And he sat with his good friend and neighbor, Jim Parsons, every time he went to the hospital. By his quiet example in difficult times, Roger taught me so much about showing up being the greater part of ministry. He sat. He waited. He kept company. He was a faithful presence. When times were hard, he wouldn’t have been anywhere else.
Last Sunday our gospel lesson was the story of the four friends who carried their friend to Jesus, each taking a corner of the paralyzed man’s blanket. I told the congregation “I looked around the edges of the sanctuary and see so many of you who lifted a corner of the pallet for Roger the past few years. You sat by him on Wednesday nights and on the bench out in the hall. You walked him to the car. When he was still living at home, you took him to lunch or to a meeting at Baylor. When Roger moved to Meadowlands, you visited him. When he moved to Wesley Woods, you continued to visit him, even when he could no longer call your name, even this week when he is closer to the healing from the terrible disease that has captured him.
Even this morning, you lift a corner of his pallet through prayer for his peaceful passing into eternal life.”
And how did Lake Shore learn to do those things? To care for each other. To be helpful to our neighbors and friends. To be present. One way we learned was from our teacher Roger.
Mother Teresa said, “God doesn’t call us to great things, but small things with great love.” For Roger, no job was too small. Finding the right size box.
Being Santa Claus at the Family Self-Sufficiency Christmas party. Moving a table down the hall. Hanging a picture. Taking flowers to a nursing home after a funeral. Handing out worship bulletins. Pulling out the chair for the person sitting by him at Wednesday night supper. In a world driven by speed, money, and size, Roger’s ministry was about coffee cups, lawn mowers, and fence slats — the nuts and bolts of ministry, literally.
“Be doers of the word,” . . .James writes, in his epistle, “not hearers only.” Don’t just “hear” the gospel. “Do” the gospel. Do it early in the morning and in the cool of the evening.. Do it wherever there’s a need. Do it for the child who likes to run through the sprinklers, for the youth learning to drive the riding lawn mower for the elderly person in a nursing home who still likes to eat cookies in the afternoon.
I will always hear Roger’s voice asking, “Anything you need me to do today?”
Surely, it’s a question God would want echoed from each of us for many years to come: “God . . . anything you need me to do today?”