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Thursday, June 30, 2022

Why Are You Not Evil? A Humanist Perspective on Ethics, By my friend Ross Henry

 

Why Are You Not Evil? A Humanist Perspective on Ethics.

     A Discourse given at the Northwoods Unitarian Universalist Society by The Reverent Ross Hamilton Henry on July 16, 2006]

 

Reading # 1 From The End of Faith by Sam Harris, Subtitled Religion Terror and the Future of Reason.

 

A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet, our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous.

     While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it. Clearly, it must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith. 

     No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstances. No personal god need be worshipped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish.

     The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this.[i]

 

Reading # 2

Epictitus the former Greek slave turned philosopher said:

Every matter has two handles, only one of which will bear taking hold of. If thy brother sin against thee, lay not hold of the matter by this, that he has sinned against thee. But rather, lay hold of it by this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate; and if you do so you will have taken hold of the handle that will bear handling.[ii]

 

Why Are You Not Evil? A Humanist Perspective on Ethics.

 

OPENING WORDS: I was asked to speak to you today on the subject of ETHICS and was pressed for a title for my talk a couple of weeks ago. So, I chose the title, “Why Are You Not Evil?” considering that if you include the word ETHICS in the title of a talk, most people start to fall asleep immediately, I thought this would make a snapper title. Most people find Evil more interesting than Ethics. 

     I would also like to add in these opening remarks that I am a Humanist Minister and the words you hear this morning are from a non-theistic perspective. I think that most people realize, when they enter the doors of a Unitarian Universalist church that they are likely to encounter some unorthodox views.

      That is going to happen today.

      However, nothing that I say is meant to insult or denigrate anyone’s strongly held beliefs nor am I hostile to people who hold theistic beliefs. I realize that there are many good people who are theists and there are many whose ethics are almost identical to my own except for that one difference of opinion on the ultimate source of those ethics.

     Many people do not realize that some of the world’s major religions such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism do not have, belief in a god as part of their ethical system. Doubt or skepticism or atheism, is a respectable tradition that has existed since the dawn of history.

      I realize that it may seem odd to some, that a person who does not believe in god would be asked to speak from the pulpit of a Church; however, I believe that just because Atheists do not believe in god does not mean that we cannot be religious, in the most liberal sense of that word.

      My Oxford American dictionary defines religion as the Quest for the Values of the ideal life. My Funk and Wagnalls says that Religion is the attitudes constituting man’s relation ship with the powers and principles of the Universe. I consider myself a secular religious Humanist under these definitions, for my Humanist ethical journey requires that I search for those values and relate to those principles. I base my search on my observations of the natural world and believe that the word supernatural is a contradiction in terms. The Natural World encompasses all that is.

     Of course, we all love a good story. I am a great fan of Mythology and of science fiction and I frequently enter into that state that Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the willing suspension of disbelief, in order to enjoy the fanciful world of the human imagination. I remind myself once the adventure of imagination is over, that it is time to, once again, begin to deal with events in the world of reality. So I un-suspend my disbelief and reactivate my skepticism concerning claims of miraculous supernatural events like time travel, spoon bending, sawing people in half, walking on water, virgin births, and resurrections from the dead. My ethics requires that I encourage others to do so as well and to remind people of the comment of a famous Unitarian, P.T. Barnum. He said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The lesson in this is don’t be one.

     The philosopher David Hume has said that once a thing has actually happened in the real world, it can no longer be considered supernatural. It must then be reclassified as natural. Of course, many things are reported to have happened that actually never happened. And there are many wonderful things that happen every day that seem almost miraculous: the birth of a child, a beautiful sunrise and the dawning of each new day, these things are wonderful, but are all governed by the mundane miracle of the existence of our universe and the discoverable laws that govern its functioning. Carl Sagan has said that the greatest mystery of all is this: Why is there something rather than nothing? This is a mystery that neither science nor religion is likely to ever explain completely. 

 

SERMON BEGINS HERE

     This talk is about Ethics of the non-theistic variety, the kind that Humanists and most other Unitarian Universalists follow, where, as Kurt Vonnegut has said, we try to be decent human beings without the fear of punishment or hope of reward after we are dead. 

     Of course, there is not enough time in a Sunday morning service to give an exhaustive course on Ethics. Millions of words have been dedicated to that topic by thousands of philosophers and pundits. But, here are a few condensed ideas from some of those who have written on the topic.

     Urakagina, probably the world’s first philosopher was an ancient king of Babylon around 5,000 years ago. The oldest Ethical admonition on record is something he inscribed on a stone pillar: “It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak.” This is something we do not see much of in our current administration with tax cuts for the wealthy and automatic pay raises for a congress that resists raising the minimum wage to a level that will give workers a living wage in this economy.

     Among the Ancient Greeks, there is Euclid of Megara, who lived back in the 300’s BCE. He wrote the textbook on Plane Geometry that is still in use today. He formed the Megarian School of philosophy and said that although “the good” may be called wisdom, god, or reason it is all one. “Good,” he said, “is the final secret of the universe, which can only be revealed by logical inquiry.”   

     Spinoza in 1674 said: “The good that we should seek for others is the good that we desire for ourselves.” He was, in fact, a pantheist, who identified the universe itself as an infinite sacred substance, which he equated with the idea of God as ‘that which there is nothing greater than.’ However, he did not believe that this substance could be petitioned to aid individual human beings. He is perhaps one of the most ethical men who ever lived. He was always tolerant toward his fellow beings who were not so tolerant toward him. His own Jewish community excommunicated him and forbade his fellow Jews to speak to him. Yet, he made this statement:

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions but to understand them.

 Although he was offered grants of money and honored positions by royalty on several occasions, he turned them all down, realizing that to accept them meant that he would not be free to express his own opinions. He preferred to continue to make his living as a lens grinder and to speak his mind and express his philosophy honestly. The world of philosophy is much richer because of that. Albert Einstein was a great fan of Spinoza.    

     Ambrose Bierce in the late 1800s said, “To pray is to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.”

 

   

     Many people make the assumption, in this multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation, that if you are not a Christian, you are immoral and if your ethics are not based on belief in the traditional concept of a creator god who answers prayers and intervenes in the world on behalf of his petitioners you are evil.

    My thesis is this: I have not found this to be true. 

     We Humanists and most of us Unitarian Universalists refute that unwarranted, baseless and intolerant assumption.

     Arthur C. Clarke said, “One of the greatest tragedies of human history is the hijacking of morality by religion.”

     He thought that, although supernatural religion may have had a function in the past in enforcing good behavior on primitive people the association is now counterproductive. “Yet,” he says, “at the very moment when the two ideas should be decoupled, sanctimonious nitwits are calling for a return to morals based on supernatural beliefs.”

     Many people also put forward the claim that this is a Christian nation and that the founding fathers and founding mothers of these United States were all Christians. Therefore, they believe that our Ethics should be based on the teachings of the bible and in particular, on the 10 Commandments. Many see no problem in posting them in our government buildings and having our government in effect endorse one particular religious sect over all others. This myth of the U.S. as a Christian nation is another mistaken assumption. 

The founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism is a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a deity who created a universe that operated by natural law. They believed that the god of the Deists created the universe and then left it to operate on its own. This deistic god, did not intervene to alter natural phenomena; it gave no supernatural revelations to human agents…

     Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, the divinity of or the resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or that the bible was divinely inspired. These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in” The Age of Reason” Other important founding fathers that espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe.[iii] John Adams was a Unitarian.

     Fundamentalist Christians are currently working overtime to convince the American public that the founding fathers intended to establish this country on biblical principles; history simply does not support their view. The men mentioned above were in no sense Bible-believing Christians. Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was fiercely anti-cleric. In a letter to Horatio Spafford in 1814, Jefferson said, "In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon.[iv]

 

     We are once again, in this country, in midst of an age where the alliance of Priest and Despot, or rather Preacher and Politician has been forged.

    Ethics has taken a back seat to ‘Politics-as-usual,’ and the fundamentalist allies of the party in power are claiming that their ideas of morality should determine the values of our nation. 

     The philosopher C. S. Peirce has pointed out a subtle difference between the concepts of Ethics and of Morality.

“We all know what Morality is,” he said. “It is believing what you were brought up to believe.

Conservatism is thinking what you were brought up to think, not trusting one's own reasoning powers. Hence, Morality is Conservatism.

     To be a moral human is to obey the traditional maxims of your community without hesitation or discussion.”

 

     Therefore, ethics is, by the definition of these moralists, immoral. For Ethics requires that truth claims be subjected to the tests of reason & logic.

     The question I am addressing here today is this: is it ethical to remain silent, out of some sort of misguided idea that all religions are sacred and thus not open to normal criticism even when they promote nonsensical views of reality and sometimes even advocate hateful and intolerant doctrines.

     My ethics reject the idea that anyone’s religion is sacrosanct and should be above criticism. I agree with the philosopher Daniel Dennett who says in his latest book, “Breaking the Spell,” that it is time that we begin to examine religion as a natural phenomenon.

Here are his words:

It is high time that we subject religion, as a global phenomenon, to the most intensive multidisciplinary research we can muster, calling on the best minds on the planet. Why? Because religion is too important for us to remain ignorant about. It affects not just our social, political, and economic conflicts, but the very meaning we find in our lives. For this very reason, it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about it.

     Religious extremists are attacking the secular institutions that are the basis of our democracy with the stated goal of changing our Secular Democracy into a Theocracy. My Humanistic ethics requires me to speak out against those who would tear down the wall of separation that Thomas Jefferson and the founders of our nation erected. Our nations chief executive continues to erode this sacred principle of church state separation by distributing our tax dollars to the religious organizations that he sees as his political base?

     Some people ask, what harm is there in being deluded about reality or believing in a supernatural being who, we are assured, has a plan for our lives so that we don’t have to have a plan. “What is the harm,” they say, “as long as it provides comfort to those who hold those beliefs.”

Here are a few ethical reasons why I believe there is harm:

 

1. It wastes time & money.

2. It diverts attention and resources away from possible realistic solutions to real human problems.

3. It fosters distrust of science by discouraging healthy essential skepticism.

4. It undercuts the desirable modernization of cultures.

5. It sustains immaturity.

6. It falsely imputes expertise to charlatans, like John Edward who claims to speak to dead people, and Pat Robertson who claims to speak for god.

7. It inhibits the practice of logical thinking.

8. It Encourages fraud.

9. It Overvalues triviality.[v]

     I believe that our ethics require us to begin to develop educational systems that teach critical thinking skill to our children that will help them to achieve the maturity of mind necessary to be able to see beyond these naive beliefs that now permeate our culture.

    I am currently the chair of the recruiting committee for The Humanist Institute. Over the past 3 years, they have sent me to three or four conventions per year to enlist students in that Secular Seminary. We have now graduated over 100 Humanist leaders who are now out there in the world in leadership positions in their communities preaching the gospel of Humanism to a world that desperately needs that message in these troubled times.

     This summer I was absent from Northwoods for several Sundays attending the American Humanist Association Conference in Tampa Florida, the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in St. Louis and I have just returned from the American Ethical Union Assembly in Chicago. The A.E.U. is a nontheistic religious society that bases its religion on Ethics. While I was there, in Chicago, I gathered some material on the topic I am speaking on today. Each of the three organizations I mentioned above has a list of statements that expresses the ethical principles by which they operate. The AHA has its Humanist Manifesto; The UUA has its Seven Principles, which I am sure you have all committed to memory so I do not have to cite them here. But I would like to take a moment here at the closing to mention something Felix Adler, the Ethical Union founder, called the supreme Ethical rule. Here it is:

“We are committed To elicit the best in oneself and in others by drawing out the unique difference that constitutes each self.”

Their by-words are “DEED BEFORE CREED.”

Here are some of their core values stated in plain language for their young people: 

*ETHICS IS MY RELIGION.

*EVERY PERSON IS IMPORTANT AND UNIQUE.

*I CAN LEARN FROM EVERYONE.

*I AM PART OF THIS EARTH; I CHERISH IT AND ALL THE LIFE UPON IT.

*I LEARN FROM THE WORLD AROUND ME BY USING MY SENSES, MY MIND, AND MY FEELINGS.

*I AM A MEMBER OF THE WORLD COMMUNITY, WHICH DEPENDS ON THE COOPERATION OF ALL PEOPLE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE.

*I CAN LEARN FROM THE PAST TO BUILD FOR THE FUTURE.

* I AM FREE TO QUESTION.

* I AM FREE TO CHOOSE WHAT I BELIEVE.

* I ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY CHOICES AND ACTIONS.

* I STRIVE TO LIVE MY VALUES.     

These final words are FROM JENNIFER MICHAEL HECHT’S BOOK- DOUBT: A HISTORY. I think that they provide us with a truly ethical perspective from the standpoint of skepticism.

. “The religions are all beautiful and horrible, filled with feasts, sacrifices, miracles, wars, songs, lamentations, stained glass, onion matzos, and intense communal joy…. The religions have also been the energy behind much generosity, compassion and bravery. The story of doubt, however, has all this too. It also has a relationship to the truth that is rigorous and sober–… and it prizes this approach to truth above the delights of belief. Doubt has its own version of comforts and challenges. From doubt’s beginnings, it has advised that if you create your own desires and model them after what you actually experience, you can be happy. Accept that we are animals, but ones with special problems, and that the world is natural…. Devote yourself to wisdom, self-knowledge, friends, family, and give some attention to community, money, politics, and pleasure. Know that none of it brings happiness all that consistently. It’s best to stay agile, to keep an open mind…. In a funny way, the one thing you can really count on is doubt. Expect change. Accept death. Enjoy life. As Marcus Aurelius explained, the brains that got you through the troubles you have had so far will get you through any troubles yet to come.[vi]

CLOSING WORDS: G.K. Chesterton said the mark of a good religion is if you can make a joke about it. So I will close with the great skeptic Voltaire’ closing joke. When on his deathbed he was admonished by a priest to renounce Satan and all his minions. Voltaire replied: “Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies.”

     We living humans can and do love the idea of ethical heroes of thought like Euclid, Spinoza, and Einstein, and heroes of compassion like Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth. But Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth can no longer love you; they died, one in old age, one killed cruelly by unjust men. However, your fellow human beings, humanists who live among you in the mundane universe, whose intention is to make the concrete world a good and loving community for all humans, can, and many of them do love you. They do fervently intend that outcome and do arduously work toward that end.  

 

 

             

 

 



[i] The End of Faith, Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. 2004

[ii] Epictetus, Encheiridion, verse 43, Old father translation.

 

[iii] From an essay by Ferrell Till on the Internet Infidels web page.

[iv] Ibid Ferrell Till

[v] Robert Tapp, Dean of The Humanist Institute

[vi] From Doubt, A History by Jennifer Michael Hecht. P.493

Sunday, May 2, 2021

Tragedy In Heber Springs

It began as a lovely Friday in April, 1946 at Heber Springs, Arkansas.  Twenty six year old Viola Martin had baked a chocolate cake and two dozen oatmeal cookies earlier in the day. When husband Rufo returned to work on the Vincent Farm after a lunch of cornbread and beans with wild onions, she quickly washed up the dishes and took her two daughters on a walk to Spring Park, a short distance west from their small shotgun frame house on a sharecropper lot at Vincent Farms where Rufo had been employed since they moved down to Heber from Berryville a year earlier.  It was as sunny afternoon but Viola had the girls wear the sweaters that Grandma Walls had sent down from Green Forrest for Christmas.  There was a soft cool breeze from the south.  A mother never knew what to expect on a day in early April.

There were plans for a Saturday picnic at the park and fishing along the Little Red River.  Sunday dinner would be with local relatives after church.  Viola had caught, plucked and cleaned a chicken in the back yard, gathered some potatoes and onionfrom the cellar and taken a jar of green beans from the shelf that she had canned last summer.  Viola was well prepared for the weekend ahead. But this Friday afternoon had been too nice to be spent indoors with those energetic young girls.  Dolias was six and kid sister, Angelean, not quite three years old.

After an hour of fun in Spring Park, dark clouds gathered and a chill wind whipped up out of the northwest.  Viola called to the girls and coaxed them away from the teeter-totter where they were playing with some neighbor kids.  

Walking out of the park along the dirt road on the east end of town where Main Street bent northeast and became Wilburn Road, Viola saw a neighbor lady and stopped by the road to visit.  Suddenly a gust of wind blew Angelean’s red scarf off her head onto the road.  Angelean dashed onto the roadway after the scarf.  To Viola’s horror, a logging truck was baring down on Angelean.  Instinctively, Viola leapt out onto the road and threw Angelean back.  In doing so, Viola slipped and fell under the truck as it veered to avoid hitting her.  It was too late.  Viola lay crumpled in the road bleeding and covered in dirt.  The girls shrieked and cried.  The horrified neighbor called for her teenage son to run up to the Vincent Farm and find Rufo as she ran into her house to call an ambulance.

The ambulance from Estelle Hospital arrived 10 minutes later.  Dolais lay in the dirt beside the lifeless body of her mother,weeping inconsolably.  The neighbor lady held trembling Angelean as others had gathered around aghast at the tragedy before them, some praying loudly, others screaming and weeping.  The truck driver was upset, pacing about and looking for solace himself.  The ambulance driver and his medic were not sure what to do.  Viola’s body was in such a twisted state that they were afraid to move her.  Red faced and bewildered, Rufo came running onto the scene.  He immediately gathered Viola up in his arms, crawled up into the ambulance with her, and commanded the driver to get them to the hospital.

At the hospital, nurses and a doctor worked to assess Viola’s condition.  Viola had suffered multiple fractures, lacerations, and head trauma.  Although the medical team did what they could, she never regained consciousness.  By the fourth day, infections and swelling of her brain had taken their toll.  On Tuesday morning, April 10, 1946, Viola Martin, a loving wife and mother, was pronounced dead at Estelle Hospital.  

Word was sent to Green Forest bearing the sad news to Viola’s family there as plans were being made with a Heber Springs funeral home and the family’s local Baptist pastor for her funeral and burial the following Friday afternoon.  After the services, a grief stricken Rufo was consoled by local friends and family as the Walls relatives offered to take the girls up to Green Forest in northwest Arkansas.  They felt this might help Viola’s grieving family to heal and would offer comfort to Dolias and Angelean while their father dealt with his personal loss and his own future.

The summer and fall of 1946 was a saperiod of time for the two girls but Grandma Walls did her best to make them feel welcome in their mother’s home community and close knit family.  In time, Rufo met a somewhat younger woman, Helen Crawford.  She was attractive with black hair, brown eyes, and an enticing figure.  They were married in December, 1946 at White, Arkansas.   In Heber Springs, they rented an upstairs apartment in an old house across the street General Baptist Church.  Rufo and Helen enjoyed some time there as newlyweds.  Soon, Rufo longed to have Dolias and Angelean with him again in Heber Springs.  In April, 1947, just over a year after their mother’s death, Rufo drove 140 miles up to Green Forrest and brought the girls back home to Heber Springs.  Heading down Highway 65, the girls were very happy and looking forward to starting a new life with their father and his new wife.

It wasn’t long before that happy dream proved to be elusive.  The beauty and excitement Rufo had seen in Helen began to fade as Helen assumed the routine day to day role of housewife and step-mother of the two young girls.  

Dolias, about age 7, needed special attention due to physical and emotional conditions that had affected her for some time.  It is not certain if some of this was present at birth or if the severe fever she suffered around age two was the primary cause.  Dolias had beautiful dark eyes, natural curly hairan olive complexion, and lovely full lips.  However, a spinal condition caused a slight hump high on her back.  This was often a source of teasing and insecurity for her and may have contributed to her frequent flashes of anger.

However, nearly 4 year old Angelean was a different story.  She was strong and energetic yet somewhat withdrawn, often playing quietly with a doll or a neighborhood kitten.  Local friends and relatives often commented about how much she had grown the past year and how she resembled her beautiful mother.  A child her age required a lot of supervision. Helen may have found it distracting to answer frequent questions of why to satisfy the rich curiosity of Angelean’s growing intellect. 

This disruption to their brief honeymoon life soon revealed the truly darker side of Helen’s personality.  She was no longer the center of attention in Rufo’s life.  In reaction to this change in status, Helen resorted instinctively by striking out against the one she felt most threatened by, the one with whom she fought for Rufo’s attention; Angelean.  Her resentment grew toward the child who reminded Rufo and others of the beloved mother and former wife to Rufo.  As her resentment grew, Helen began to dole out harsh punishments to Angelean for typical childhood behaviors.

At first the harshness was known only within the apartment while Rufo was at work.  Before long, Rufo began to feel the effects of Helen’s resentment when he was at home with the family.  He observed the insincere ritual that Helen demanded each night in which the girls were required to kiss her goodnight before going to bed.  He noted that on one occasion Helen was angry and refused to allow the goodnight kisses, sending them off to bed without a goodnight kiss.  To his dismay, Rufo soon heard Helen go to the girls’ bedroom to angrily spank and chastise them for not kissing her goodnight. Rufo also became the target of Helen’s angry outburstsand grew increasingly concerned at the mean spirited way she disciplined the girls for the slightest perceived misbehavior.

Soon the harsh discipline escalated into outright physical abuse.  Helen had lost control of her own emotions; leading her to beat the girls physically to such an extent that neighbors could hear what was going on.  The neighbors began to talk among themselves about the horrible things they were hearing from the Martin’s apartment.  One day a neighbor, by the name of Wincel Lacy, saw Angelean sitting in the yard under a tree. Mrs. Lacy went outside to check on Angelean and asked her to come inside out of the heat.  But Angelean told her no, that she had to sit right there and not get up.  Mrs. Lacy told Angelean it was okay and that she would see to it.  As they walked up onto the porch, Mrs. Lacy was shocked to see black and blue marks on Angelean’s legs.  This prompted what was likely the first time the abuse was reported to Rufo and to local authorities.  But it would not be the last.

Mrs. Hazel Jones, a neighbor and recent acquaintance of Helen, heard the angry voice of their step-mother chastising the girls almost daily.  The outbursts were often followed by the sounds of the girls being whipped.  The beatings were so loud at times that Mrs. Jones could hear them from her home, the second house away.

The abuse reached a critical point when Rufo arrived home from work one Saturday evening and found Angelean lying in bed with ablood stained bandage wrapped around her head.  Helen had boiled water and prepared a bath for Angelean.  But the water was steaming and Angelean, afraid of being burned, refused to get into the galvanized tub that sat on the kitchen floor.  Helen, who had been fixing supper, held the big hog knife in her hand.  In a fit of rage Helen swung the knife at little Angelean.  The sharp edge of the knife struck a glancing blow along the hairline separating a 3 inch portion of Angelean’s scalp from her skull.  Horrified and disgusted at this act of violence, Rufo demanded that Helen get out of the apartment and not return.  The permanent separation beganthe next day on Sunday, September 21, 1947

On October 6, 1947, Rufo filed for divorce from Helen in the Cleburne County Chaucery Court.  On the same date, Helen filed an Entry of Appearance and Waivers, determined not to submit to a deposition and requested she be restored to her former and maiden name of Helen Louise Crawford when the final decree would be entered.  The final divorce actions were completed on October 23, 1947.

With the help of his family and neighbors in Heber Springs, Rufo, Dolias, and Angelean experienced a brief holiday season as a small family unit that Christmas of 1947.  Finally there was peace on earth and peace at home. Another special woman appeared on their father’s arm soon after.  Rufo married Modean Jernigan on 1/22/1948.  This would be the beginning of a lasting and stable family.  Two years later, the family would add another daughter, Patsy.  The age difference between the two older girls and Patsy along with other family dynamics would see the girls’ lives move on in different directions.  But this new family unit was loving and strong, enduring through the many changes on the horizon.  

Rufo transitioned from sharecropping to retail operations when he went to work at Young’s Department Store in Heber Springs.  His military and C.C. Camp experience with store and supply management provided a solid foundation for the retail business he would pursue the rest of his life.  At last there was stability at home and the community was growing.  The scenic landscapes of historic Sugar Loaf would soon be transformed into one of Arkansas’ most popular recreation and tourist locations.  The beautiful Little Red River would be forever changed from the quiet fishing and boating stream long enjoyed by locals when construction of the Greer’s Ferry Dam began in 1959.  That project and the ensuing population growth would bring prosperity to Heber Springs and especially to the long suffering family of Rufo Martin.  In 1960, Rufo attained an important goal when he opened his own furniture store in town.  
This new status coupled with his natural leadership skills and supportive wife, provided a springboard that launched Rufo and Modean on the path to prominent community leadership roles.  

The new prosperity provided a much different school and life experience for Patsy.  She loved horses and was allowed to have one of her own.  She was very active, always on the go and popular at school, in church programs, and other social activities.

For Angelean, the transition of Rufo’s career was mainly a source of work and labor as she was expected to help him by working part-time.  When he started the furniture storeAngelean’s workload there became even more significant.  When she graduated from Heber Springs High School in 1961, she promptly went to Memphis and enrolled in Beauty College.  This would be her primary career work for many years before she parlayed her retail experience into a more rewarding career and her own business in the Pawn Shop industry.

Very soon after arriving in Memphis in 1961, Angelean fell in love and married.  To this brief marriage a daughter, Kim was born.  Her first marriage ended due to the husband’s mental illness. Her second marriage was to a man who liked to move frequently and often leave unsettled debts behind. They moved often during the early years but started a family.  There were two sons, Lance and Tommy.  Eventually the failure of her husband to consistently meet the financial and emotional needs of the family resulted in this marriage ending in divorce.  But Angelean’s strength of character, built through hard times of grief and abuse made her determined to make it on her own.  And she did just that. In time, she married a strong reliable man, Gene Fisher, who remained steady and loyal.

In Heber Springs, Dolias was well known by prominent professional families who relied on her kind steady nature and practical skills to provide child care and other household work.  Because of her sincere efforts in school, Dolias was allowed to walk with her graduating classmates and receive a complimentary certificate.  She later completed the GED certification.  Because she was ever dependent on the support of her parents, they too came to rely on her services at their home.  She cooked, cleaned and provided other important services for them in exchange for the shelter of their home and family support.

Sadly, in her late 30s, Dolias developed a form of cancer which would appear under the skin over various parts of her body and become horrible looking areas like dark moles.  Soon the cancer spread rapidly and took her life on 6/17/1978 at the age of 38.

As related to me by Angie Martin in 2021

James Middleton 

5/2/2021