Born on Route 66

By Bill and Brenda Evans

Call him Rocky. Silver hair, jeans, white button-down shirt…and a 1970 Chevy Monte Carlo SS, 454 Big Block, 360 horse. Black cherry. A shining beauty!

Born 73 years ago near Springfield, Illinois, along famous Route 66, Rocky Vernon likes his Monte Carlo, but inside his condo in Park Hills, Missouri, we saw his real love: the Lord and his family.

Rocky’s Bible was on the island counter where we settled down for coffee and conversation. To our left was a family photo gallery: a wall of pictures of Shirley, his wife of 42 years, who died three years ago, his two daughters, grandchildren, and parents.

We talked about the Lord, cars, the desert Southwest, motor homes, volunteering, and some life lessons he’s learned. One of the first things Rocky learned after he was saved at about 40 was that he could give up his Maximum Strength Maalox.

“I carried a jug of that stuff in my car. The biggest they made.” Rocky said. “I was in sales, then later a sales supervisor, but I absolutely dreaded sales calls, so I drank Maalox by the gallon. During three nights of lay testimonies in the church Shirley and I attended, I gave my heart to the Lord. Some time later, I had a big presentation in Kansas City, so I prayed, ‘Lord, help me do my best.’ It was a big deal, slide presentation, the whole thing. They introduced me and handed me a mic. It was dead. Then another mic, and it was dead, too. But I went on anyway. I never did pray for better success, and sales were no better after I got saved, but I had more success within. So I stopped carrying around those jugs of Maalox.”

“Eight years later, I knew I still wasn’t growing. Our daughter Cindy had a bad car accident, and that impacted me spiritually. Then Shirley and I were in Nashville to meet friends and attended an early morning worship service at The Donelson Fellowship. The Holy Spirit dealt with me. I was hungering. Something was not right. I knew I needed hard Bible preaching and teaching, not just the little moral lessons I’d been getting. When we got home, we found Fellowship Free Will Baptist Church. I’m a deacon there now and a co-Sunday School teacher with two other fellows.”

When Shirley was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, Rocky held to another ideal: treat women well, a lesson he learned as a small boy at a baseball game where he knocked down a brassy, young female first baseman. That day, his father taught him a better way to deal with females. He never forgot.

“Shirley was my woman” Rocky said. “I had always taken care of her and was determined to do that through her illness. She was an RN and showed me some things; so did home health. I was good with my hands, so I took care of her. The 5FU pump for chemo, all that. And when I botched it—like a colostomy episode in the shower—we laughed together. I’d rather talk about Shirley than myself, because she lived for 17 months with Stage 4 cancer and never complained. I don’t think I could do it.”

Rocky’s third life lesson is dogged determination: “I’m not afraid to try anything. I’m one of those jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none kind of fellows. My friend Ken Bailey and I tackle all kinds of projects for people who need help in our town. I was in sales, not building, but out in Yuma, Arizona, where we spent our winters, my landlord and I built a casa, a small daytime house with one large room, laundry room and bath, no bedroom.”

“And probably the highlight of our careers was eight years with Helping Hands, the Home Missions building program that Hap Gwartney headed up. We worked on 20 projects, usually two or three weeks long, sometimes three or four a year. The Lord just blessed us 10 times over what we gave. I learned that God has a remnant of people, redeemed ones, who want to help others.

“We had wonderful people, no foul words, just testimonies from mostly retired people working with their hands. We were in Oklahoma in April once—tons of rain and tornadoes all around. We were never touched. It was like we were already in Heaven.”

Shirley would try anything as well. During the winter of 2012, their two youngest grandsons, ages two and four, had planned to fly out to Arizona with their dad on his business trip, then drive back to Missouri with Rocky and Shirley in their motor home. All the while, Shirley was growing sicker and sicker and was on the couch or bed most of the time. “I wanted to cancel the plan,” Rocky said, “but she insisted, ‘Let’s do this.’” So the grandsons came, and the four of them spent eight days getting back to Missouri. Shirley entertained the four-year-old, and Rocky kept the two-year-old occupied and drove.

Another lesson Rocky has learned is to prepare for the future. More than a dozen years before Shirley’s death, they created a living trust to manage the distribution of their estate. They also took out a gift annuity at Free Will Baptist Foundation to benefit the Lord’s work and insure that Shirley would have lifetime income. “I always assumed I’d be the first to go,” he said, “and I wanted to be certain Shirley was taken care of.”

Beyond that, Rocky and Shirley prepared for their deaths in other ways. Rocky is a veteran, and so a few years before Shirley got sick, they decided to be buried at Missouri Veterans Cemetery in Jacksonville, Missouri. He explained: “We’d lived around the United States a lot, but both of us had some family near there. It’s 200 miles away from here, but if we believe God’s Word, she’s not there anyway.”

Having both financial and burial plans in place years ahead of time was a blessing. “We knew for almost two years that Shirley would not live, and we never dodged the issue. When she died, I called the funeral home and our pastor Wayne Phillips. That part was easy, because she was so sick the last two weeks that I had asked the Lord to take her home. At the end, she died peacefully. It was raining the day of her service, but it stopped for five minutes, and our grandsons brought her in, her nephew preached, and the girls and I gave eulogies. But let me tell you what the Lord made happen. On the 200-mile trip back here, the Lord sent us five rainbows. Our granddaughter Emma said, ‘Those rainbows mean Momo is with Jesus.’”

Settling the financial issues after Shirley’s death was easy because of their living trust. “Everything was done in a few days, and I kept the girls updated. I had seen on my mother’s side of the family what happens when there aren’t good financial plans made ahead. So we had everything in place—still do—and I keep the girls updated so there’ll be no turmoil.”

What other lessons has Rocky learned? That you are sometimes willing to drive 10 hours and 660 miles for a 454 Big Block, 360 horse shining beauty. That you are smart to invite only one grandchild at a time for an extended stay. That you can’t live in the past or for yourself. That you should walk three or four miles every morning. That you can pass along your love for Sprint car racing to a grandson if you take him to Knoxville, Iowa, so he sees the fast wings and open wheels for himself. That alongside Route 66 in the middle of Illinois was a good place to begin life…73 years ago.

About the Writers: Bill and Brenda Evans live in Ashland, Kentucky. Bill is former director of the Free Will Baptist Foundation and Brenda is a retired English teacher. Visit www.fwbgifts.org for more information on planned giving that benefits your favorite ministry.