After graduating from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1978, we received and accepted a call to serve as pastors of the Hettinger and Reeder, North Dakota United Churches of Christ. The two small churches were a great match for us and we served there for seven years. I learned a lot of important lessons in those towns. I made a lot of friends for life. Susan and I were job sharing, so I was technically working half time for the churches. I was active in Conference activities and served on several different Conference and regional committees. Our combined salary for that job was less than our health insurance premiums were when we retired, but we had enough to live well. Part of what made our ministry there work was that I had a variety of part-time jobs on the side. I drove a school bus, and for a time drove the activities bus, which was the bus that took the teams to out of town games, the band to competitions, and students on field trips to the state capitol. Perhaps my favorite part time job in those years was serving as the host of an early morning radio program. I turned on the transmitter, read the news, and played the records from 6 am to 9 am on weekdays and occasionally filled in on other shifts to cover for other members of the radio station team. KNDC was a small market, low power, community radio station. We read the birthdays of the people in our community, reported on school events and activities, and promoted local businesses in our advertisements.

The general manager of the Radio Station, Al McIntyre, was on the search committee that called us to serve the church. He served on a variety of different boards and committees during the time we were pastors. His family became ours. We were invited for Thanksgiving dinners and holiday celebrations. His children were just a bit younger than us. We watched them graduate from High School and move out into their first adult adventures. I walked over to their place when his oldest son purchased a used Corvette. We officiated at their daughter’s wedding and baptized his first grandchild. His wife was a nurse at the local hospital and administered my allergy shots in her kitchen so I didn’t have to go to the clinic and wait the mandatory time to make sure there was no reaction. I’d go over there just as Al was coming home from the radio station and we’d shoot the breeze while I waited. She was in attendance when our son was born. We are lifelong friends and get together when we are able. It worked for us to see them quite a bit when we lived in South Dakota. Al and Kaye are both nearing ninety, and have had some health issues, but remain basically well.

In the days when I worked at the Radio Station, I would finish up my shift and complete my logs while Al and his father Bill hosted a half hour talk show called TTO. TTO stood for “This, That, and The Other.” They discussed community events and news, offered a few political opinions, and interviewed guests from the community. At 9:30, that show would end and the morning drive show began. Al, Bill, and I would walk down to the City Cafe and have a cup of coffee. Most mornings there would be anywhere from six to a dozen church members in that cafe. We played games to see who would pay for the coffee.

Part of those morning coffee sessions was a fairly regular argument between me and local lawyer Tom Secrest. Tom served us by helping to complete the adoption of our daughter and he drew up our first wills. He was chairman of the North Dakota Republican Party. He and Al nominated me for appointment to the Governor’s Commission on Refugee Resettlement even though they both knew that I was a Democrat. I received the appointment and was involved in helping the state receive the waves of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia that came after the Vietnam War.

Tom and I could argue about almost every subject imaginable. One night we faced off in a debate in front of the local Toasmaster’s Club. The topic was “Resolved: The 55 mile per hour speed limit should be eliminated.” There was a nation-wide 55 mph speed limit in those days. Tom drew the affirmative. I blasted him with statistics on highway fatalities, brain injuries, insurance rates, and a host of other facts I had drawn up in my research. He responded with a libertarian tirade about over-reaching government. At the end of the evening I won the debate on points, but barely. Afterward, I told Tom he could have easily won had he pushed my argument to the extreme. If a 55 mph speed limit saves lives, why not lower it to 15 mph where there would be far fewer fatalities? He laughed and bought me a beer. In those days it was only barely acceptable for a minister to drink, and drinking in public was definitely not the norm. The gang at the cafe teased me about it for several weeks, and McIntyre brought it up years later. I didn’t lose my job as pastor over the deal. I never even got a comment from church leaders, which suited me.

After we moved from Hettinger, the editor of the newspaper died and a new person was brought into town to run the paper. Tony Bender became friends with some of the same gang I had known. Bill McIntyre passed away and eventually the TTO radio show became BS in the AM. The BS was for Bender and Secrest. The newspaper editor and the attorney joined Al McIntyre for a half hour of irreverent radio banter each morning. AM stood for more than the morning time slot, it was also a reference to Al McIntyre’s initials.

Yesterday, I read Tony’s column in the Fargo-Moorhead newspaper. It was a tribute to Tom Secrest, and a nod to Al McIntyre and some of our other Hettinger Friends. You can read his column by following this link. He told it straight and the memories flooded me. How fortunate I was to begin my career in a community of such wonderful people. Judging from the column, it was a great experience for Tony Bender, too.