October 21, 2002
Oklahoma BSU alums gather in Texas & thank God
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___GARLAND--While football fans crammed into the Cotton Bowl to cheer on the Oklahoma Sooners or the Texas Longhorns, a much smaller crowd donned the crimson and cream of OU and pulled into a quiet cul-de-sac in nearby Garland.
___They used the Texas-OU football game as an excuse to gather from both sides of the Red River and as far away as Colorado and Georgia to celebrate five decades of friendship and to thank God for a time and place that changed all their lives.
___They're Oklahoma alumni, but more importantly, veterans of the OU Baptist Student Union and members of First Baptist Church in Norman, Okla., from around 1949 to 1954.
___"We're all connected spiritually," Ed Jackson said of 50 or so friends who gathered at his home. "But what marvels me is we have kept together because we wanted to keep together."
___Explanations of their bond tumble out like testimonies at a tent meeting--one on top of the other, received with everything from raucous laughter to knowing nods and the occasional tear.
MAGGIE MALCOM, Ed Jackson and Don Staton embraced their past--and each other--at a reunion of Oklahoma University BSU alumni.
___"I was not a Christian when I went to OU," said Curt Floyd, now a member of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston. "What impressed me was Morning Watch --these Christian young people getting up early to pray."
___"We had spiritual leaders in each of the classes--guys and gals," added Jimell Badry, a music minister from Colorado Springs, Colo., who formerly served MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church in Irving. "Some of the gals could lead a devotion as well as any preacher."
___"BSU was our social life, too," noted Maggie Malcolm of Richardson. The young people encouraged each other in their Christian faith, but also genuinely enjoyed each other's company, she said.
___They talked, and names of "young people," now in their late 60s and 70s, spilled out--friends whose influence shaped their lives and others who came to know Jesus as Savior back then.
___"There was always an evangelistic spirit in BSU, but it was a lifestyle approach, not a Bible-thumping 'you're going to hell' thing," explained Jackson, retired staff member with the Baptist General Convention of Texas and member of First Baptist Church in Garland.
___The students at OU came under a dual influence, they said--BSU, but also First Baptist Church in Norman and its legendary pastor, Edgar "Preacher" Hallock.
___"To this day, when I hear 'prayer' or 'promises,' I think of Preacher Hallock," Jackson said.
___"When I have to make a big decision, I still go to the Bible and seek Scriptures of promises," Floyd agreed.
___Heads nodded, and then voices recounted Preacher Hallock stories, every one a testimony to the influence of a pastor well advanced in years who still made time for students and their quests for God's plan for their lives.
___The long-lasting impact on these lives reflects the power of BSU--now Baptist Student Ministry--to shape students' lives, especially when it teams with a local church to envelope them in God's love and Christian nurture, said Warren Woolf, OU's BSU director until 1950, later the BSU director at Georgia Tech and a longtime staff member at the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board.
___That impact is broad, said Reggie Kikugawa, a layman from Tulsa.
___"None of these people have had their picture on the cover of Time magazine, but they influenced the lives of many, many people," he said, describing how they all went on to serve in ministry or as active laypeople, touching countless lives, who, in turn, have influenced others. "OU's BSU has reached thousands and thousands of people today, and I'm so grateful."
___
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