CANDIDATING Chapter 224

Entrance to Canby from the West. We arrived from the east.

In Philosophy of Ministry class I was teaching a series about the candidating process when I got the second call from Daryl Dale about coming to Oregon to candidate as his replacement as the District Pastor of Christian Education. I turned him down flat the first time he called. There was no real discussion. 

Between the first and second call the school honored Rev. Murray Downey and Rev. Raymond Kincheloe for their years of service to Canadian Bible College. I thought it was a very nice thing to do, but I also caught some of the comments of students about those men.

Rev. Downey was no longer teaching at the school, but Rev. Kincheloe was. I repeatedly heard comments about how out of touch these men were with reality. It hurt, but at the same time I wondered how long I could continue to teach before I was named in that group. I knew I was teaching in a very practical ministry and I had been teaching six years already. I didn’t consider that very long and was sure I have at least three or four more years. What made me decide to make the visit was that I had not candidated since 1966 at my very first church and felt like I had done it wrong. That was fourteen years ago.

I talked it over with Della (I learned from an earlier mistake) and agreed to go if they would bring her with me. After accepting that invitation I got a call from Ellensburg, WA asking if I would consider candidating there at the same time. Why not! All I wanted was the experience and that was a real church. More like I expected my students would face.

In February we flew into Seattle and were met my Pastor Tim and his wife. Seattle had very nice weather. We then got in the car and drove over Snoqualmie Pass to the eastern side of Washington State. That reminded us of Regina. It was cold and windy. By the time we got to Ellensburg we both knew this was not a reason to leave Regina.

We met with the board and went through the process and treated it like it was important. One board member asked one question of Della that ticked me off. Then she responded in a way I loved, but was more like me than her. She was asked if she played an instrument. What! Were they trying to get to employees for one price? I was the one candidating. She said, “Only the radio/” I was the only one who laughed. I didn’t really care what they thought, we were not coming and they were not going to ask.

The next day Pastor Tim drove us to Canby, OR for an afternoon meeting with DEXCOM. We met Ralph and Marion Shellrude, the District Superintendent. Della stayed at their place while I went with Ralph to the meeting at the district office. I knew this would not be a real test for a candidate because I didn’t care if they called me or not. I still only wanted the experience.

We got into it and it was a great give and take through the typical part of the process. Who am I? What is my work experience? What is faith experience? That went well. Then we got down to the nitty gritty. They laid out a six-point job description and I told them there were two I would not do. They requested I be on the road most weekends visiting the churches and I told them I had I had young children and would only go half the time as I believed I should be an example to my children and be in church with them. They wanted someone who would promote Simpson College. I told them that would be hard from someone who graduated from CBC and was currently teaching there. I said I would just keep my mouth shut. They suggested a salary and I told them wasn’t enough to get me to move. They immediately raise it, twice.

Canby Ferry

I left the office and went back to the Shellrude’s. Della immediately asked how it went and I told her,  “They were going to call us.” Then the phone rang. It was that fast and the Shellrude's lived only about six minutes away.

They extended a unanimous call to come at the end of the school year. Della couldn’t believe it. As I told her the details of the meeting, I explained that I was confident and knew they liked me. It was my confidence. Generally I had hoped they would not extend a call. But on the drive to meet Della, it felt like God told me they would. Della said, “What are we going to do?”

REHEARSAL BEGINS chapter 223

John Dueck and team had the raft ready early into rehearsals. As much as I loved the raft, it posed new problems. The raft was so crowded, as it should have been, that we struggled with staging so the audience could see the actors. It didn’t take long to realize they could not all be sitting down at the same time. It did not look interesting at all. There had to be some stair stepping from front to back. Movement was going to be limited, but we could not leave the cast in one place the entire play. They had to change positions. Even knowing that, some people moved very little. We would have to let a few carry the weight of physical action.

The Bell family always had their place, They were usually stuck in the front stage right corner, the Bo’sen and George moved around at the back with George standing on one of the benches probably more than he should have. He anchored the visual height. We had a dying sailor for part of the play and needed him lying down but struggled with how get him high enough to be seen. We ultimately seated the captain on the bench with the sailor’s head in his lap.

Then there was the movement on the raft. Basically it moved very little. I had suspected that just the team on the raft would cause it to rock. No! Rocking it would have to be intentional. So the team had to learn lines and remember to keep the raft rocking. That did not always happen. I would get so wrapped up in working the lines with them that I did not notice how little rocking there was. It ultimately changed.

One of the few photos that shows most of the raft. Some one was always
high and the Bell family always near the front.

The raft it’s self was too low to the ground. It needed height. I looked at some raft photos and noticed some had a makeshift mast made out of a pole of some kind and a piece of canvus. That helped. It also made sense as a way to collect rainwater. The actual  raft came with a limited water supply, but with nineteen days floating in the Atlantic they needed more.

The only time we really got that raft to really move was a storm scene. The movement always led to the raft smacking the stage at the carious corners. The sound effects and the noise of the action usually covered that noise. You could only hear it on wooden stages. It looked cool.

Just staging the play was very time consuming. The actors had input as we tried one thing and then another. The script keep changing as well. I loved the process of refining the play and putting it together as a group.

Another example of trying to
get the staging so the audience
could easily see..

When the play was mostly together, it was time to sell my idea. I should say ideas! I wanted to fly Bob and Ruth Bell in from New York and Mary and Elmer Wittbeck in from Lincoln, Nebraska. Also, I wanted to put them up in a hotel and feed them for two days. I wanted the premiere to include them and be huge. I was convinced it would be a big deal for the school and the city.

Then if we did that, I wanted the tour to extend to both their cities and end at LIFE ‘80. I knew I was pushing my luck but it was time to get it all out in the open and begin the planning. The College Board made the final decision and everything was a go. I was walking on air.

Mel Bowker had written the score for No Time for Tombstones and I needed one for Adrift. We use music for all the scene changes. Dale Dirksen had writing some music and one piece in particular resonated with me. It was very plaintive. So I approached him to begin coming to the rehearsals, get to know the moods and feel, watch the transitions occur and see what he could do. He did a beautiful job. I wanted to give the audience the feel of long days and nights and the enormous solitude of drifting with no direction and wondering if they would ever be rescued. His music was perfect and gave of a long section with no words, just sitting and looking with longing and wondering about their future. We combined a verbal description over some musical transitions. Mrs. Anna Rose recorded it for us. The voice was perfect. The music was perfect.

CASTING chapter 222

I don’t recall how many auditioned for Portrait Player for the 1980 tour. I announced how many men and women I needed so that reduced some of women. I had expected to only cast three women, but in rethinking housing and other needs I upped it to four. I had not yet established the tour, but knew I was hoping to get to Nyack and Simpson Memorial Church and then on out to Long Island, NY. That would be a very long tour. We had never been to any churches in the Maritimes so I also had that dream in the back of my head.

Since I had a some small connection with the LIFE ’80 committee I knew a tour group would be sent from each Alliance College to The YMCA Camp of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado in the first week of July. I wanted to be that group. I knew we would be different than any of the other schools and believed we could make a significant impact. If all that came together, it would be the longest tour any school group had ever made (and ever did make).

I don’t recall if I explained the possible tour or not, but most likely did. I guess it would be easier to tell them the tour was shorter than expected than try and stretch it out later. I knew I would have to sell it early, but I felt like I needed the play completed before I tried.

When I saw the girls at auditions I knew I had to ask if they were willing to cut their hair. I explained that it would be necessary for two of them to play a young boy. Rhonda Mix hair was already the shortest so I suspected it would not be a problem for it to be a little shorter. Lori Buck was the shortest girl to come. Her hair was long. I wanted her to play Robert. We talked privately. I told her she could leave it as long as she wanted right up to the premiere. She had to think about that for a while, but agreed.

I was going to need people to play: Mrs. Ethel Bell, 14-year old Mary Bell, and eleven-year old Robert Bell. I had already decided to drop the two Shaw children. It was purely a space issue. Mrs. Bell took care of all four kids on the raft when the Shaw children’s parents could not be found after the ship sank. If could have been a hugely dramatic moment, but again, space was an issue. By this time I had decided that the girl rotating out of the performance would run the lights. And sound.

The primary male character was to be the Bo’sen. I wanted Garry Tollefson. I can’t help it. I knew what he could do and that he would be a key leader on the team. Let’s just say, I trusted him. I also trusted Terry Dyck and David Thompson. I had not predetermined the roles they would have, as the script was not finished. The rest of the guys would partially play composites. That is, a combination of personalities of several sailors, with one exception. One would be the captain. Several sailors died while on the raft and I would have one die. He would represent the three (I believe that was the number) that died.

More was said in the book and my correspondence about a guy name George. As it turned out, Bob Bell and George had made contact years later and so Bob fed me more information about him. The other interesting character was the cook. I didn’t know much but I liked what I knew. He would give me someone worried about the food and maybe fishing, I only assumed they fished but that made sense. That really only left two characters to be the “everyman” (a combination of the other twelve sailors) and one of them would die.

I am sure I told them what I was planning to do, but I know I did not cast the play at that time. I wanted to give time to discern what their talents were, and I wanted a completed script. That was done by late fall. There would be changes as the actors got into their roles and we would develop the final play together. But I had my cast and could begin work on skits. There would be plenty to work on and time to get to know them.

The final team was: Carolyn Magnus, Rhonda Mix, Betty Wolfe, Lori Buck, Garry Tollefson, Terry Dyck, David Thompson, Duncan McDonald, Gary Strangway, and Grant McDowell. Con Hild would represent the college and rotate in and out with me on the actual tour. That decision followed casting after the tour was established.

THE FINAL SEASON chapter 221

I didn’t know it was going to be my last year teaching. It was just another school year and I was excited to get started. One thing I loved about teaching was that each year was a fresh start. The sins of the past were removed and one started fresh. I n ever really knew what sins needed repentance, but there had to be some. Teachers don’t like all students and students definitely don’t like all teachers. But I would get a new crop of freshman and I always looked forward to that.

I was excited about a new script and a new team. I had decided on the exact number I needed to cast, who the characters would be and I would write a few pages before auditions. I was going to take three women seven men. I knew Terry Dyck and Dave Thompson were coming back to school and I hoped they would both return to Portrait player, but expected the rest to all be new. I received a great big wonderful surprise. Garry Tollefson returned to attend CTC and wanted back in. Absolutely. I was thrilled to have him. Three possible returning guys on a brand new project! How exciting. If they all wanted to be part of the team again they were all in. Con Hild was also still at CBC but he was working on the college staff. I was sure he would be a big support.

When I held auditions I explained the plan and told them a new script is a lot of hard work. They would be required to memorize some pages that might b-completely thrown out the next rehearsal, but they would also be in on the group floor of helping to create and shape something new. I had the largest turnout for auditions ever with way more men and women. God was definitely in it as I did not have to reject too many. I hated that part of the process. It always made me nervous that I would make a mistake and regret on choice I rejected.

My research continued and expanded. I was still serving on the LIFE committee so there were trips to Nyack for meetings and the opportunity to hang out with historian John Sawin to get his input. He had been a valuable asset on two other pieces and got me started on this one. I valued his knowledge and desire to make this work. He had a couple of opportunities to see Tombstones and I promised he would see this one as well. Since Bob Bell lived on Long Island I told him I would try to bring it to his school and on the way stop at the John’s church in Nyack. He told me he would make sure that happened.

The first order of business that fall was to convince our president, Dave Rambo, that this would be a very good thing for the school and therefore it would be worth the money necessary to find the development. He was 100% on board.

I had several requests for information and research in the mail when school began. I had the first of several calls completed to Bob Bell and his sister Mary. Mrs. Bell was alive and living near her daughter in Lincoln, but regretfully she had Alzheimer’s and had not memory of the ship being sunk, the raft or even having been a missionary. Bob and Mary ultimately began to feed me some important clues. I wanted to know some of things that talked about while on the raft. Initially all they said was  “Just the ordinary things of daily life.” But when asking them about what they ate and drank it got better. The raft has a storage compartment with survival items such as: fishing line, containers for collecting rain water, canned rations like the military had. The problem was that there was clearly not enough for nineteen people and nineteen days. They fished and dream of real meals. One of the sailors was the cook. I let him start the food conversations.

I tried to find some of the sailors for their input but never connected with any of them. I was left with history, the book and thoughts of the Bell children. All the conversation was going to come from my head. I had no idea what they talked about.

The play came together slowly. The raft was going to be a staging problem. I had to have one that would fit in the trailer we pulled. I wanted it to rock. I sat down with John Dueck the head of maintenance and his crew to talk about the problems. We drew up several ideas before the photo of the raft arrived. Then John knew what do to right away. For economy we made it 8x8 and built it mostly out of 2x4’s eight feet long. It was built in two sections so it would split in half for transport and give it more ability to rock. That problem was solved by strapping tractor tire inner tubes to the bottom of each section so that the natural movement of the actors would make it shake. It worked great.

THE FAMILY chapter 220

Rhonda had entered second grade and Rod fourth grade. They were well settled into the Regina culture. Both were taking French (if your are a Canadian in is helpful to know your countries second language.). Rhonda’s best friend was Gigi, the daughter of French Canadian good friends and neighbors. She got a little practice with her French. Rod’s best bud were brothers from down the street and were full-blooded North American Indians. We loved having them at Connaught where the tremendous mix of cultures. In addition to Indians, there were Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and East Indians. It was a melting pot.

Della taught both the kids how to skate on the pond created each winter in Leslie Park across Victoria Street. She tried to teach me. I could never skate on ice, inline skates or any single blade boot. My left ankle turned sideways every time I tried and then I had a hard time walking on it for more than a week. I blame it all on the basketball “field” at Webster, my elementary school. The canyon caused by rain created a hazard that tripped me up more times than I can remember. Felt like my left ankle was swollen most of my youth. I did better on roller skates (four wheels), but put me on a single blade I was doomed.

Rhonda helped her mother with Avon deliveries in the neighborhood. My favorite story is when Della asked her to run a delivery down to the corner to Mrs. Hamm. No problem! She took it down, knocked on the door and handed it to her saying, “This is for you, Mrs. Bacon.” She was on the right track. She remembered that name had something to do with pork.

Rod was also getting terrific encouragement with geography from Charlie Cook. Charlie was an MK from South America who, with his family, attended West Side church and took an interest in Rod. It was obvious that Rod was very bright and responded well to intellectual stimulation. Charlie promised Rod a world map for his wall if he memorized all the countries of the world and their capitals. He accomplished that in third grade. He did it and was very proud of his world map. We had to put it in his wall immediately.

Charlie was also one of my more regular racquetball partners. It was so nice to have two teenage boys at our small church that interacted so well with all the children and adults. He and Tim were amazing young men.

Summers were wonderful times for our family. You had to be there in the summer to appreciate how beautiful Regain was at that time of year. We were a big biking family. There was a bike trail we could take two blocks from our house down to Wascana at the Parliament grounds. We took that ride often.

Rod went through a hockey stage when he was six-seven. We gathered that massive amount of equipment (all used, of course) and hustled him off to the rink at the fairgrounds and sat in the freezing cold building while he attempted to play. It was very clear we started him way to late in the program. So many of the midgets could skate very well and Rod was never allowed in a game. He lost interest before the season was over. We were just glad we bought to little equipment. We returned it all and closed the door to that phase of life.

Della took Rhonda to Lawson Aquatic Center for swimming lessons and often took the kids there just to swim and play. It helped that the pool was only about six blocks away. I believe that was the beginning of their great interest in swimming that really took hold when we got to Oregon. They both held swim records in their club for a time.

I tried to get Della to go to Saskatchewan Roughrider games with me, but never hooked her on football. I held season tickets. Man it was cold. I never could figure out why that was an outdoor stadium. I see by the satellite of Taylor Flied that they built a new stadium and it is still not closed in. That’s crazy to me. I often missed the last game of two of the season because I could not take the cold.

SUMMER OF ‘79 chapter 219

It was time to get serious. I needed (wanted) a new play for the coming school year. I re-read both One Shall Chase a Thousand, the story of Mable Francis and Adrift, the story of missionaries on a raft in the middle of the Atlantic for nineteen days.

I liked the Mable Francis story better: more topical, a recognized individual, a feisty woman and the possibility of a cast with more women. I played around with a plot and outline. While she was under house arrest in Japan during World War II, the conflict was weak. I needed some tension and looked for every potential conflict in the story. I did not believe there was enough to hold interest for a play. It might have worked as a skit, but I could not find an hour’s worth of material so finally turned to Adrift.

Adrift certainly had drama. It was a life and death struggle. I struggled with what to do with the cast of characters. There were 19 sailors, one woman and four children. I was bothered by both the size and lack of female parts. Did I dare do another play with one woman?

The book had more problems than just the potential size of the cast. I figured I could whittle the cast down to van size, but there were many holes in the book. The book was written during the war and way too many things were censored out or just eluded too. There were few real descriptive passages so it was hard to get a clear picture of the people. The most intriguing part of the story was the raft. I loved the idea of nearly the entire cast being on stage for the entire play and that there could be no scene changes.

I decided early that I would begin with the people getting on the raft after the Merchant Marine ship they were traveling home on had been torpedoed. That would keep the play to a single scene. Then I had to whittle down the cast. What was the minimum cast needed to still fit in the van for travel and still make the raft appear crowded? Then I wanted to know what the raft was like? There was one photo in the book of people being rescued from the raft but little was shown and there was only a limited description in the book.

All of that slowed me down. I knew the story had to focus on Mrs. Bell and her two children, one boy and one girl. The sailors were more essential to the story. I dropped the two Shaw children. Mary was 14. I could surely find a girl to play 14. Robert was a bigger problem. He was ten. Because of voice and size he would have to be played by a girl. It helped that while young, he was nearly as tall as his sister Mary.

Mrs. Bells story was already one of tragedy before being on the raft. While on their last furlough, Mr. Bell was hit and killed in a tragic bus accident. She decided to return to the Ivory Coast with her children. Their ship was torpedoed while returning home for the following furlough.

Copy of telegram notification of ship sinking.

I did not write any of the script that summer. I did all that after school began in the fall. I did, however, write several letters to try and get more information. I wrote to the now adult children of Mrs. Bell to explain what I intended to do. Bob Bell was a school principle at Stony Brook on Long Island, New York, and Mary had married Elmer Whitbeck, a pastor on the Back to the Bible radio broadcast out of Lincoln, Nebraska. I wanted more details about life on the raft, what they and others were like, what they wore, what they felt, what they saw, what they experienced. I wanted to know about the raft, food, going to the bathroom. I heard from them and had obviously not convinced them I could rise to the challenge so got very little help. Later phone calls were much more helpful.

I was looking for any descriptions I could get. I contacted the US Navy about the names of ships and what the raft looked like and they sent me photos. This material set my mind racing. I knew the play would work.

Now what sailors would I need? I began whittling away and combining personalities. I had the characters clearly in mind at the beginning of school, at least enough to begin casting. This was going to be a big sales job to the administration. What I wanted to do was going to cost more than Tombstones and at that point I had no idea how big it would get. I just knew I needed support. I love 

Dave Rambo.

Both pictures are of the West Lashaway ship before it was sunk.

I received this photo of a raft like the one in the story. I cannot remember
the size, but there were nineteen people on board.

I have all the photos and historical  documentation in photo files on my Facebook page, You can fine them there if you want to see everything. You will also find notes, articles and related photos. If you are no my friend on Facebook and are interested, send a request to Clyde Walker, Silverton, OR and if I do not now know you note you are a friend through my blog. I do not accept people I do not know. You will find every photo I have of all the years with Portrait plays and several comments made by team members.

YOUTH CONFERENCE AND TOUR chapter 218

An attempt to make
Super Missionary
Larger than life

Youth Conference was always a great weekend. The theme was Sonsurround and this year we created a character called “Super Missionary” with a Superman like costume of orange and yellow. We didn’t know it at the time, but it did not hurt that the first of the Superman movies starring Christopher Reeves was coming out that same year. We had a mild mannered student considering the possibility of God’s call to missions (played by Ron Freeman, a little guy) who would go into a phone booth, then poof, change into Super Missionary. I cannot for the life of me remember who that actor was. He was not a Portrait Player, but he had the height and built to be the man of spiritual steel. That was such a fun theme to play with. We had a skit on that every at every gathering. The hardest part was getting SaskTel to loan us a phone booth.

Super Missionary Logo

Super Missionary helping a native. Students looking on.

We went west that summer. We had performed in all sizes of churches and frankly, setup was easier in small churches. First we knew most people could see. Second, we knew they could hear without amplification. Hearing and seeing was often a problem in large churches. This was a situation where small intimate locations beat out large venues. But none was worse than the stage at North Seattle Alliance.

The church could seat 500-600 and had an 8” rise for a front portion platform and then another two steps up for the back which was smaller and much to narrow. The back portion was about 20’-25’ from the first pew. Way to far for a stage production. We did the show, but people really struggled to see and hear. It may have been the worst place we preformed any of our shows. I got weary of the people telling me how hard it was to see and hear. I knew it would be a problem before we ever started.

The old sanctuary had been turned into a gym and I wanted to hold the show there. They did not have a stage, but they had platforms that could be set up as a stage. The church leadership felt it would be too small to hold the crowd. I’m sure it would have been, but had I known what the stage was like I would have pushed for two shows in the gym. The acoustics would also have been better in our situation.

They set up mics for us, but that didn’t help much. Several people stood at the back for the whole show while others stretched their necks and cupped their ears.

Typical casting schedule

We got over to Victoria Island for two shows but had little time to look around. We also preformed at Tenth Avenue in Vancouver. That was my first time back since leaving eight years earlier. There were very few the remembered me and I never made a comment about having worked there. Things had changed. We hooked up with several students from the area. That was good.

Typical drivel I wrote to inform and/or collect info from the team.

As part of the US tour I got into many church I would eventually visit as a district pastor. One was Moses Lake where anther of Della’s long time friend and her family lived. Anna “Jean” (Gifford) McDaniels and Mike were fun to visit.