Chapter 7

Cecil Jerry Pryor (1914-1979)

Dad was born in Southeastern Tennessee. He was the son of a half Cherokee man and an Irish woman. His father was a deafmute blacksmith.

Dad grew up in a blacksmith shop; learning to build almost anything and

repair anything. He was extremely intelligent but only went through elementary school. He played on a semi-pro baseball team in Graysville. He was a gifted athlete, and very strong because of his blacksmith work.

He missed WWII because his skills were needed in first building the Pentagon, and then converting the Rogue River Ford plant in Detroit to build B-17s. He was in the Medical Cadet Corps (a paramilitary organization), where he trained for emergency medical treatment.

After the war, he worked in D.C., where he was the general superintendent for Eisen-Majors Construction. He was always proud of having built the huge Suburban Trust bank building in downtown Washington. While he remained in Washington, my mother took her little brood back to Tennessee. While my dad was making good money, we never saw any of it. We were dirt poor for my entire childhood and teen years.

For this reason, and several others, I became self reliant by the age of 13.

My father continued in the construction game until roughly 1964. Practically this whole time, he was in an alcoholic fog. During his sober moments, he was a great father. We went hunting and fishing together any time I visited him. He was a great tracker and hunter, and I learned a lot from him.

Beginning in about 1964, he returned to the SDA Church. He worked for

the Christian Record Braille Foundation. He had always been interested in helping the handicapped due to his father's condition. He parlayed this work into becoming an ordained minister about the time I went to Vietnam.

He had a little 5 church circuit ministry in Southwestern Minnesota until around 1972. I am not sure what happened, but he went out of favor with his church conference, with the result that his churches were all closed. He told me one time that his mistake was in spending more time with his charitable work with the poor farmers in his churches than in pushing church doctrine. I have heard later that there were issues all over the church in the early seventies with the younger, more educated, ministers resenting the older, more traditional, pastors.

I do know that my father was very traditional, but also, very forgiving of the minor "sins" of his parishoners. He used to tell me that if a man's heart was good, what did it matter if they sinned a little as long as they worshipped God? He refused to judge other people. He could easily relate to their sins, having been a sinner most of his life.

He journeyed to Belize in 1973 to build a church and school. He remained

there until 1976, when he moved to California. He moved back to Tennessee (Dayton) to retire in 1978. While remodeling a house in 1979, he suffered a massive heart attack. He recovered enough to live for 2 more weeks. We all journeyed to Tennessee to say goodbye to him.

His funeral was packed with the friends he had made with his very gregarious and generous personality. He was always cracking bad jokes and laughing. I will never forget how he acted when I returned from Vietnam. He was VERY proud of me and paraded me around to his churches in my uniform, with all it's medals. His parishoners worshipped him, and took me into their fellowship with open arms.

My dad told me several years later that he sensed something wrong with me on my return from war. That is why he gave me such a welcome home.

In the final analysis, he was a great man who suffered from very human

weaknesses.