Edmund Waller once wrote
“For all we know
Of what the blessed do above
Is, that they sing,
and that they love.”
When I got to know Steve, he had already played varsity football four years at the University of North Alabama. He had bought and sold businesses, raised a family, been the mayor of a small town and served as a State Representative in Montgomery. He had flown his own plane and raced his own boat in the Gulf with dear friend, Johnny Ray. He had competed and won multiple awards in the National Cutting Horse Association in Fort Worth. Throughout all of this, the thing that I noted most was the number of friends he collected and loved. He had friends he had known since elementary school. Wayland Elliott, Charlie Banks and they still had lunch together about once a month. He still had friends he had played football with. Also, cowboy friends all the way to Wyoming and they phoned often just to keep in touch. And cowboy friend, Phil Sappington, who when the doctor told Steve not to ride his horse anymore, built him a seat belt for his saddle.
Steve loved his Sunday School class at Winfield First Baptist Church taught by a wonderful teacher, Bill Atkinson.
And there was the duck camp. He loved that short season and the friends he hunted with. To get up before daylight in frigid temperatures to get out in the mud –you gotta love it and buddies–Creek Henson, James Clark, their sons and grandsons.
I noted that not only did he keep long-time friends, but he made new ones constantly–like Brock Wilder–because he genuinely loved people.
John 13:34 (ESV) “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”
Steve loved and was loved.
Sherrian McDaniel Logan
See complete story in the Journal Record.
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