According to Ancestry.com, my DNA is 100% European, with ancestors from Ireland 53%, Scandinavia 26%, Iberia 11% and Finland 4%. All of the earlier ones crossed the Atlantic and settled in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. Following the Civil War, my stream of ancestral seed were scattered, in the latter 1800's, from the deep south westward, into Texas, by the harsh northern winds of vengeful, Yankee, Scalawags and Carpet Baggers. In Texas they struggled to survive dry land, Indians, drought and locusts, but took root and stayed ... After all, it was Texas. They weren't born here but got here as soon as they could and sowed their seed, my family tree, and cotton and grain as well.
My Grandfather Blair, still a great admirer of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate General, named my dad Robert Lee Blair (RLB), and Dad named me Rayburn Lee (RLB). My first name came from Texas U.S. Senator Sam Rayburn and retained the initial R" of the Rebel General. My dad never had a bone to pick concerning that war though his dad, Millard Fillmore Blair, obviously did. Probably because he was raised in a strongly Confederate home by a Civil War vet during the Union occupation of the south. My dad was the greatest man who ever lived, next to Jesus, whom he followed. And my mother had to be the most loving mother a child could have.
I was born southwest of Sweetwater, in West Texas, on the Double Heart Ranch, but we soon moved to the outskirts of Sweetwater into a three room shotgun house my dad built on a sandy road. My earliest memories were of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl which swept a lot of farmers out of Texas into California. I remember a rolling dust wall as big as all the sky west of us and up to the
clouds, which rolled right over our shack and I couldn't see a thing outside and little inside. Those were also the days of the new form of travel, dirigibles and zeppelins. I can still see and hear the sight and sound of that zeppelin, about as long as a football field, passing over our house and close enough to see people waving. The engines made a huge low drone as it passed over following old Highway 80 from the east coast to the west coast without refueling.
I spent much of my boyhood days roaming around the mesquite and cactus hills outside of town. My first friend, Jim Powell, had a donkey we sometimes road on our ventures until he got tired of us and scraped us off under a thorny mesquite limb into the stickers and cactus. We always carried a stick for snakes but never took food or water. Mom had no extra food and all the ranchers had cattle tanks (ponds) for their cows to drink. We would wade off into the brown water and drink with the cows. They didn't just take water, they put some back in ... right where they stood. It tasted kind of funny, but so did a lot of water in those days. I never saw a clear water lake or stream until I left Texas.
When I was about six, our family gathered, with a host of relatives, up on the black land Divide south of town at my mother's grandparent's farm for a Sunday dinner. After the meal, while the big kids were chasing calves and dropping rocks in the well, my great grandmother Jones called all the little children to line up at the front porch. She sat in her old rocking chair there and had us pass by her one at a time. She had on a dress she made from flour sacks, printed with flowers for that purpose back then. Her hair was pulled back in a bun and she smelled like biscuits. As we passed, she would lay her hand on us and pray for each one. As my turn came, she laid her little, bony hand on my head and prayed, "Lord, here is Lee, I ask that you direct his path and maybe you will make him a preacher." Fourteen years later, in North Korea, as a Marine, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, I felt God's call and surrendered my life to preach the gospel.
When I was about six, our family gathered, with a host of relatives, up on the black land Divide south of town at my mother's grandparent's farm for a Sunday dinner. After the meal, while the big kids were chasing calves and dropping rocks in the well, my great grandmother Jones called all the little children to line up at the front porch. She sat in her old rocking chair there and had us pass by her one at a time. She had on a dress she made from flour sacks, printed with flowers for that purpose back then. Her hair was pulled back in a bun and she smelled like biscuits. As we passed, she would lay her hand on us and pray for each one. As my turn came, she laid her little, bony hand on my head and prayed, "Lord, here is Lee, I ask that you direct his path and maybe you will make him a preacher." Fourteen years later, in North Korea, as a Marine, during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, I felt God's call and surrendered my life to preach the gospel.
My very first paid job, when I was six or seven, paid a dime for riding on the back of a horse holding a lamb while a boy of about twelve tried to herd a flock of sheep across town. It was quit a ride. The Lamb jumped, kicked and wet on me all the way. The owner was leading a ram out front. My second job was self employment, picking up mesquite beans, a bushel at a time to drag nearly a mile to the stockyard. They were fed to cattle on their way to market. I got a nickel a bushel.
My third job, when I was eleven, at the beginning of WWII, was in the scrap metals business after I heard a man say these metals were going sky high. I had the whole town as my territory in the finding of scrap copper, brass, aluminum, and lead. People threw this stuff away or left it lay where it died. Plumbers and electricians always left bits of metal on the ground and housewives threw ruined aluminum pans in the trash... where I found them. I still don't throw copper away but drop it in a 5 gallon bucket.
Soon after the War began, Mother was a beauty operator and Dad was in Panama helping build an airfield in the jungle to protect the west end of the Canal Zone from Japanese ships and submarines. Dad returned home and we moved to Grand Prairie, Texas where mom and dad got jobs at the North American Aircraft plant building P51 Mustangs.
My new Buddie, Robert Clark, and I were seeing movies about the Marines fighting the Japs on South Pacific islands and we wanted to be a part of the fighting. We dug a big fox hole on an empty lot and put a roof on it where we were dream Marines mowing down the imaginary enemy when along comes a spy, we called cry baby, who was gathering secret information on us. Well, we captured him and tortured him into telling all he knew .... to his mother, who told all she knew to the police, who came and told us all they knew about crime, justice and punishment. They took us to their jail and let us see how we would like living there for the rest of our lives. Since we had a strong aversion to Jap prison camps we agreed to abandon our life of crime and smoking cigarette butts off the streets.
So we both joined the Navy at the Naval air station's bowling alley, with the rank of pin-boy. Let me tell you that was a dangerous job in those days. Those young sailors' main point in the game was more to fire that bowling ball down the alley faster than anyone else and knock those pins, at the speed of an artillery shell ...exploding shrapnel in all directions. It was good practice for a real shooting war. A bowling pin hit Robert in the forehead and knocked him out for thirty minutes with a knot as big as a baseball where a unicorn's horn should be.
In the summer time, Robert and I camped out on Mountain Creek Lake and practiced our Marine tactics by attacking and capturing Japanese landing craft which the fishermen owners had chained to trees along the banks. They should have chosen larger trees; We were equipped for just such a maneuver... a hatchet and two 1X4 boards since they never left the paddles. On one occasion, we rowed all the way across the lake, escaping the enemy, in a leaky boat with a rainstorm and high wind. We finally survived to the other side of the lake, and had to walk all the way around the lake, in a pouring down rain ... and darkness ... which earned us a lecture from our moms for being AWOL. Another time, my left hand got hung up on a hook of a trout line half way across a channel between two sections of the lake. Robert was pulling on my other arm. His heroics nearly drowned me but saved my life.
Mom and Dad were Christians, but didn't attend church, so our uncle Henry and his wife talked us kids into going to a revival meeting at First Baptist Church one Sunday. My sister, Betty, and I both gave our hearts to Christ and became Christians. At that age, most of my sinning hadn't been done yet. About all I could think of to confess was torturing Cry Baby, cussing in the minor key the few cuss words older boys used on me, smoking second hand cigarettes, borrowing boats without the owner's permission, drinking the dribblings of whiskey left in bottles beside the highway to the Naval base, playing hookie and lying at about the sixth grade level. But that was enough to brand me as a sinner in my eyes and in God's.... and in Cry Baby's.
It wasn't long after that, when I turned 16, that I joined the Marine Corps Reserve, at the Naval
Air Station, where I set pins. They gave me a Marine uniform which I had to wear to regular meetings and where I was taught the basic stuff required of every new Marine. Mostly Marine history, weapons, marching, the General Orders for Sentries , chain of command, why Marines never leave a wounded buddy behind, and such foundational subjects.
Soon the war was over and we moved to Dalworthington Gardens, near Arlington, where my sister, Alta, brought her friend Bettie Ashcraft home with her, and I fell in love.... when I was sixteen. Young love is a powerful force to have to deal with at that age and all I could think about was getting away from school and everybody telling me what to do, and being with Bunnie, which is what Mom called her.
Since I couldn't be with Bunnie very often and everybody was giving me orders of what to do, I started thinking about quiting school and joining the real Marines where I could do as I pleased and not have so many bosses ordering me around.
After a year in the Reserves, in the summer of 1947, I just had to jump out of the nest and become a man. My hormones, love, and a thirst for adventure were jerking me around, and bouncing me off the wall. So I hitchhiked to the Pan Handle of Texas and followed the wheat harvest all the way to Nebraska where I ran out of time before school started and returned home to be with Bunnie, and entered the eleventh grade. When I turned 17, in December, I joined the Regular Marine Corps and was sent to Boot Camp in San Diego. Because of my Reserve Training, I was a step ahead of most recruits, and because I had just finished digging an 8X8X10 foot cellar for mom's home canned vegetables and fruit, I was in good physical shape for the rigorous training.
When I graduated Boot Camp, I was sent to Oceanside, California to attend Marine Communications school to become a combat radio operator. Upon graduation there, I was assigned to a Marine, Cold-Weather Expedition headed for Kodiac, Alaska to assess the quality and acceptability of cold weather clothing, equipment and newly launched freeze-dried-food, which was not good at all. We slept in tents, and learned to function in below zero weather. I've always considered this, unusual endeavor by we few Marines was commissioned by God to prepare me for the North Korean winter of 1950-51 in "minus" 30-35 below zero cold at the Battle Of Chosin Reservoir against the Chinese and North Korean armies.
Before we left Alaska, we were allowed, a few Marines at a time, to spend three or four hours in the village of Kodiac where there was a Trading Post with a wide assortment of hunting, trapping and
Indian/Eskimo unique supplies. The only two things I remember looking at closely was a stuffed Grizzly Bear standing 12-13 feet tall and a diamond engagement ring. I left the Grizzly and bought the ring. The Trading Post mailed it for me to Bunnie. That wasn't very romantic, but I was afraid some other Marine or Sailor might "find it" and give it to some ugly girl in Brooklyn.
When I finally got home again, in May of "50", we were married, spent our honeymoon in a cheap motel and I had to take her back to the Arlington High School to graduate with honors. Our twin sons, Rex and Ron, were born nine months later. I went back to Camp Pendleton, California and fought mountain forest fires all summer which the Marines out there are still doing 70 years later.
The next time I got home was on my way to my next duty station at Camp Lejeune, N.C. I got to spend a few days leave with my sweet, little, innocent Bunnie before continuing on to Lejuene.
All of my time there was spent on combat maneuvers in the field, firing the rifle range, learning how to use all the different weapons, map reading, day and night compass use and all kinds of war training. At one point we went aboard a convoy of ships and sailed to an island off Puerto Rica to practice amphibious landings. As a West Texas boy, the island of Viegus was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. The island was almost uninhabited and we temporarily damaged the beaches, but we would use that training at Inchon, Korea within less than six months.
When I got a short leave, I went home to get Bunnie and bring her back with me. We packed up all we owned in one box, and began our life together, she in a rented room in someone's home in Jacksonville, N.C. and I on base or in the field on maneuvers. Poor little girl had to spend all week alone and many week-ends, but she seemed glad to be there for the little time we had together. I met, at that time, one of the best friends I ever had, Leroy (Jim) Storey. Jim and Don Henderson, and sometimes I, entertained the troops at night singing bluegrass songs. Lucky Don played the guitar and the troops often sang along with us. We weren't much on quality but by far preferable to the mosquitoes, gnats, 20 mile marches, no baths, sweat and sizzling days and nights.
It was there, on maneuvers, when the Korean War broke out. Immediately maneuvers were canceled, we trucked back to Lejuene, began to load everything up, and married men with wives in town were told to send them home. Bunnie was heart broken as was I, but we had no choice.
Within days we were on a long train headed for the west coast and Camp Pendleton. There, we were all shifted around into different units of the 1st Marine Division and given new equipment. We sailed for Japan in late summer of 1950 and made the amphibious landing at South Korea's Port of Inchon which was then far behind enemy lines. They had driven the South Korean army and occupying forces of the U.S. Army all the way to the southern tip of Korea already. We drove inland and recaptured the S.K. Capital of Seoul, broke the North Korean's back, cut their supply lines and drove them north back into North Korea. As they retreated they took political leaders, policemen, the wealthy, and missionaries prisoner, bound their hands behind their backs, pushed them into the ditches on each side of the road to North Korea, and shot them in the head. I saw hundreds of maybe thousands of their dead bodies alongside that dreadful road going north.
We Marines were then loaded back aboard our ships and sailed around the Korean peninsula and landed in North Korea to cut off the retreat of the fleeing North Korean Armies. The fighting continued north, toward Manchuria, up a one lane gravel road into the frozen Tabeck mountains, to a place called the Chosin Reservoir which became the epicenter of one of the most fierce battles in history. During the 17 day battle, it is estimated that we suffered nearly 18,000 casualties, killed, wounded, missing or frost bite injury, while the Chinese and North Koreans had an estimated 49,000 casualties in the 17 days of that one battle. (These numbers from Wikipedia). I limit my account here because my experience in the Korean War is, alone, a story of its own.
When the Chinese entered the war, they drove us back into South Korea. During my last days in the war, my little wife came to the end of her own battle of sorts, carrying twin babies which she gave birth to in February of 1951. Their birth plus time in combat, and personal awards, put me at the head of the list, in my unit, to be rotated back home. In the mean time, my two best buddies were killed in action. Jim Story in the Chosin Battle and Don Henderson just after I left for home.
I had a long leave with Bunnie and our twin boys, Rex and Ron. They accompanied me to my next duty station at the Charleston, S.C. Naval Shipyard, Marine Barracks, where I had the best job among the Marines ... Mail Orderly. I was like the Colonel's aid. Just back from the war, they were pampering me. Bunnie and I had an upstairs apartment in an ancient house at 10 Green St. right down town. It had a carved, historical date on a plaque at the front of the house that said it was bult in the early 1800's. Years later we went back there and it had been renovated and was the Charleston College President's office.
I loved the Marine Corps for all it had taught me in those five years, for the WW2 vets who prepared me for that war and who produced one of the greatest fighting forces in history out of a bunch of ordinary boys. And I would have re-uped and stayed in the Marines, but, since I felt God was leading me to prepare for the ministry, I took my discharge and my precious wife and two sons home to Texas.
I entered seminary, drove a Humble Oil gasoline transport truck at night in Dallas/Fort Worth, graduated and was called to my first Pastorate in Arlington, Texas. We pastored just two churches over the next 36 years. Then after heart by-pass surgery in the early 90's, my emotions were unable to absorb the stress of pastoring and I knew it was God's timing for me to take Bunnie and our six children, Rex, Ron, Danice, Mary, Robert and Kaye back home to Texas. Again, as I said, about the Korean War, those 30 years of founding and pastoring Temple Baptist Church (Now North Florida Baptist) are, alone, a story of their own which I may tell later.
During all these years I have had occasion to visit 47 States and 35 nations on 4 continents, and been to the Holy Land 7 times. I have never suffered anything except for my own good or been in need of anything I could not do without. God has always been extra good to me and people who have not, I don't remember. I do remember those I hurt. I have physical problems but no complaints, and mental lapses I don't remember. I know no one I would trade places with, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or not. I am content in Jesus and leave my final days in his hands.
Bunnie and I are now 86 and 88 ... almost. Our 6 children have given us, within one or two, 78 or 79 or 80 Grand, Great, and Great Great Grandchildren. My prayer for them is not for fame, fortune or an easy life but that each of them would know God loves them, love Him back, love His word, His people and live their lives for Him. Nothing but following Jesus is worth first place in any life. Nothing but that is worth your short time in this world. If you don't know it now, you will when you are my age.... or when you stand before God ... which you will. RB
We Marines were then loaded back aboard our ships and sailed around the Korean peninsula and landed in North Korea to cut off the retreat of the fleeing North Korean Armies. The fighting continued north, toward Manchuria, up a one lane gravel road into the frozen Tabeck mountains, to a place called the Chosin Reservoir which became the epicenter of one of the most fierce battles in history. During the 17 day battle, it is estimated that we suffered nearly 18,000 casualties, killed, wounded, missing or frost bite injury, while the Chinese and North Koreans had an estimated 49,000 casualties in the 17 days of that one battle. (These numbers from Wikipedia). I limit my account here because my experience in the Korean War is, alone, a story of its own.
When the Chinese entered the war, they drove us back into South Korea. During my last days in the war, my little wife came to the end of her own battle of sorts, carrying twin babies which she gave birth to in February of 1951. Their birth plus time in combat, and personal awards, put me at the head of the list, in my unit, to be rotated back home. In the mean time, my two best buddies were killed in action. Jim Story in the Chosin Battle and Don Henderson just after I left for home.
I had a long leave with Bunnie and our twin boys, Rex and Ron. They accompanied me to my next duty station at the Charleston, S.C. Naval Shipyard, Marine Barracks, where I had the best job among the Marines ... Mail Orderly. I was like the Colonel's aid. Just back from the war, they were pampering me. Bunnie and I had an upstairs apartment in an ancient house at 10 Green St. right down town. It had a carved, historical date on a plaque at the front of the house that said it was bult in the early 1800's. Years later we went back there and it had been renovated and was the Charleston College President's office.
I loved the Marine Corps for all it had taught me in those five years, for the WW2 vets who prepared me for that war and who produced one of the greatest fighting forces in history out of a bunch of ordinary boys. And I would have re-uped and stayed in the Marines, but, since I felt God was leading me to prepare for the ministry, I took my discharge and my precious wife and two sons home to Texas.
I entered seminary, drove a Humble Oil gasoline transport truck at night in Dallas/Fort Worth, graduated and was called to my first Pastorate in Arlington, Texas. We pastored just two churches over the next 36 years. Then after heart by-pass surgery in the early 90's, my emotions were unable to absorb the stress of pastoring and I knew it was God's timing for me to take Bunnie and our six children, Rex, Ron, Danice, Mary, Robert and Kaye back home to Texas. Again, as I said, about the Korean War, those 30 years of founding and pastoring Temple Baptist Church (Now North Florida Baptist) are, alone, a story of their own which I may tell later.
During all these years I have had occasion to visit 47 States and 35 nations on 4 continents, and been to the Holy Land 7 times. I have never suffered anything except for my own good or been in need of anything I could not do without. God has always been extra good to me and people who have not, I don't remember. I do remember those I hurt. I have physical problems but no complaints, and mental lapses I don't remember. I know no one I would trade places with, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or not. I am content in Jesus and leave my final days in his hands.
Bunnie and I are now 86 and 88 ... almost. Our 6 children have given us, within one or two, 78 or 79 or 80 Grand, Great, and Great Great Grandchildren. My prayer for them is not for fame, fortune or an easy life but that each of them would know God loves them, love Him back, love His word, His people and live their lives for Him. Nothing but following Jesus is worth first place in any life. Nothing but that is worth your short time in this world. If you don't know it now, you will when you are my age.... or when you stand before God ... which you will. RB
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