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Short Stories: The Day My Wife was Sued for $2.6 Million

Bruce Gerencser 2 Comments
newark baptist temple heath ohio

My wife taught one year of third grade at Licking County Christian Academy in Newark, Ohio — 1980-1981. The unaccredited school was operated by the Newark Baptist Temple — an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation pastored by Polly’s uncle, the late James (Jim) Dennis. (Please see The Family Patriarch is Dead: My Life With James Dennis.)

As Polly will admit, she was grossly unprepared and unqualified to teach school, but LCCA needed a teacher and we needed the money, so Polly dutifully tried to manage a class of third graders. (Polly was paid less money because she was a woman; not her family’s breadwinner.)

After Polly left LCCA, we helped her father start an IFB church in Buckeye Lake, Ohio. In the spring of 1983, Polly learned that a student of hers, Eddie Linders was alleging that he had suffered serious physical injuries after being beaten up by fellow student, Stan Toomey. Linders’ parents sued LCCA, the Baptist Temple, Toomey’s parents, and Polly — as the boys’ teacher.

The 1983 lawsuit was dismissed. I was unable to find any news report on the original suit. The lawsuit was refiled in 1985.

The Newark Advocate reported on April 5, 1985 (behind paywall):

Lawsuit seeks $2.6 Million in Damages

A former Licking Countian has filed a $2.6 million suit in Common Pleas Court, seeking damages from the family of a boy she claims beat her son several times during April and May of 1981. Patricia Nelson, of Brooksville. Fla., filed suit Thursday on behalf of her 14-year-old son, Edwin. Ms. Nelson alleges Stan Toomey of Alexandria beat her son up while they were both students of the Licking County Christian Academy, run by the Newark Baptist Temple. She filed an earlier version of the suit in 1983, but it was dismissed March 15 of this year. Ms. Nelson seeks $1.6 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive, damages from the Toomey youth and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Earl Toomey, of 4472 Lobdell Road, Alexandria, and Polly Gerencser, of the Emanuel Baptist Church, Buckeye Lake. Ms. Gerencser was a teacher at the school at the time of the alleged incidents and should have controlled Toomey’s behavior, Ms. Nelson said. She also seeks to hold his parents responsible While Thursday’s suit does not enumerate Linders’ injuries, the first claim said he suffered from dislocation of the vertebra, swollen legs, bruises and head injuries. Ms. Nelson seeks a jury trial.

This suit was also tossed out of court. According to Polly, she wasn’t even in the classroom when the alleged assaults occurred, and best she can remember, all the Toomey boy had was a bloody nose. Besides being sued for $2.6 million, what was most irritating about this lawsuit was the fact that Pastor Dennis — remember, he’s Polly’s uncle — didn’t bother to tell us about the suit. We read about it in the newspaper. Needless to say, we weren’t happy.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: Grandpa, Can I Play with The Boat?

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
noahs ark

My partner, Polly’s late father, an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor, was handy with his hands — roofing houses, remodeling homes, building knick-knacks, constructing baby cradles, and making toys for his grandchildren. Lee’s favorite thing to make was a wooden version of Noah and the Ark, complete with animals. We still own one of the Arks, one Dad made for our youngest son Josiah, thirty years ago. This Ark has been beat-up, misused, and abused, but it is the type of toy that is virtually indestructible.

Fast forward to today. Our youngest daughter and her three children were over last weekend to visit. . .

Ezra (who is six): Grandpa?

Grandpa: Yes?

Ezra: Can I play with the boat?

Grandpa (puzzled): The boat?

Ezra: The one with the animals.

Grandpa (Still puzzled)

Ezra’s mother starts laughing

Laura: He’s talking about Noah’s Ark and the animals.

Grandpa (laughing): Sure.

As I later pondered this short exchange with my grandson, I was pleased with how far we have come as a family. Ezra doesn’t attend church. He’s never been indoctrinated or fed a steady dose of fictional Bible stories passed off as historical fact. Ezra had never heard of Noah’s Ark before. All he knew about was the wooden boat with animals in the closet upstairs.

This is progress. The curse has been broken.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: My First Gun, A Mossberg .410 Shotgun

Bruce Gerencser 5 Comments
mossberg 410 shotgun

In 1966, the Gerencser family moved from Bryan, Ohio to a rural home outside of Harrod, near Lima. Our house was a brand new trilevel home Dad rented for $200 a month, with the understanding he would buy the house once the lease was up. I attended part of the fourth and fifth grades at Harrod Elementary School. Once the lease was up, Dad was unable to buy the house, so we were forced to move to Farmer where I attended fifth and sixth grades.

Our house near Harrod was in a subdivision on old Route 30, near the road that ran north to Layfayette and our swimming hole, Silver Springs. Dad worked for Combined Insurance Company. By this time, Mom had serious mental health problems. Over the year or so we lived near Harrod, Mom tried to kill herself three times, once by slitting her wrists, another time by overdosing on medications, and finally by driving her car in front of a truck. She survived all three attempts. But the day I came home from school as an eleven-year-old boy and found my mom lying on the kitchen floor unconscious in a pool of blood left a permanent imprint on me — even to this day. (Please see Barbara.)

While living near Harrod, I learned that Dad had embezzled thousands of dollars from his employer. I found a letter he had written to Combinde admitting his crime and promising to repay the money. Surprisingly, Combined did not fire him. This explained how Dad could afford the brand-new Pontiac convertible in the garage, the huge HO train layout, complete with expensive brass engines, that took up most of the space in the finished basement, and dozens of firearms in the cabinet in Dad’s office.

Dad bought and sold firearms — lots of them. In 1968, Dad was investigated for violating the Gun Control Act. He had been making illegal firearm sales at gun shows. He was not charged with a crime but was told he would be if he didn’t stop selling guns. Dad complied — I think. Two years later, I remember him shooting a fully automatic military rifle in our backyard outside of Farmer. I also remember Dad converting semi-automatic rifles to automatics. So, did Dad really stop his illegal gun trade? I have my doubts.

One Sunday, Dad took me to the gun show with him. I was almost twelve. I had been hunting with Dad since I was a young child, and I was looking forward to one day owning my own gun. This was the day. Dad bought me a bolt action (with a modified choke) .410 Mossberg shotgun. Boy, was I excited. I loved to hunt, so it was not long before I was hunting on my own or with my school friends. Yes, I was only twelve, but guns and hunting were part of the fabric of rural life. I would NEVER think it okay today to let my twelve-year-old grandchildren not only own a firearm, but also go hunting without an adult present. Different times . . .

At the age of eighteen, I had a serious accident with this gun. One day, I was out and about outside of Hereford, Arizona with my girlfriend’s brother. We both had shotguns, and were horsing around as boys often do. At a gun show, I had purchased some reloaded .410 shells. I racked one of the shells into the chamber, but the shell seemed too large for the gun. I ignored this, forcing the shell into the chamber, and pulled the trigger. Boom! The double-loaded shell exploded, blowing the action out of the gun and splintering the stock by the barrel. The wood from the stock cut my abdomen and then injured my girlfriend’s brother. A piece of the receiver buried itself deep into my hand, so much so that it would be three years before I even knew it was there. (It worked its way to the surface while I was in college. I pulled it out of my hand with a pair of pliers.)

The shotgun was salvageable. I bought a new bolt for the gun and refinished the stock. I married, had children, and lost interest in hunting. The gun sat for years in my closet and later in a cabinet. In 1996, during a time when I felt I should sell everything for the sake of the gospel, I sold all of my firearms. At the time, I thought I was doing what Jesus wanted me to do. Boy, do I regret listening to Jesus. 🙂

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: Dropping Out of High School

Bruce Gerencser 9 Comments

My family moved a lot during the first eighteen years of my life, and I attended nine different schools in three states. The summer before my eighth-grade year, my dad moved us from Deshler, Ohio to Findlay, from a small rural school to one of the largest public schools in the state. My parents divorced after fifteen years of marriage in the spring of my ninth-grade year. Less than a year later, Dad sold most of our worldly belongings and moved us to Tucson, Arizona. I would later learn that Dad was running and hiding from creditors. They eventually traced him to Arizona and repossessed both of our automobiles.

After completing my tenth-grade school year in Arizona, I returned to my mom’s home in Bryan, Ohio, planning to enroll in classes at Bryan High School. I really missed my friends and church in Findlay. I expressed this yearning to my youth pastor, Bruce Turner, (please see Dear Bruce Turner) and he floated the idea of me moving to Findlay and living with one of the families in the church. God, or so I thought at the time, put everything in motion, and in short order I found myself living with Bob and Bonnie Bolander — a young couple at Trinity Baptist Church. My stay was short-lived. Bruce Turner found another home for me to stay; that of Gladys Canterberry.

To provide insurance for me and a monthly check to Gladys for keeping me, I was made a ward of court. Every day I would ride my three-speed bike to Findlay High School, attending classes from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. I would then hop on my bike and ride to Bill Knapp’s (a chain family restaurant) where I worked the first of two shifts bussing tables. I worked the lunch shift, took a two-hour break, and then worked the dinner shift. Afterward, I would ride back to Gladys’ house and call it a night. When the weather was bad, I would either walk or take a cab. Regardless, I worked three or four days while carrying a full load of classes. Throw in church, sports, and youth group events, and I was a busy boy. Yet, I never missed a day of school or work.

In May of 1974, I decided I wanted to move back to my mom’s home. I couldn’t legally do so because I was a ward of the state. I spent several weeks planning my escape, and finally, one week before the end of the school year, Mom drove the fifty-five miles from Bryan to Findlay, picked me up, and then we returned to her home. Gladys was livid. She threatened me (and my mother) with arrest if I didn’t immediately return to Findlay. I told her I wasn’t coming back; that I wanted to live with my mom. More threats were uttered, I hung up, and that was that. I wasn’t arrested, but I was very much on my own. By this time, my younger siblings had moved from Arizona to Ohio and were also living with Mom.

Mom had serious mental health problems. Six months after I returned to her home, she had a total breakdown and was involuntarily placed in the state psychiatric hospital in Toledo. My siblings and I were on our own. Dad got wind that we were without parental supervision and drove from Arizona to retrieve us. While I was powerless in the moment, being a minor, I have always felt bad about moving away while Mom was in the hospital. Dad did the right thing, but I can only imagine how Mom felt coming home only to find her children (and money and food stamps) were gone.

After moving back to Bryan, Mom and I went to Bryan High School so I could enroll for my senior year. Bryan requested my records from Findlay, finding out that the school had not given me any credits for my junior year. Why? Evidently, I missed some final exams. I couldn’t retake them, so no credits for eleventh grade. I would have to take the eleventh grade again.

Mom tried to straighten the matter out, even consulting a lawyer. He told her that what Findlay was doing was wrong, but it would take a lot of time and money to fix my record. We had plenty of time, but no money. Knowing this, he suggested I retake eleventh grade.

I was angry, to say the least. I mean really, really, really, red-hair-on-fire angry. During this time, my best friend Dave dropped out of high school. I thought, “That’s exactly what I am going to do.” I informed my mom that I was dropping out of high school. She, of course, exploded, telling me, “Oh no you’re not!” Having just turned seventeen, I knew Mom was all bark and no bite. Eventually, she relented and I dropped out of school.

Being a “dropout” — what an ugly word we use to disparage people who fail to meet societal norms — never materially affected me. I was always able to find employment. Once I had three years of college under my belt, prospective employers quit asking about me dropping out of high school.

In 2002, at the age of forty-five, I decided to get my GED. I was confident that I could pass the exam without taking classes. The GED exam, at the time, took place over several days. On my first day, I checked in for the exam only to have the teacher question whether I should take the test. He knew I hadn’t taken the GED class, so I suspect he thought I would spectacularly fail. I smiled and told him I would be fine.

I passed with flying colors. Higher math questions posed a bit of an issue, but the rest of the questions were no problem for me. Not only that, I was generally the first person to finish his test. (Either you know it or you don’t, right?) The teacher’s face expressed surprise. I so wanted to tell him that it is not wise to judge people you do not know; that I had been doing academic work for thirty years. I may have grown up in poverty, but my mind was rich with knowledge gleaned from books and school. I may have dropped out of high school, but that doesn’t mean I was academically deficient. I was a voracious reader thanks to Mom’s continued reminders to read! Of course, these reminders often came like this: “Butch, get out of my hair. Go read a book!” 🙂

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: Charlotte and Bruce, a Summer Romance

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
carl and pat brandenburg

In the fall of 1970, Dad moved us from Deshler, Ohio — a small rural community in northwest Ohio — to a moderate-sized city of 35,000 residents called Findlay. Findlay is home to Marathon Oil and a large Whirlpool plant. I lived in Findlay in eighth grade, ninth grade, and half of the tenth grade (moved to Arizona), and then returned for my eleventh-grade year. All told, I lived in Findlay forty months.

As good Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB), Dad and Mom looked for a church to attend. Our first stop was Calvary Baptist Church. We didn’t stay long. My parents thought Calvary was too uptown; too upper class, for their liking. Our next stop was Trinity Baptist Church, a fast-growing congregation affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship in Springfield, Illinois.

Trinity was definitely our kind of people — poor, working class, with a few rich folks sprinkled in. Wall-to-wall Sunday attendances were common. Trinity had a large bus ministry that brought hundreds of riders to church every week, as well as a large youth group — one hundred or so students from seventh to twelfth grade.

The summer of 1971 brought Uncle Carl and Aunt Pat Brandenburg to Trinity to hold a five-day Super Summer Bible Rally (SSBR). Hailing out of the Troy Baptist Temple, the Brandenburgs held youth-oriented events for IFB churches. The SSBR held at Trinity gathered all the children into the auditorium (500 kids one night) for ninety minutes of entertainment with a Jesus flavor, and a call to salvation at the end of the night.

While I don’t remember much about the program, I do remember Carl and Pat’s daughter, Charlotte. Both of us were fifteen. While I had been interested in girls for a while, I had never had a serious girlfriend. I hung out with my girl friends, but they were not my girlfriends. Charlotte would soon change that for me.

After the first night of the SSBR, Charlotte and I struck up a conversation, and it was not long before our conversation moved from “acquaintance” to “I like you” to by the end of the week good old-fashioned IFB “puppy love.” For the following four days, I would walk a few blocks to the motel where the Brandenburgs were staying, pick up Charlotte, and we would walk to Riverside Park. There we would walk along the river and sit on the banks of the Blanchard River. Mutual infatuation to be sure, but it seemed “real” to both of us.

charlotte brandenburg

Alas, Friday night came and went, and then it was time for Charlotte to return to Troy. We vowed to keep in touch with one another, and so we did with letters and phone calls. While Charlotte and I held hands and put our arms around each other, we didn’t kiss. Doing so was a crime in IFB circles. Kissing leads to premarital sex . . . need I say more?

In September, I talked my youth director into taking a busload of teens to Troy Baptist Temple to view the movie, A Thief in the Night. Of course, Charlotte would be in attendance too. We sat together, holding hands the whole time. “Was this the making of something special?” I wondered at the time.

After the movie, Charlotte and I were lingering near the church bus, lamenting my soon departure. I really, really, really wanted to kiss her. My youth director, Bruce Turner, told me it was time to get on the bus, and then he looked at the both of us as he turned away and said, “get it over with.” And so we did. A quick kiss and a promise to keep the flame burning.

Alas, absence does not make the heart grow founder, proximity does. By Christmas, both of us had moved on to other people.

I would remain a casual dater until I had my first real adult romance at age eighteen with a woman named Anita. (Please see 1975: Anita, My First Love.) We talked marriage, but our relationship did not last. After Anita, I swore off dating for a while, focusing instead on work, friends, and my 1970 Nova SS. It would not be until the fall of 1976 that I was ready to play the field again. Little did I know the field only had one woman, a beautiful, dark-haired girl named Polly. Two years later we married.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: The Empty Garage

Bruce Gerencser 12 Comments
road ends

I am sixty-six years old. For decades I was Mr. Fix-It. I wasn’t born with mechanical skills, nor did my dad teach them to me. I learned on the job, making countless mistakes. I spent much of my life bouncing between poverty and poor, so hiring people to fix our cars or repair/remodel our homes was not an option. I was in my fifties before I hired someone to work on our house for the first time. I stood in the yard and cried as this man painted the eaves of our home, something I could no longer do.

Since 2020, I have been forced, due to my declining health, to stop doing things I love to do. I am a pragmatist. I try to see things as they are, and not how I want them to be. In 2022, I decided to sell my professional camera equipment. I no longer was able to properly hold a camera, so it was time to dispose of thousands of dollars of camera bodies, lenses, and other equipment. (And I have a lot of studio equipment and miscellaneous stuff I still have to sell.) Family and friends alike were shocked that I sold off all my equipment. Refusing to admit that my debility was progressive and incurable, they thought I should hang on to my camera stuff just in case my health miraculously took a turn for the better. I appreciate them not wanting me to “give up” on photography, but I know my body, and it was and is telling me that there will never be a day when I can once again safely do the things I used to do.

Last Saturday, our children came over for “Garage Day.” My tools have been gathering dust in the garage, no longer used by me because I no longer have the strength and dexterity to use them. I knew there was never again going to be a day when I repaired our car or remodeled our home. I decided to give my children all of my tools, save for some hand tools I put in the house to be used for small, insignificant repairs.

I wondered how our children would respond to “Garage Day.” Surely they knew that this was Dad getting his house in order. What did this “mean”? At the appointed time, they gathered in the backyard to divey up my tools. I had already set up tables in yard-sale-like fashion and put my hand tools, saws, and other items on them.

I didn’t go outside right away, choosing to let them navigate who got what. I was pleased by their thoughtful interaction with each other. No fighting or argument over this or that item. Even the red Craftsman toolbox I bought in 1983 quietly went to our youngest son without a fuss. I was proud of my children. I have seen more than a few families fight and divide over “junk.” Our children know that Mom and Dad are not into material things. They are just a means to an end. Nice to have, but not the end of the world if we don’t have them. Family, not things, is what matters.

An hour later, my tools were headed to new homes in Bryan, Stryker, Defiance, and Ridgeville Corners. Time stops for no one. I know that I will die sooner, and not later. I don’t want it left to Polly to have to deal with my stuff after I’m gone. That said, after everyone left for their respective homes, I retreated to our bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, and cried. I felt a great sense of loss, yet I knew I had done the right thing. Just because you do the right thing doesn’t mean doing so doesn’t cause heartache and pain. Loss is inevitable, and all I know to do is embrace it.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: The Perry County Jail, the Baptist Preacher, and Beavis and Butt-Head

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
bruce gerencser 2002
Bruce Gerencser, 2002

From 1983 to 1994, I pastored Somerset Baptist Church in Mt. Perry, Ohio. A growing Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church in the Appalachian region of southeast Ohio, it was here that I learned what it meant to be a pastor; to minister to the least of these. The church grew to 200 in attendance and then suffered a decline in the early 1990s. By then I had started Somerset Baptist Academy — a tuition-free school for church children.

In the mid-1980s, I started a prison ministry, weekly visiting inmates at the Perry County Jail, along with visiting inmates at several state prisons. (Another IFB preacher later ministered with me at the jail. I don’t remember why he stopped doing so.) Every Tuesday I would go to the jail to talk with anyone who wanted to talk with me. I never pushed the gospel or tried to evangelize them. My goal was to befriend these men with no strings attached.

I vividly remember my first time at the jail. The jailer took me to an open place outside where the men were congregated, saying other churches stood there and “preached” to the inmates. (I thought, at the time, you mean preach AT the inmates.) I told the jailer that I would like to visit the men on their side of the bars. The jailer, with a worried look on his face, said, “Are you sure, preacher? What if something happens?” I told him that I would be fine; that I was a big man, and if someone attacked me, I would defend myself. And with that, each week that I came to the jail, the jailer would lock me in with the men, saying, “Bang on the bars when you are ready to go.” Not one time did an inmate threaten me with physical harm. In time, they came to see me as their friend and looked forward to my visits.

I learned about the human condition while ministering to the men at the Perry County Jail. I learned that poverty and substance abuse were never far from these men. Two young men were charged with murder after they, high on drugs, robbed an elderly woman’s home and slit her throat. Another young man was charged with murder after getting into an argument with his best friend over a pizza. Enraged, he killed him with a shotgun. Others were incarcerated for drug crimes, robbery, theft, and domestic violence. Everyone had a story to tell, and I was there to listen, and if asked, pray for them. I tried to help their families on the outside if I could. Not one inmate ever visited the church I pastored, but I took comfort in knowing that I did as Jesus commanded me to do in Matthew 25. Whether I helped effect change in these men is for them to say. I do know, however, that I was a changed man after getting to know them and hearing their stories. What I learned at the Perry County Jail stayed with me even to this day.

I am sure you are wondering about Beavis and Butt-Head. What do they have to do with my work at the Perry County Jail? Beavis and Butt-Head were on the TV every Tuesday. The men loved this show. I never asked them to turn off the TV. While I personally found Beavis and Butt-Head offensive, I was a guest in their home. I learned to tune out the noise as I talked with the men. I never wanted to be THAT preacher; you know the pushy, arrogant pastor who takes offense at everything. The men quickly learned that they could swear around me. I was just one of the guys, albeit without a criminal record. I understood their poverty, having grown up in a dirt-poor home with a drug-addicted mentally-ill mother and a father who paid little to no attention to me. I knew what it was to do without; to move from house to house and school to school.

In the late 80s, a new, cocky sheriff came to town. He threatened me with arrest several times for street preaching. I dared him to do so, knowing the law was on my side. He revoked my jail privileges, and my ministry at the Perry County Jail came to an end. I often wonder what happened to many of those men. The murderers likely were paroled. What became of them? What lives did they live post-prison? I can only hope that I, in a moment of time, was some small help to them; a friendly man who never judged and was ever content to listen.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: The Day Abraham Roberts Blew Himself Up at Emmanuel Baptist Church

Bruce Gerencser 60 Comments
for sale sign emmanuel baptist church pontiac
For Sale Sign in Main Entrance Door, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Pontiac, Michigan

I attended Midwestern Baptist College in the mid-1970s. All dorm students were required to attend nearby Emmanuel Baptist Church. Emmanuel was pastored by Tom Malone, the chancellor of Midwestern.

Emmanuel Baptist Church was a large church, what we today would call a megachurch. At one time, Emmanuel was one of the largest churches in the United States. Emmanuel ran busses all over the Pontiac/Detroit area. During my time at Emmanuel, the church operated 80 busses. (Today, Emmanuel Baptist is shuttered, its members having moved on to other churches.)

One of the bus riders was a young man named Abraham.

Abraham was a walking contradiction. He was a brilliant, crazy young man.

Abraham would walk up in back of people and snip hair from their heads. A week or so later, Abraham would bring the snipped person a silk sachet filled with hair and fingernail clippings. Needless to say, most of us kept a close eye on Abraham.

One day in 1979, there was a huge explosion at the church. Abraham had built a bomb and brought it on the bus to church. Abraham carried the bomb into a restroom and, whether accidentally or on purpose, the bomb detonated. It was the last strange thing Abraham ever did.

The bomb blew Abraham to bits. One man, an older dorm student, who helped clean up the mess, said bits and pieces of Abraham fell from the drop ceiling. Not a pleasant sight.

At the time, I thought all of this was quite funny. “I guess Abraham won’t do that again.”

Years later, my thoughts are quite different. The busses brought thousands of people to the services of Emmanuel Baptist Church. Most of the riders came from poor or dysfunctional homes. Their needs were great, but all we offered them was Jesus.

Jesus was the answer for everything.

Except that he wasn’t.

As I now know, the problems that people face are anything but simple, and Jesus is not the cure for all that ails you.

In April 1985, The New York Times reported:

A homemade bomb found in a church and detonated by the police was probably planted six years ago by a man who died in a 1979 bomb explosion there, the authorities said Sunday.

A maintenance worker spotted the pipe bomb Saturday above a ceiling panel in the basement recreation area of Emmanuel Baptist Church, said Sgt. Gary Johnston of the Pontiac police.

He said the bomb was probably placed there by Abraham Roberts, who was killed in October 1979 when a bomb he was handling in the church exploded and blew out a wall.

Mr. Roberts, who was 25 years old, was a member of the church who had a history of mental problems and apparently made the bombs in retaliation for being barred from worship services because he was disruptive, Sergeant Johnston said.

The police searched the church after the 1979 explosion, but did not find any other bomb material.

The 18-inch, dust-covered bomb found Saturday was X-rayed by a bomb technician of the Michigan State Police before being detonated later in a field.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: My One and Only Dog

Bruce Gerencser 4 Comments
bruce gerencser 1960s
“Butch”, 1960s, with a different stuffed animal

I will soon celebrate my sixty-sixth birthday. I was born on a warm summer day in June at Cameron Hospital — five miles from where I live today. My grandparents, aunts, and uncles came to visit Bob and Barbara’s redheaded boy. I am sure some of them looked at my dark-skinned, dark-haired father and then looked at me, saying to themselves, hmm. Sixty-four years later, a DNA test revealed that my biological father was a truck driver from Michigan; a man who met my seventeen-year-old mother at a local truck stop where she worked. One thing led to another, and nine months later I was born.

Those who came to visit me in the hospital nursery brought gifts, though none of them brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. One gift was a stuffed animal; a light-brown colored dog with a big nose and a hat. I left the hospital with two things: the nickname Butch, given to me by my doctor who said “isn’t he a Butch,” and my dog.

I quickly became attached to my dog. Over the next eighteen years, I lived in communities such as Bryan, Ney, San Diego, Harrod, Farmer, Deshler, Findlay, Tucson, Mt. Blanchard, and Sierra Vista. No matter where I lived, my dog went with me. In fact, he slept with me every night. When I left home to go to college in 1976, my dog went with me. By then, my dog’s stuffing had settled, its nose was partially detached, and its hat was lost somewhere between Ohio and Arizona.

While at college, I started dating a beautiful dark-haired girl named Polly. Six months later, we were engaged. Polly, of course, met my dog. As I write this, I wonder what she thought about my dog and my love for a scraggly stuffed animal. Whatever she may have thought, she kept her thoughts to herself. On one occasion, she performed emergency surgery on my dog, keeping his innards intact.

After we married, we left college and moved, for a time, to Bryan. From there, we moved to Newark, Ohio, the home of Polly’s preacher father and mother. We rented a house directly across the street from Polly’s parent’s home. By then, Polly and I had a baby and a toddler, and both of us were working full-time jobs.

We stored some of our belongings in Polly’s parent’s basement, hoping to retrieve them once we got settled in our new home. My dog was safely stored in a box, or so I thought, anyway. One day, I decided to retrieve several boxes from the basement, only to find out that the box where my dog lived was gone. This box not only contained my dog, but it also contained mementos (pictures, books, baseball pennants) from my childhood. Evidently, the box had become damp, and my mother-in-law unilaterally decided that the box was filled with junk and threw everything away — including my dog.

My dog survived twenty-two years of moving, but it didn’t survive a woman who had no regard for him (or for his owner); who gave no thought to whether the dog had any sentimental meaning to me. While my dog can’t be replaced, he and I did a lot of traveling and shared many wonderful experiences.

I miss him.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Short Stories: Polly’s AMC Hornet

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments
1972 AMC hornet
1972 AMC Hornet, the car in this story was a darker blue

During the summer of 1972, my wife’s family took a vacation road trip from Bay City, Michigan to California. While in California, their car suffered a major mechanical failure. Polly’s dad decided to junk the car and buy another one: a brand spanking new 1972 AMC Hornet, complete with bench seats, crank windows, and an AM radio.

Dad graduated from Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the spring of 1976 and moved his family to Newark, Ohio so he could work at the Newark Baptist Temple as its assistant pastor. By then the Hornet was worn out and Dad was driving a Chrysler. (Polly’s dad was known for misusing and abusing cars. It is no surprise that he wore out a four-year-old automobile. Besides, it was built by AMC — a company not known for quality cars.) The Hornet moved to Newark too, only to return to Pontiac with a new driver: seventeen-year-old Polly. While Polly started taking some college classes at Midwestern during her senior year of high school (from which she graduated second in her class), her first full year began in the fall of 1976.

While at Midwestern, Polly’s dad spent four years working an excellent-paying union job at GM Truck and Coach’s Pontiac plant. His new job at the Baptist Temple paid seventy-five percent less than he made at Truck and Coach, and had no insurance benefits. When Polly arrived at Midwestern with her Hornet, she was on her own. Her parents were unable to pay for her tuition and room and board, so it was up to her to pay her own way. This was quite a culture shock for her, having grown up in a blue-collar middle-class home.

Polly quickly found work, but the wages were poor. Fortunately, she met a redheaded boy from Ohio who quickly caught her fancy. I had much better-paying jobs than Polly did, so I often gave her money for food, gasoline, and other incidentals. One of my responsibilities was repairing and maintaining Polly’s car. Not long after Polly arrived at Midwestern, the Hornet quit running. Her dad told her to junk the car (without providing her with new transportation). I told Polly to ignore her dad; that I could get the car up and running in no time flat. And I did.

The Hornet was a non-stop repair project. I was up to the task, able to fix virtually anything on a car. Those were the days. By the winter of 1976, the Hornet was already showing signs of rust, especially on top of the front fenders. One day I was driving the Hornet down Golf Drive near the College on my way to work. Suddenly, the hood unlatched. The wind caught the hood, standing it straight up, pushing the hood straight down into its rusted fenders and wells. This, of course, caused a lot of damage. Not having any money to properly fix the hood and the fenders, I removed the hood, and we drove the Hornet for several months hoodless. When it rained or snowed, I put a canvas tarp over the motor to keep it from getting wet.

By the spring of 1977, not even Bruce, the magical mechanic, could keep the Hornet running. Polly called her dad to tell him, only to be lectured for not junking the car when she was told to. Never mind that Polly’s parents left her to fend for herself. How was she supposed to get to work or buy groceries? Polly spent the next sixteen months either driving my cars or bumming rides off of fellow students. To this day, I don’t understand Polly’s parent’s indifference toward their daughter’s plight. (I suspect their own financial problems kept them from helping their daughter.) She was naive, as innocent as they come. She had no idea about how to care for a car or manage her finances. Things could have gone very wrong for Polly had it not been for her fiancé and friends.

After determining that the Hornet was no longer drivable, Polly parked it at the back of the student parking lot — a junkyard of sorts for other cars that were no longer usable. Our intention was to sell the car to a junkyard. Before we could, a fellow student named Randy — who had a crush on Polly, a man I despised — asked Polly what she planned to do with the Hornet. She told him “Junk it.” Randy replied, “Can I have it?” Polly said yes, and I reminded him that the car was NOT drivable. He replied, “No problem.” Later that day, we heard a loud banging sound in the parking lot. We went outside to see what the commotion was all about. There was Randy repeatedly driving his own automobile into the Hornet, treating it like it was a demolition derby car.

I can’t remember how many times Randy smashed into the car, but when he was done, the Hornet was a certifiable wreck. The college informed Polly that she had to have the car immediately towed off school property. And that was the end of the Hornet.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Connect with me on social media:

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.