These is my tribute to Ardelle Clemons printed in this week's Second Page:
On Monday of next week I and many others from Second Baptist will travel down to San Antonio to say goodbye to Ardelle Clemons. It is hard to express just how much Ardelle’s life and spirit helped to shape me, Irie, and indeed all of Second B.
When I was a young boy at Second B I knew Ardelle only in a very limited way. Hardy Clemons was then the senior pastor at Second B, and Ardelle was first and foremost in my mind Hardy’s wife. When I was a child I thought like a child, and I thank God that as I grew up I put away such childish thinking. In fact, we all did. Ardelle pretty much insisted on it. The other day Penny Vann told me that when he and Joy first joined the church back in the 70’s, someone introduced Ardelle to them as “the preacher’s wife.” Penny said Ardelle looked at that person square in the eye and clarified. “I am Ardelle,” she said.
I was reacquainted with Ardelle and Hardy while I was in divinity school in Durham, NC, and they were in Greenville, SC. Once a semester I would drive south from Durham to Greenville and stay the weekend with the Clemonses. I always looked forward to sleeping in the big “Grady Nutt Memorial Bed” upstairs and waking to enjoy a cup of Ardelle’s “Brazilian style” coffee – half coffee and half milk. Just the way Ardelle liked it.
What amazed me about Ardelle most on those trips was the way she jumped right in on the late-night, theological bull sessions. She could hold her own whether we were talking about the modernism of Harry Emerson Fosdick, the fundamentalism of Paige Patterson, or the temperamentalism of First Corinth. Ardelle knew theology and, having grown up a preacher’s kid, she knew church — or, as she lovingly called it, “the fish bowl.”
It was Ardelle’s way with navigating the fish bowl that I give the most thanks for. Once Irie and I were engaged and then first married, we spent even more frequent weekends with Hardy and Ardelle down south in Greenville. I had stopped kicking against the goads and decided I was for sure going to be a pastor, and that decision left Irie – all of age 22 – afraid she needed to learn to play the piano and knit doilies so as to fit into her new “preacher’s wife” role.
Ardelle showed Irie another way. She modeled how someone could be the wife of a pastor while at the same time keeping her own name and identity. Ardelle encouraged Irie take up only the things she wanted and felt called to take up in church – regardless of how short-handed the youth department or any other ministry in the church might be. “Feel free to be your own person,” Ardelle told Irie. And Irie listened. She listened because Ardelle spoke with the authority of someone who had not only survived being a pastor’s wife, but excelled at it. I thought of Ardelle when at our first church Irie said thanks but no thanks to being a part of the ladies’ auxiliary. Irie felt the freedom to be Irie because Ardelle had the courage to be Ardelle.
There is a saying attributed to Jesus that for me summarizes the gift Ardelle gave to Irie, me, and so many others here at Second B, First Baptist Greenville, and across the country. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is in you, what is in you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you, what is in you will destroy you.” Though not canonical, the saying is true. When we are free to be, and love, and express our true selves, then the truth of ourselves will set us free; and then we will be free indeed. This is the gift Ardelle Clemons gave to so many of us. She showed us how to be ourselves.
A decade after all those trips from Durham to Greenville, I find myself planning one more final road trip south to see Ardelle. Yes, I’m going to pay my respects to my first pastor’s wife. But I’m also going to pay my respects to a friend, and a mentor, and a fellow-traveler who showed me and so many others the way.
I’m going to pay my respects to Ardelle.
