It may seem strange for someone to think of a place they lived for only six months as their adopted hometown, but that’s how I feel about Charleston, Ark.

Attending the recent celebration of the 150th anniversary of Charleston’s First United Methodist Church caused me to reflect on lasting influence the church, and the town, had on the lives of my mom and dad, my two brothers and me, due to my dad, the Rev. Roy E. Poynor, being the pastor there from 1960 to 1965.

I was born and raised in Fort Smith and I loved living here close to good neighbors and scads of aunts, uncles and cousins who were some of my family’s very best friends. I think Dad already had been preaching about two years when I realized in about the first grade at Mill Creek Elementary that Methodist ministers are often assigned to churches in many different cities.
That knowledge inspired me to begin fervently praying that my dad wouldn’t get sent to another town – at least until I was out of high school.

Methodist pastors get their church assignments every year in June during a state conference where their appointments are announced. So, by the time school was out for the summer at the end of May every year, I’d be on pins and needles to find out if we would get to stay in Fort Smith.

Apparently, my prayers worked pretty well until I graduated from Fort Smith High School in May 1960. It seemed like the ink on my diploma was barely dry when Daddy returned from church conference in June with news he had been appointed the pastor of First Methodist Church in Charleston. Within a week, we had left my original hometown and moved into the parsonage of the old rock Methodist church that now sits vacant on the south side of Charleston’s East Main Street (aka Arkansas 22.) Services are now held in a modern church building about a mile or less east of the old church, on the same side of the same road.

My brother Roy II (whose family nickname is Rep) started eighth grade in Charleston that first fall we lived there and I started college classes at Westark (now UA-Fort Smith). Our little brother, Rob, celebrated his first birthday in the parsonage that November, and my mom found a lifelong friend in our neighbor, “Granny” Delaney, and her daughter, Mary Belle.

My friendly dad soon knew practically everyone in town, of course, and some of the lifetime friends we made there (and please forgive me if I misspell anyone’s name from memory) include the Flannagan, Schaffer, Bumpers, Ervin, Delaney, King, Hiatt, Wells, Moore, Bollinger, Fenter and Williams families – to name but a few.

Less than six months after we moved to Charleston, the handsome love of my life, Frank Seubold, asked me to marry him, unexpectedly disrupting my college plans and taking me off from my new hometown, after our December marriage, to Davenport, Iowa, where he was going to college. But we had our wedding reception in the parsonage and came back there to visit my family every time we could.

Four years later, Rob started school in Charleston and Rep graduated high school there in 1965, just before Dad was transferred to Washington Avenue Methodist Church in North Little Rock that June. Charleston has still seemed like home to me and my family, and my dad ended his life on this earth in our “second hometown” last year, as he and Mom had both said they hoped they could when it was their time to die.

As I enjoyed visiting with many families I hadn’t seen for years during the 150th anniversary celebration feast that was prepared by the church’s great cooks and served after the anniversary church service, I couldn’t help thinking about my mom and dad. I knew they both must have surely been smiling down on that event, happy in the knowledge the church that was “only” 102 years old when they first moved our family to Charleston is still thriving and serving our “adopted” hometown, and other communities, too, 48 years later.

Linda Seubold, editor of Entertainment Fort Smith Magazine, can be reached at lindaseubold@efortsmith.com. Read her archived columns and articles online.

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