For Wilshire Baptist Church
Fifty years ago today, on April 6, 1971, my sister, Martha Ann Hampton, age nine, died from injuries after an automobile accident on our way to my grandparents’ house for Easter. Nobody else in our car was seriously injured, but our lives were changed forever.
Sorry to be so blunt just two days after Easter. I should be crowing instead about how our Baylor basketball team won the national championship in dominant style last night. But like a newspaper editor tasked with news judgement, I’ve had to make a decision on what to lead with today, and that 50th anniversary of my first life tragedy can’t be buried on page two. So, both stories are on my front page today.
We were just an hour from our destination of Orange, Texas, after five hours of driving and stopping for lunch, when a Ford Ranchero pulled out in front of us on U.S. 69 a few miles north of Koontz. There was nothing my father could do but slam on the brakes and prepare for impact. And what an impact it was. It killed two people in the other vehicle, shook up the rest of us, put stitches in my scalp, and gave my sister invisible internal injuries that couldn’t be repaired. We flew home to Dallas from Beaumont — my first plane ride — had the funeral, and then Sunday was Easter with the “hallelujahs” and all that. Christ had risen yet again, but Martha was gone. There wasn’t much joy that day or for many days to come.
Last night during the victory celebration in Indianapolis, Baylor’s head coach Scott Drew explained how the team and coaches have lived and played this year with a culture of JOY: Jesus, Others, Yourself in that order. They’ve been outspoken and up front with that mantra all year long and that’s been great. Win or lose, there’s a sustenance and a peace in that order that can’t be denied. If you order your life that way, you never really lose. You’ll hurt and be hurt, you’ll fall down and stay down sometimes, you’ll kick and cry and feel bluer than blue, but you’ll never really lose.
I think that’s what has sustained me through these past 50 years. Certainly not consistently, because I’m only human and I’ve strayed and put myself out front too often. I’ve questioned God and doubted God’s plan — even doubted the Easter story and our own future with it. But the seeds of that idea of JOY were planted in me long before that day 50 years ago and I’ve found peace in the shade of those vines. They were planted by my parents, my grandparents, my church and my family of faith. And that’s where JOY really needs to be — planted deep inside and nurtured organically rather than just being spoken from a platform or printed on a T-shirt.
For the record, I haven’t dwelled on my sister’s death daily or even annually during these past 50 years. There’s been too much wonderful life to live. In fact, there are some years when I haven’t even thought about it. Part of the reason for that, I suspect, is that it happened just before Easter, and Easter is always a moving target. Easter Sunday has come on April 11 after Tuesday, April 6, just three times in the past 50 years. And only three times on April 4 as it did this year.
I also haven’t dwelled on it because I think it shocked me more than grieved me at the time. I was only 12 years old, and in 1971 there wasn’t much going on with grief counseling for children. I know the North Texas Grief and Loss Center that is housed at Wilshire has wonderful programs for children who have lost parents or siblings, but 50 years ago we just gathered ourselves up and went back to school and to life. There’s nobody to blame for that; that’s just the way it was.
But I thank God that at least I had the seeds of JOY planted in me. Just having Jesus at the forefront has kept me sane and kept me from going astray in my actions and my beliefs, and it definitely has given me perspective when other tragedies have come along. At age 62, more experience with life and loss has opened me up to more exploration of what happened 50 years ago. I’ve thought about it more and written about it more in recent years, and maybe talking about it here will help someone else someday.
Meanwhile, unless science gets a handle on aging, I won’t be here 50 years from now to remember and talk about the death of my sister. By then, I’ll be with her and with so many other people I’ve loved and missed. But 50 years from now, someone at Baylor will be retelling the story of how the Bears beat the Bulldogs. And unless they include the power of JOY in that telling, the story will be incomplete.