Thank you so much for letting me know about Wayne Oates dying. He was one of the most important people in my life.

I must have shared with you somewhere along the way about my terrible experience with freshman psy. I had a professor who had nothing to say, and said it poorly, a text book that was drier than dust and did not merit being published.

I was interested in counseling first, to understand what made me tick, and second, because I had (I can say it now) counseled with some of the people who worked for me when I was a manager with the telephone co before God called me into the ministry. I just thought of it as being a caring boss and seeking to get the best production from the employees. If you had told me I was counseling then I would have told you you were crazy.

When I finished that course I vowed I would never take another psy course and I dismissed any idea of counseling as proof that I didn't know what I was talking about.

Fortunately, by God's grace, in 1955, my first semester at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, I had a course with Dr. Wayne Oates. I had never heard of him. He had not said three sentences in the first class before there was a veritable explosion inside me and I silently shouted, THAT'S WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR". From that moment on I took every course from him I possibly could and he became a special mentor and spiritual Father to me. He had a great sense of humor, was comfortable with his humanity, and really lived what he was teaching. As you know my Father had died and that made his influence on me all the more profound. He was one of the outstanding early pioneers in integrating Christianity and counseling. He is the one who had managed to set up an opportunity for seminary students to do a field placement, (I forget what it was called) at the Louisville Medical Center. I don't remember the exact name now, but it was the hospital connected with the medical school, comparable to LSU Medical School. That was back in the days when any mention of God was labeled as "religion ideation ", and considered a symptom of mental illness. Psychiatrists dismissed any desire on the part of patients to talk about spiritual issues with a catch phrase, "We don't deal with value issues". Which is, of course, a stupid statement, because the very statement is a statement of values.

I also saw Wayne for some personal counseling, which greatly contributed to the happy marriage my wife and I are still enjoying.

He and I stayed in contact for 10 or 15 years after I left Louisville. By then our lives were so busy and so geographically distant that slowly we lost contact with each other. My last contact with him was in the mid 70's when I needed a letter from him verifying the clinical training I had received from him. He wrote a wonderful letter confirming the training and expressing his warm memories of our time together.

I cried and celebrated throughout the day yesterday and I'm sure will continue to do so for a while.