Nora Rebecca Still Kerby was born January 13, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the third child of ordained preachers Owen and Shirley Still, the little sister of Owen Junior and Eleanor Ann Still.
Mom was named after my grandmother's best friend, a judge's wife, Nora Hathcock. Two days later after mom arrived, only a few blocks away right there in Atlanta, another preacher and his wife welcomed into their lives a son who would be named Martin Luther King Jr. My mom and Dr. King never met, but she was a quiet admirer. When I was a child, she made sure I watched on TV as Alabama governor George Wallace stood in the doorway, blocking black students from enrolling in the university and told me - a ten-year-old - that, yes, we were proud to be southerners, but "that is not who we are."
A little more than a year after Mom's arrival, Ruth Elizabeth was born, and the two sisters would be best friends for life.
At age five, "when we lived on Division Street in Atlanta," remembers Ruth, "in about 1934, Rebecca was afraid of monsters. The rest of the family did not know it, but there were monsters in the darkness through which Rebecca and I had to pass on the way to our room. Rebecca was five or six years old and though I was twenty-two months younger, for some reason, I did not fear the monsters. When it was time to go through the dreaded darkness, I would go first and scare those monsters from their hiding places---drive them from our path.
"During those early years, Rebecca and I were inseparable. We owned kittens together, Boots and Ring, and made them fearful of water by insisting they needed to be baptized (we were mindful of our heritage).
"It is interesting to me that as the years went by, Rebecca became fearless. When we wandered the streets of pre-war Tokyo, and got lost, she would say calmly, "Don't worry, Ruth. We will find the train tracks and follow them home."
"What can I say of her today? She blessed my life for more than 80 years. And yesterday, she faced a dark room where she saw no monsters. With a faith that burned strong, she murmured words of love to those around her and a few minutes later, entered a room that was filled with light.
"And while I know this is true, I will miss her bright light in my world ... as will you."
As a child, Sundays were busy for Rebecca and her family. Her dad was an evangelist for the Christian Restoration Association and preached tent revivals all around Atlanta that drew large crowds - as well as the 10 a.m. service at Atlanta's Grant Park Christian Church and the 11 o'clock service. At the same time, Shirley preached the morning sermon at Jefferson Park Christian Church. The kids tagged along. The family was dirt poor - preachers didn't do it for the money during the Great Depression. The family lived in a house owned by Judge Hathcock, who also helped pay Owen's salary.
But just after my mom turned eight, her dad accepted a call to fill the gap left by the death of missionary W.D. Cunningham in faraway Tokyo. He had established and oversaw 12 churches in Japan and 17 more in Korea.
The kids saw it as a glorious adventure - first the long, long ocean voyage to Japan, then the excitement of living in Tokyo, just down the street from the Crown Prince's palace. Rebecca and Ruth introduced an American custom to the Japanese capital - and would draw large crowds following the strangely dressed foreigner children as they careened down the sidewalks.
"We had roller skates," remembers Ruth something Japanese children had never seen, and we delighted in swooping down hills, drawing a fascinated audience. One day we shot down a steep road, right out into a busy street. From a nearby kiosk came a police officer and we knew from the way he walked that we were in trouble and he intended to scold us.
Rebecca had a plan. "Let's pretend we don't understand Japanese, Ruth. Then he will just have to let us go."
When he approached we were quite prepared to play dumb, not lie, you understand, just play dumb; but to our dismay, he spoke to us in nearly perfect English and we got the scolding we deserved.
But it was a very difficult time in history. World War II broke out as Hitler invaded Poland, then Czechoslovakia. Japan took over Korea and invaded China. Mom and her siblings attended the American International School along with kids from about 50 different nations. The playground included obnoxious, arrogant Hitler youth from Germany who were not supposed to bring up politics.
Mom liked playing soccer and delighted in beating the Nazi kids - which they took very badly, since they were being taught that they were racially superior than the other children.
If you've seen the Stephen Spielberg movie Empire of the Sun, it tells the story of a little boy who missed the ship evacuating Europeans from the growing conflict. He spent the war in a prisoner of war camp. My grandfather just barely got on the ship. The kids and my grandmother boarded a luxury liner that had been commandeered by the U.S. government to evacuate Americans in Japan, Shanghai and Australia.
But it was all just another adventure for my mom and the other kids. They were supposed to stay down in the improvised cabins for refugees, but instead explored the ship and made friends with the rich first class passengers - much like in the movie Titanic - you remember Leonardo di Caprio sneaking up to the fancy desks to make friends with Rose.
The family settled in Bentonville, then Yellville, Arkansas. But as the planet descended into world war, as thousands of Americans died in the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, then the terrible Pacific campaigns through Guadacanal, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, sentiment against the Japanese was intense and anyone who befriended "Japs" was suspect.
My grandparents were appalled that the U.S. government was gathering up anyone of Japanese ancestry - even second and third generation American citizens - and relocating them into camps in the American desert. So, that's where my mom's family spent much of World War II - as her parents became unofficial chaplains to Japanese-Americans forced to live behind barbed wire in Arizona and Utah. My grandfather's financial support dried up. He was considered a traitor. He had to plead with the local ration board to give him the stamps necessary to buy tires, oil and gasoline so he could get to the camps.
At the war's end, he was one of the first American civilians allowed back into devastated Tokyo and was given the temporary rank of U.S. Army lieutenant colonel to permit him to work with General Douglas MacArthur's rebuilding of Japan.
Mom stayed behind and enrolled at San Jose Bible College where she fell in love with a boy from Iowa studying to be a preacher. Both had graduated from high school early. Bobby Kerby had been preaching at as many as four churches each Sunday since he was 14. They were married although both were teenagers. My dad's parents had to sign permission since he was under-age.
Not willing to wait until they finished college, they set off to change the world, pulling a tiny travel trailer. He began preaching first back in Iowa, then at a little church in New Mexico and another in Missouri, but as they paused at First Christian Church in Owasso, Oklahoma, Rebecca became a mother for the first time to Robert Kerby Jr.
My dad worked for the telephone company, then got a job with Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa. He preferred preaching at tiny congregations that could not afford a fulltime preacher - and delighted in building up their congregations. Since he could not carry a tune, Mom often led the singing and always taught a Sunday school class of kids - as well as set up women's Bible study groups. We lived in the Garnett area of Tulsa, but on Saturdays and Sundays ministered in Morris, Adair, Berryhill and Chouteau, Oklahoma.
While we were at Morris, when I was four and five, we did a stint in Hawaii with my dad preaching at Palolo Valley Christian Church. Mom had just given birth to my sister, Robyn, but off we went. I loved it - being buddies with a ton of cousins my age. Mom delighted at being reunited with her sisters, who taught at Sunset Beach Christian School that my grandfather had founded on Oahu's north shore.
But my dad's heart was in Oklahoma. When I was in the fifth grade, he resigned from the church at Chouteau and started a congregation in the rural Tulsa housing development of Rolling Hills outside of Catoosa. The only place he could find to meet was the fire station - and so we had church there. Fireman Troy Phillips and he would back the fire engines out onto the driveway, set up chairs and have a service.
Mom jumped into the project enthusiastically. She loaded me and Robyn into the car and we set out to map Rolling Hills, identifying every street and house. Then evenings after work and on Saturdays, my dad went "calling," visiting every house and inviting them to church. My mom worked out a system of filing cards to keep track of every family - noting whether they attended church, whether they would allow their kids to come to Sunday School.
Meanwhile, if all that was not enough, my mom hosted a weekly Bible club in our home. Neighborhood kids learned the books of the Bible, the judges of Israel, the important events of each chapter in the Book of Acts. At a 35-year high school reunion, my best friend from the third grade, Lester Corbit, now an insurance agent, greeted me with a recitation of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. For memorizing Bible verses, we were awarded prizes and told "secret words" that entitled us to more prizes. I remember vividly one day when several neighborhood bullies older than me dragged me out into the field across from our house and tried to extract from me one of the secret words. I refused to tell.
My sister's best friend, Janie Palmer, remembers this: "The Kerbys lived around the corner on Newton Place. Mrs. Kerby was a beautiful influence on me and the other kids in our neighborhood. I spent many hours at their house, in their yard playing with Robyn, attending backyard Bible club, and having piano lessons from Mrs. Kerby. We remained friends over 50 years. In reflection, Mrs. Kerby was truly a Proverbs 31 lady. "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate." Proverbs 31:30, 31. As we look back to the 60's and 70's on N. Garnett we know how blessed we were to grow up in a neighborhood with godly and caring families with mothers such as Rebecca Kerby.
When I was in the sixth grade, my dad quit his job - by then he was an electrician at the big Martin Marietta cement plant nearby - and took the plunge into being a fulltime preacher. As a result, we were dirt poor... but mom was incredibly frugal and pinched every penny. When the offering wasn't enough to pay my dad's salary, we just skipped paychecks. I resented it as a junior high schooler - but it never escaped my attention that throughout my life - at Palolo Valley, at Morris, at Chouteau, now at Rolling Hills, God always provided.
He continued to do so when Dad retired from Rolling Hills. Uncomfortable with not being in the pulpit, he filled in for congregations without preachers - including long stints in Boynton and Okmulgee. Then he decided to jump back in - and considered starting a church in Glenpool or Inola. He and mom decided on Inola and jumped into the new project with the same gusto they'd brought to other congregations. It would be there that he preached his last sermon, pleased that the congregation was in the capable hands of Jim and Nancy Page. Mom continued to toil at Inola even after his death - running children's church and organizing a decade of Vacation Bible School and Sunday school material.
Mom had always wanted to be a writer. Indeed, she was a published playwright and author of In Word or In Deed, the biography of her father. She has left behind a hilarious novel that was never published - not yet anyway - of letters sent home from church camp. When I was little, Mom would tell me how she had picked her pen name for when she became famous - Barbara Allen, yes, the tragic maiden from the oldtime ballad.
She was thrilled when I actually was able to make a living as a writer, first as a teenager at the Tulsa Daily World - I stayed there 11 years, then as a magazine and book editor. I've actually written 60 books, but very few of them have my name on them. I was a ghostwriter. That didn't bother her one bit. I had accomplished her dream.
She was also an aspiring musician - and was thrilled when my sister pursued a successful career in piano.
After my dad passed away, we found that a lifetime of frugal living had paid off - he left her a modest annuity that more than met her needs. In retirement, she continued conducting Bible clubs and Sunday school and ladies group. Well into her 70s, she was traveling to a local nursing home to provide a communion service each Sunday to the, as she put it, "old people."
She cared about telemarketers and would talk to them for hours, telling them about Jesus - and fretting to Robyn and me that she couldn't afford to send much to support their causes.
When she finally entered an assisted living facility, she continued conducting Bible studies. At Canoebrook down the road, she was thrilled to discover new neighbors who included the parents of my kindergarten and junior high buddy - her longtime friends the Stinchcombs. Ray became a special project of hers - she was determined to help him understand the importance of the chronology of the Bible... that Noah lived long before Abraham, that Solomon came after David, but before Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
She came down with a debilitating condition that left her in pain, but helped her develop a deep and caring relationship with her physician, Dr. Mark Thompson, whose care beat a prognosis that she would descend into dementia 15 years ago. He held off her bone deterioration and fulfilled her deep, deep desire that the final thing to go would be her mind.
Four years ago, she seemed to be at death's door, suffering from a rare lung disorder that apparently was residual from her childhood travels. She prayed with my sister - telling God that she wanted to come home, to walk Heaven's streets of gold with my dad and all her loved ones who had gone before. However, she prayed, "If you have anything left for this old woman, I am willing to stay." That was when she jumped enthusiastically into her Bible studies for fellow retirement home residents. She saw a purpose. For her, life must have a purpose.
But missions were one of her many passions. Almost 50 years ago at church camp, she inspired an eight-year-old preacher's kid who would become my best friend for life, Andrew Loveall. The fourth grader felt God's call on his life and today is toiling away in rural Guatemala. One of the last things I was able to talk to mom about was how the recent volcano disaster there had heavily damaged one of his schools - but that international rescue efforts were using the school at El Rodeo as the command center.
She let Robyn and me know that she saw no point in wasting good money on a casket and enabling - when we could use some of the annuity my dad had left to help Andrew. And so it is, we invite you to join her in her final cause, supporting Andrew Loveall's New Hope for Guatemala. You can find the mission at www.NewHopeFor < http://www.NewHopeFor > Guatemala.com. I am proud to serve on his board. I'm the one who deals with IRS and other legal issues. In the back of the church is a basket if you would like to contribute to his mission work.
Today, there are so many faithful friends who helped give her a rich life even when she could no longer drive. Because of my sister's daily visits, Mom never felt stuck in a nursing home. She enjoyed the faithful attention of so many buddies, too many to name here, but including Mary Jane Baker. It was her faithful friend Linda McAdams last Sunday afternoon who had come up with her husband Jack who spoke to Mom last. Her breathing had been labored. Even though she could no longer speak, there was still that twinkle in her eye - as she was laughing and attempting to add her two-cents worth to our silly conversation.
This afternoon, we've all lost a friend. Robyn and I have lost our mom. Alecia Barbour, Myra Kerby, Andrea Withrow, Robert "Trey" Kerby III and Michael Kerby have lost their grandma. Jessica Kerby, Victor Orellana and David Withrow have lost their grandmother-in-law. Mom's beloved Dixie Lee Kerby Short has lost a sister-in-law. Eight great grandkids who gave her such joy remain to carry on her legacy - Jaydan Kerby, Isaiah Moore, Moriah Moore, Dahlia Orellana, Bryce Withrow, Riley Jo Kerby, Garrett Withrow and Finley Nora Kerby.
Today Mom is walking the streets of gold. Dad has undoubtedly already given her a complete tour. She's no longer bent and in pain. She is enjoying her eternal reward. I'm not distraught at all. I'm going to see her again.
She's looking forward to seeing you. But she's in no hurry.
She'd prefer you find God's purpose in your life - and follow it. That is what gave her a life of joy.
Serving you.
Loving you.
Praying for you.
And now, waiting to see you again.

To view video family made click link below, once in the link type Rebecca Kerby memorial service video.

< https://vimeo.com/276700957 >
Memorial Service 3:00 p.m., Sunday, June, 24, 2018
Catoosa Hills Christian Church
18415 E. Admiral Pl., Catoosa, OK 74015
918-234-3507

Moore's Eastlawn Chapel
918-622-1155