The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 75, No. 4, Ed. 1 Sunday, April 1, 2018 Page: 4 of 35
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INSIDE STORY
4 THE CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE
APRIL 2018
SISTER KEEBLE: Evangelist's widow lived by faith
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TRANSPARENT
dress and go preach. He’d say, ‘Come
on, Mama, let’s go to church.’”
She chuckled as she recalled their
drawn-out honeymoon: a three-
month tent revival that he preached
in California.
While the minister spent weeks
and even months on the road, Sister
Keeble stayed home.
“There was plenty to do at home
to keep her occupied,” author Willie
Cato wrote in the book “His Hand and
His Heart... The Wit and Wisdom
of Marshall Keeble.” “She became a
very loving mother to his three chil-
dren and also to the grandchildren.”
Later, when the minister served as
president of the Nashville Christian
Institute, a school for black children,
Sister Keeble kept up to a dozen
a good wife,” Keeble told friends
after Minnie died from an illness. “I
can’t live single the rest of my life as
young as I am.”
A relative suggested Laura, and
Keeble initiated the courtship with
letters. To see a preacher “flirting
around with a woman” disgusted
him, he said, so he never spent
more than five minutes alone with
her before they married. Keeble
later said the relative “told me I’d
get the best rose in the Johnson
flower garden, and I think I did.”
When I visited with her in 2003,
Sister Keeble’s love for her husband
still shone through.
“Ain’t he a dandy?” she said, holding
a black-and-white photograph other
husband of 34 years. “He loved to
ROB SCOBEY
The late Laura Keeble, then 104, talks with Corrinne Osei at the Lakeshore
Estates Retirement Nursing Home in Nashville,Tenn., in 2003.
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FROM PAGE 3
Baptized in a Mississippi creek in
1913, this gentle woman known as
“Sister Keeble” boasted a spiritual
strength that belied her wrinkles,
white hair and wheelchair.
For much of her life, she lived
in the shadow of her husband. But
Sister Keeble, who also became
“Mama” to dozens of young girls,
had her own story.
Born Aug. 6,1898, Laura Catherine
Johnson was one of seven girls and
three boys in her family. Her father,
Luke, worked in an iron foundry. Her
mother, Susan, was a nurse.
Laura attended No. 2 High School,
the black school in Corinth, Miss.
Her great-granddaughter Gwen
Cummings asked her one time if she
resented the segregated education.
“We weren’t taught that way,”
Cummings, an elder’s wife who
attends the Jackson Street Church
of Christ in Nashville, recalled her
saying. “We stayed busy, and we
stayed circled in Christianity.”
When Marshall Keeble came
along, he was already a well-known
minister. Laura was 35, working as
a nanny and wondering if she might
die an “old maid.”
Keeble, the son of former slaves,
was a recent widower and 20 years
older than Laura. His first wife,
Minnie, a Fisk University graduate,
helped teach the preacher how
to read and write. In 36 years of
marriage, the couple had five chil-
dren, two of whom died in infancy.
“Some of you ought to find me
.....W.W
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girls at a time in her home. She
never gave birth to a child, but she
became “Mama” to many.
However busy their days were,
the Keebles always knelt and prayed
before going to bed — and prayer
remained an integral part of Sister
Keeble’s life when I met her.
When she fell and fractured her
back a few years earlier, Sister
Keeble insisted on thanking God
before she sipped a cup of soup.
“She was in such pain ... but
she said, ‘Righteous father, I
most humbly thank you for these
blessings that you’ve given me,”’
Cummings told me in 2003.
Sister Keeble’s favorite song was
“Faith Is The Victory.” The song fit
how she lived — by faith.
When I was working on the AP
story, she was suffering from a
nasty cough. Still, Sister Keeble had
a relative roll her wheelchair to the
nursing home lobby for worship.
She wore a purple dress and a
diamond ring that her husband
gave her — and a blue, decades-old
church hymnal rested on her lap.
About 40 nursing home residents
sang “0 for a Faith that Will Not
Shrink.” Then men prayed and
offered communion.
As the collection plate approached,
Sister Keeble pulled out a $5 bill.
“Nobody’s expecting her to give,”
Cummings said. But Sister Keeble
saw it differently.
“The Lord is,” she said.
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Tryggestad, Erik. The Christian Chronicle (Oklahoma City, Okla.), Vol. 75, No. 4, Ed. 1 Sunday, April 1, 2018, newspaper, April 1, 2018; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1509388/m1/4/?rotate=0: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Christian University Library.