The Fourth Sunday in August

August was always a special time for Tyre Denney.  His birthday was the 25th of August.  He would have been 80 this year.  Mom and Dad were married on August 14, 1948.  And, the fourth Sunday in August each year was the Denney Family Reunion.  Most of the time it was the last Sunday in August and it was always close to Dad's birthday; sometimes it was the same day.  My grandmother, Leone Denney, always said the reunion is on the last Sunday in August, except when there are five Sundays in August, and that year it won't be the last Sunday, it will be on the fourth Sunday.  This year there are five Sundays in August so next Sunday will be the Denney Reunion.  I don't think anyone in my family will be going this year.  Dad didn't go last year because he wasn't feeling up for the trip.  It was the first year he had missed in many years. He was recovering from knee replacement surgery and he just didn't feel that well.  He did plan to go this year and if he was here and able to go, I would go with him.  But, it will not be the same without him there.  He wrote an article back in 1991 about going to the reunion each year.  It is worth remembering.  Dad wrote,

I didn't go to church on August 25th because I was at the Macintosh Passive Recreational Facility in Carroll County, Georgia for the annual Denney Reunion.  For over 50 years, those of us who are descendents of my grandparents, James Thomas and Laura Smith Denney, meet every year for about three hours on the fourth Sunday in August.  When I was a child, we went, period.  It was still that way when Betty and I first married.  But after I became a pastor, it was difficult to get away and I missed several.  In fact, in the later years of daddy's life, I rarely took advantage of the opportunity to spend some time with, as I say it, people who know how to pronounce Tyre and spell Denney with the proper amount of e's.  Strangely enough, since he passed away, I haven't missed a year--24 straight now, if I'm counting right.  Long enough to see his generation of seven brothers and four sisters shrink down to the only one that remains, his baby sister, my Aunt Gerila.  And, for all those 24 years, since I'm the only one of the preacher persuasion in the family--except the one who married one of my cousins, but they never come, it's been Aunt Gerila who's come over to put her arm around me and say "Tyre's going to say a few words to us now and then ask the blessing on our food."  For a number of years, I tried to say a few words.  Words about the common name we share and the love we have for one another that draws us across many miles so we can spend a few minutes together once a year.  And better than that, since we are a Christian family, about the Savior we share and the privilege we have to tell our world about His love.  But my emotions would get the best of me and I'd usually be so full I couldn't handle it.  So I've just about given up on trying to do that.  Now I just try to get through the blessing without puddling up.  That doesn't work too well either.  But if the good Lord is willing, the creek doesn't rise too far, the Gideons can fill my standing offer to have a speaker here on the last Sunday in August, and I'm still around here, I'll miss church one time next year too.  I'll be back in the land of red clay dirt, tall pine trees, blue skies, fleecy white clouds and people who know how to say Tyre.  And Aunt Gerila will hug me again and say, "Honey, that's alright."

I'm sure Aunt Gerila will be hugging Dad and saying the same thing to him this year.