Southwestern Union Record

Grandparents routinely brag about their grandchildren. But if you’d humor me, I’d like to brag about my grandmother, “Mumsy.” At 91 years young, Vivian Imogene Bohannon has been a faithful member of the Tulsa First Seventh-day Adventist Church since the 1940s.

The other day, I visited with her over the phone, and she shared a remarkable story. My grandfather, Bo, wasn’t baptized until he was in his 70s. As a young father, he wasn’t supportive of my grandmother’s desire to send their three children to Adventist schools. It just wasn’t an expense he was willing to budget for.

But my grandmother would not give up, and started praying. When it came time for my mother, Judy, to enter first grade at Tulsa Junior Academy, Mumsy began taking in ironing and watching children to earn money for her “church school fund.”

Before long, she was offered a job at the local public school playing background piano music while the students did their calisthenics.

“It’s kind of funny,” she muses. “The Lord had me playing the piano at a public school so my children could attend church school.”

That job provided just enough for her to keep her children, Judy, Joyce, and Don in church school all the way through college. As soon as her youngest graduated from college, she received a letter from the school where she had played for almost two decades. They would no longer be providing live accompaniment for calisthenics, but would be shifting to recorded music. Her services were no longer required.

“I know it was an answer to prayer,” she reminisces. “God gave me a job exactly as long as I needed it, and not a day longer.” She quips, “If that’s not a miracle, I don’t know what is!”

Forty years later, Mumsy’s miracle still lives on. Her children continue to be active in the church, and some of her grandchildren have gone on to be teachers, pastors, and church workers. Mumsy still talks about the legacy of Adventist education. I suppose she’s earned the bragging rights.