by Dr. Jeff Mathis
When I learned that Winston Hardman had elected to forgo nutrition several months into his season of hospice care, I rushed to visit him. In truth, I wasn't sure what to expect. Most individuals in his circumstances are either unresponsive or not lucid. Winston was neither. Sitting in his blue pajamas in his rocking chair, Winston smiled at me as I sat beside him.
Settling into my chair beside Winston, I was immediately reminded of a similar meeting four years prior.
It was late November in 2019. Winston Hardman and I had scheduled a conversation, and he handed me a stack of papers as he sat across from me in my office. I had known Winston long before I had come to serve at First Baptist. I knew him as a long-time campus minister, friend, and mentor to many young adults. But until that late morning in November, I had not heard about the depth and character of his extraordinary life.
I found Winston, and our conversation, to be fascinating. I was captivated by the stories he shared, prompting reflection on the profound impact one person can have on the world.
As his eloquently-written obituary reports, Winston was born in Orlando, Florida, in 1929. Winston pointed out that he grew up 1.5 miles from a downtown district that few, if any, could have imagined existing a century ago.
"We lived out in the country, then. Folks had a cow, chickens, a garden, and did their clothes in a wash pot," Winston told me.
In this environment, Winston's faith began to take shape, with his father's Baptist roots and his mother's Methodist heritage influencing his religious upbringing.
In addition to the education he received while working in his father's citrus business, Winston was a keen observer of the injustices and evil inflicted upon his Black and Hispanic friends, coworkers, and neighbors.
Grabbing for the papers he had given me when he came in, Winston rifled through the stack to find a page photocopied from his grandfather's diary. Pointing to an entry from September 10, 1919, Winston referenced the line: "Boys went to the Negro burning…"
Eyes wide, still in disbelief at how his Christian community could abide such open hatred for others, Winston sat back in his chair and sighed. Taking a beat, he shared how he went to the University of Florida, played piccolo in the marching band, became a brother in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, and joined the ROTC.
Winston served his country during the Korean War at Fort Jackson and returned to the family citrus business before claiming his call to the Gospel Ministry. Winston attended Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, from 1959 to 1962 and became familiar with the theological giants in ethics and social justice.
Winston's voice grew strong with pride as he told me about the social justice prophets who had filled his formative years.
"There was T.B. Maston, and Roy Fish, James Dunn and Phil Strickland," he recounted.
"You know Bill Pinson and Dr. Allen, don't you?" he continued, not waiting for me to reply.
"And of course, Bill Moyers—the Baptist—who speaks truth to power and is always on PBS," Winston told me. He was preaching now.
Indeed, these voices confirmed his belief that the hallmark of a Christian should be how we treat our neighbors. For Winston, it wasn't enough for the Church to say that we should love one another. The Church, he believed, should model it in practice.
And that's precisely what Winston did.
Winston would become a campus minister, which in the Baptist world in the mid-twentieth Century was the place to do cutting-edge ministry. Winston's generation of campus ministers would ask hard questions of their students, invite them to see their lives as opportunities to right wrongs and injustices and imagine new ways of loving one's neighbor.
Winston served as a campus minister in Monticello and Conway, Arkansas. He did resort ministry in Daytona Beach and later ministered to migrant farmers. In 1969, he and ten students operated a Christian Coffee House at the beach and pastored "hippies, runaways, and those who had over-dosed."
Punching the air with his finger and grinning, he said, "We didn't hold back! There wasn't anyone that we wouldn't serve or love."
Again, he talked about more ministry to the migrant community, college students, and those on vacation at Disney World, or at beaches along the Florida coast.
"Migrant ministry," he repeated for the umpteenth time. "Have I told you about my work with the American Youth Hostels? How about my 1,000-mile bike ride?"
It wasn't until 1978 that he found himself in North Carolina. He served in a dynamic network of Baptist ministers who served students on college and university campuses, including at Pembroke and Western Carolina University.
By this time, Winston was aglow and out of breath. We had been visiting for nearly 2 hours, but Winston wasn't done. Yes, he told me about life since retiring, but it became clear to me that Winston was disturbed and conflicted.
His great lament centered on the great political turmoil of the last couple of decades. For Winston, any strides he and his colleagues had made in the late 20th Century to love the stranger and 'other' in our midst had been eroded by Phariseeism and fundamentalism in the Christian Church. Deeply proud that he no longer associated with a Southern Baptist Convention that had shaped his early thinking but had become a pariah to all he held dear, Winston put an exclamation point on his final referendum.
He said, "Nothing has changed!"
Winston's proclamation hung there. And it left a mark. In reflecting on his life, Winston felt he had come full circle. With a furrowed brow and haunted expression, Winston couldn't seem to understand how people could still be fueled by suspicion of those who were different and filled with such hatred and venom for those Christians were commanded to love.
The pandemic would limit my contact with Winston, but I continued to get the occasional email forward or insistent message that the Church should do more for the least of these. In a recent visit, Winston acknowledged the great challenge facing churches and their leaders and expressed appreciation for those who held their ground against the lure of fundamentalist thinking.
When I pulled my chair up to visit with Winston the other day, Winston's thinking and speech were clear and strong. As he updated me on his decision to no longer delay his transition to life-eternal, I glanced around the room at his family members and marveled at the courage of the man beside me.
Winston was ready. His body was declaring its intention to return to the earth, dust to dust, and all that. Winston spoke once again of his lament for what the world had become, but he shared more freely about his love and pride for his family and the young people he had influenced in his career.
In the end, Winston's proclamation was both right and wrong. True, some things had not changed in the Century he had lived. But because of Winston, countless people's lives had changed. Winston's message of Christ-birthed love redirected the trajectory of people's life journeys. The world and the Church had needed Winston's prophetic voice, even when they didn't want to listen to it.
I, for one, am grateful that that didn't stop Winston.
May we all live as courageously and tenaciously as Lamie Winston Hardman lived his. Amen.
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“Winston will be remembered as a loving husband, a dedicated father, and a cherished grandfather. His legacy of kindness, compassion, and friendship will live on in the hearts of all who knew him…The family will hold a private celebration of Winston’s life at later date.”