A SECOND VOCATION

   It was the first week of June 1957 and school was out.  My dad had a cousin who had acquired a fair amount of skill in both interior and exterior painting.   I do not recall if my dad's cousin Keith asked me directly or if my dad said something like, "Keith wants you to work with him painting a house on the west end of Greenwich".  I also do not recall if I started at $1.75 an hour or if I got $2 right away.  Dad bought a brush at Sears for me; half nylon and half China bristle, 3 1/2 inches wide. 
   As best as I can recall I started immediately after school was out.  Recently Susan and I stopped to look as that house where my very important second vocation began.  Like many older homes it is now covered with vinyl siding.  On that June morning it was bare, weathered wood siding that had probably not been painted since early in the 20th century.  Even though lead base paint was already on the way out, the paint already on houses was mostly white lead base and it would "chalk", that is, slowly erode off the siding.  The paint on this house was totally gone.  Modern acrylic base paints do not chalk; they either stay on indefinitely or peal off if there is a moisture problem on the inside.
     The paint we were using that day may not have been lead base since I recall reading labels later that summer which said the pigment in the paint was titanium dioxide.  The move away from lead base paints had begun even before it was understood how dangerous lead was to human health.  In the years before World War II painters would often buy a barrel of white lead powder, a barrel of linseed oil, and some turpentine.  They would then mix their own paints.  Red barn paint was made by adding iron oxide to the mix.  The use of white lead base paints established a tradition of white houses.  I can recall no house in those days that was any color other than white.  Linseed oil and turpentine were used to thin paint.  By the 1950's the paints used on the interior walls of houses was mostly water and latex base. 
   Keith showed me how to thin the paint just a little so it would spread more easily but not be too thin; it had to "track in the bucket".  I was acquiring a painter's vocabulary.  He poured some into a bucket for me and I went to work.  In a couple moments he walked up behind me and said, "Russell, you can't paint with a dry brush".  In less than three minutes he showed me how to "load and unload a brush" and to apply the paint evenly with a final stroke to take out all brush marks.  I was on my way.  In more than 60 years since then there is no other basic, practical skill that I ever learned so quickly and used so often.  Since the siding on that house was bare we applied both a primer and a finish coat. 
   By July my dad had a week's vacation coming from his job at Westinghouse in Mansfield.  He would spend that vacation working.  A friend, who also worked at Westinghouse, owned a large, three story house on Center Street in Ashland and wanted it painted.  That house is now part of the Center Street Historic District.  Dad and I began work there on a Saturday and at the end of the day he said, "this job is too much for just the two of us".  He called his friend Kenneth "Doug" Ross in New London.  Doug had become a believer in Christ just a few years earlier and had started a Youth For Christ work in New London.  His wife was a teacher and Doug was working as a painter to support his ministry in Youth For Christ.  On Monday morning dad and I were back at the Center Street house ready to begin work when Doug Ross and his two sons pulled in with their trailer load of ladders to work with us. 
   My freshman year in high school may have been a year that, in the words of the Prophet Joel, "the locusts had eaten" but when the Rosses pulled in that July morning in 1957 God was beginning to (again, in the words of the Prophet Joel) restore to me the year that the locusts had eaten.  My friendship with the Rosses would prove decisive for this life and for eternity.  After the Center Street house was finished I spent the rest of the summer painting with them in the New London area, even staying at their home and being made to feel like part of the family.  The oldest son Don had been out of the Marine Corps for a year and had spent that year at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.  The other son Neil was ready to begin his senior year at Moody.  They were fun to work with.  They joked a lot.  They were not like some hyper-serious, legalistic Christians I had been around.  By the end of August here I was, a 15 year old boy, earning $2 an hour.  When adjusted for inflation there are few 15 year olds today earning that much.  More importantly, I had now been impacted by the friendship of three godly men. 
   The summer of 1958 saw the country in a recession and there were not too many people asking to have their house painted.  I did a little painting with my dad's cousin again, but spent a lot of the summer working on farms for 75 cents an hour.  At the beginning of that summer the pastor of our church resigned to take a full time position with Youth For Christ International.  Who was called to be the new pastor?  My new friend, six years older than I, Neil Ross.  In August he asked me to be in his wedding at Newport News, Virginia.  I gladly accepted.  When Neil and his wife Jane began their ministry at our church in September I often spent Sunday afternoons at their home playing LP records on their new stereo.  That fall I began dating a girl I had known since the first grade.  God was now putting everything together to bring my life to where He was calling me.
   What would I do next?  I talked with Neil about how he had spent his junior and senior years of high school at what was then called Toccoa Falls Institute.  Now called Toccoa Falls College it was then a Bible College, an academy (high school), and an elementary school all on one campus.  I knew that Toccoa was were I should go to finish high school.  When I told my mom she said, "Russell, we do not have the money to send you there".  I explained that I still had some money in the bank from painting and that in the summer ahead it looked like I would be painting again.  Neil's parents, who were now on the staff of TFI,  came back to Ohio for the summer.  Neil's father had lined up several houses to paint.  I had all the work I needed and was now earning $2.25 per hour.  After my senior year at Toccoa was over I painted with the Rosses again before going to Moody Bible Institute.
    In the spring of 1963  Susan and I, not yet married, were both attending Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana.  I was sharing an upstairs apartment with two other guys and the family who owned the house mentioned that they wanted some painting done.  I worked for my rent the last couple months of the school year.  While I was painting one day a man across the street came over and was watching me.  "I have a friend who would probably want to talk to you" he said.  A day or so later a van pulled up and a man in white painter's clothes walked over to me and said, "I'm Bud Vandermark".  He looked at my work and said that he would like to hire me full time.  I explained that I would be returning to Ohio for the summer, that Susan and I would be married in August, and that we would be returning to Winona Lake by the middle of August.  He said, "when you get back here contact me".   Just as God had used painting to bring the Rosses into my life He was now bringing into my life a man whose painting skills were equaled by few if any in the entire United States.  I do not believe that Lester "Bud" Vandermark of Warsaw, Indiana ever had an equal in his skills in both interior and exterior work.  What I learned working with him the first year of our marriage was more valuable than any trade school education.  By observing Bud work I saw the extensive preparation work that was done before you even wet a brush; preparation work like you would do before painting a classic car.  I saw how to "cut in" straight lines.  No masking tape used - ever!  Neat!  Neat!   Neat!
   In the years since, as a Christian School teacher, I do not see how our family could have survived economically without this second vocation that God gave to me.  When I worked with Bud we worked in some of the finest homes in the Warsaw/Winona Lake area.  Since then I have had the joy of also working in some of the finest homes of doctors and other professionals.  Most recently we did a suite of offices for one of Mansfield's premier dentists.
   Paints are no longer called "paints".  PPG, the giant of the paint industry, now calls them "architectural finishes"!  Susan goes with me to most jobs today.  She moves drop cloths and spots "holidays".  I may not have been born with either a Bible or paint brush in my hand but the chances are good that I will die with one or the other in my hand!                                                                                         While doing interior painting with Bud one day the owner of the house was talking with me and I explained to him that as a Christian heading for some type of ministry I wanted to be like the Apostle Paul who said, "You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions." (Acts 20:34)  ". . . we worked might and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you.  We did this . . . in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow".  (II Thess. 3:8&9)   That's what my second vocation is all about.