He was just 35 years old, but had grown enough to appreciate deep down the people whose paths he’d crossed, folks he called ‘family’. Some things like a unique odor, or a visual reminder, or a certain sound in a song, perhaps anything that touches one of our five senses (taste and touch are the other two) can spur memories like Lanny Wolfe encountered one Wednesday night in Jackson, Mississippi. Did the speaker to whom Lanny and others were listening know his words had prompted a song to emerge from Lanny’s spirit about “God’s Family”? This fellow was a missionary, and his stories captivated his listeners, so that a songwriter like Lanny Wolfe goes where he senses the Spirit wants him to go – musically, poetically. Songwriters have the intuition to have scrap paper handy, and to capture a moment, and not just one moment, but countless others that present themselves in the mind. That kinda sums up Lanny’s ‘family’ episode one Wednesday night.
By the time in his life when he was in Mississippi in the mid-1970s, Lanny Wolfe had spent significant time also in Ohio (his native state), California, and Missouri, accumulating memories and family relationships that he recalled years later. And, was it an accident that Lanny was hearing from another traveler, Fred Hyde, who told stories from faraway places in Asia about people and places and episodes that had bonded him with ‘family’? Lanny says he was crying one moment, and laughing the next as Fred shared, and so the recollections that Lanny’s mind accessed were not far below the surface of his being. Not much was required to make him remember all the people who had educated him in one way or another – Catherine Ruh and Elsie Dillon, two elementary Sunday school teachers; musical mentors, role models, and instructors like Frank Meier, Ruth Morgan, Lois Ann Newstrand, and Aiko Onishi; other teachers who had nothing to do with music, like a certain statistics professor at Ohio State, and his high school English teacher, Dorothy Moore; and mentors like Janice Moore, James K. Stewart, and George Chambers, some of whom may not have been completely aware of their influence on Lanny. Lanny writes that all of these people touched his life, and so it was difficult to single out any one person to whom he could dedicate ‘God’s Family’, though George Chambers, a pastor when Lanny was growing up, came the closest (Lanny does dedicate another song, “God’s Wonderful Family”, to George). Lanny’s own family, his parents and brothers and sisters are among the pictures he includes in the cast of characters, of course. Family reunions, including those Christian family get-togethers, are among Lanny’s treasures, with one picture among his collection, in which he singles out his father and mother (Pearl Leo and Precious Ida), Golva Chambers (George’s wife), Grace Stith, Mary Gianvito, Carolyn Cooper, Pam McClain, Paul and Bonnie Brown, and Alice McComb. Would it surprise us if Lanny said there were many, many others?
It’s also no surprise that Lanny’s family memories contain not only tears and laughter (chorus), but expectations of this family’s reunion time, forever. It’s no accident that this theme runs through all three verses and his chorus. Lanny must have concluded, even at the 30-something age when he wrote the song, that the gift of God’s family is so special, that God will not contemplate our eternity without such a group. He (God) knows you and I need others. Now and in what’s to come. Thank you Lanny, for sharing your family with us who’ve heard your story! You make me think about my own family. Do you think we have in common some of the same family members? Just think….I’ll meet yours, and you’ll meet mine someday for the first time. What an introduction-reunion that will be!
See this site to obtain the book “More than Wonderful”, where the story to the song is found: https://paradigmmusic.net/
Author’s biography is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanny_Wolfe
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