Everyday Hero #9

 September 22, 2022

I’ve received requests to keep the Everyday Hero series going, so I guess I’ll keep at it till I run out of them.

“Rugged” is not the first word that comes to mind when I think of Ozzie Palmer. He was tall, with wavy blonde hair, a ready smile, and eyes that twinkled behind thick glasses. When he took them off, he was practically blind, but he never let poor eyesight keep him from what he loved. He sang tenor in the church choir and men’s quartet, but it wasn’t his singing that makes him an Everyday Hero. It was his leadership. “Cap,” as we called him, was a gentle, steady presence in my teenage years. He earned that nickname as captain of our church’s Christian Service Brigade, a Christian version of the Boy Scouts. To make a long story short, he loved the boys that showed up every Tuesday evening.

His easy-going manner belied a toughness that enabled him to keep up with twenty or thirty boys for two hours each Tuesday evening. Lineup and basic drill, games and contests, lessons and memory verses, all this and more were regular fare at those weekly gatherings. Boys don’t pay attention to such things as behind-the-scenes preparation, accountability with the governing body of the church, and guiding the team of men and older boys who led the organization. 

We went on campouts, summer and winter, spent weeks at Camp Hickory Hill, living in small cabins with a pot-bellied stove in the center for heat. I remember long hikes, digging into a snowbank that would provide shelter for the sleeping bag in which we would spend the night. We learned responsibility, respect, and resilience from those weekly meetings and monthly outings. Through it all, Ozzie Palmer was the steady, guiding hand that kept us all in line and eager to come back next week.

We grew up and moved on; Westside Baptist has grown and changed its name to something more chic; I don’t believe they even have a CSB chapter any more, but the lessons learned and the camaraderie we had remains in my heart. I am indebted to Ozzie Palmer for the quality of his character, his quiet but firm leadership, and his continuing love for us boys that guided us as we lurched through our teenage years into young adulthood. His son Mark was one of my best friends. Sadly, I lost track of him after going off to college. I never got to tell him how much his example meant to me. So tonight, I’m telling his kids: Ozzie Palmer is my Everyday Hero #9.