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Seemingly minor things may leave a permanent mark. A small five-year-old farm boy trudged along the dirt road with his seven-year-old brother toward the frame school house in rural Oklahoma where other children were gathering. The five-year-old’s usual lively demeanor had become subdued. In February, he and his brother started attending school as new kids when their parents bought a farm just outside Wardville so the brothers could walk to school together. Their parents had convinced five-year-old Buel that this school experience would be an important, exciting new adventure. However, Buel wasn’t so sure about that now. He and his older brother, Elvin, joined the first-grade class late in the school year, so they were behind the other students. Seven-year-old Elvin seemed to be picking up the learning reasonably quickly, but Buel—younger than the others—struggled with learning to read. (The picture shows the boys about 3 years before they started school.)

One kindhearted teacher watching Buel’s struggle worried about such a young lad starting school so late in the school year. How could he perform in their end-of-the-year program in a few weeks when every child did something to show what they had learned that school year. Her keen eyes watched Buel withdrawing and becoming discouraged. She recognized that he thought something was wrong with him because everyone else was doing better. The five-year-old didn’t understand the other students were older and had been working for many months while he had just started. This kindhearted teacher resolved to find something he could excel in and do for the program. She noticed he seemed to brighten when they worked with poetry. She began working with him individually on memorizing a short poem. At the end of the school year, when the school’s achievement program for the parents arrived, the youngest child, Buel M. Smith, proudly recited a poem for the gathered parents and townspeople. Every year thereafter, he joyfully memorized longer and longer poems to recite at the end of the year—he had found his niche.

All his life, Buel credited the attention and insight of that caring teacher for helping him develop confidence in himself and in speaking before people. His original difficulty with learning to read and getting started in school contributed to his lifelong humility and apprehension in reading. As his daughter, I thought he seemed to read fine. However, I knew he felt insecure about reading in public. I would watch his face blanch when someone called on him to read something in public without any forewarning. People loved for him to read or speak publicly because of the deep resonance of his voice, and they never suspected how it affected him internally every time. He did it well, but some of that initial fear never totally left.

I’ve often wondered if that fear wasn’t partly why he turned down the group of businessmen and bankers in the Ada, Oklahoma area, who held a meeting and tried to convince the adult Buel Smith to let them sponsor him to run for Congress. Oklahoma’s Favorite Son, Will Rogers, had been killed in a plane crash in 1935, and these businessmen thought Daddy was the closest person to another Will Rogers they had ever seen. I’ll admit the two men did have a lot in common, the same sort of humble, honest “Aw Shucks” type personality, especially before a crowd of people. But there was no way Buel would go into politics and go to Washington—he would have to read too much.

However, that experience might have had a lot to do with him pouring his life into making a special effort to reach out to boys and girls struggling in school. Technically, his job was an elementary principal, but he was like a father to multitudes of children who passed through his school only to return years later to proudly share their achievements since last seeing him.

In the hot summers of the 1950s, when Daddy and I worked together in their large yard, he often said, “Let’s take a break.” We would stop to drink something or rest in the shade, and he sometimes challenged me to see which of us could name the most shapes in the clouds in the sky. Occasionally, that would trigger him to burst forth in one of the long poems he had memorized as a youth. He was especially fond of The House by the Side of the Road by Sam Walter Foss. The 40 lines of that poem talk about living in a place of self-content, by the side of the road, and being a friend to man. Daddy had memorized that in school and resolved to make it the focus of his life—to be a friend to man with the Lord’s help—and he was till the day he died.    

I’ve often thought about how the words and efforts of one person overcame what could have been a crippling experience for a little five-year-old boy thrown into a situation unsuitable for his tender age. It reminds me of the crucial role of encouragement in our lives. Scripture tells us the power of life and death is in the tongue (Proverbs 18:21), and I’m sure we’ve all seen and perhaps experienced examples of this. This story underscores the importance of using our words to encourage and help others who may be downtrodden by adversity.

I pray you and I will come alongside those in need of encouragement and use our words to encourage, to give life and hope as Daddy’s teacher did for him. There is so much need for this. Since we know the Giver of life and words of life, let us be Christ’s hands, feet, and voice of encouragement to those around us.

John said—even to the young Christian—that they could overcome because “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”  1 John 4:4(b) NKJV