Don White lounged in a canvas lawn chair outside First Presbyterian Church Friday morning during a break in his duties as a crossing guard for this week’s Vacation Bible School at First Presbyterian and Wesley United Churches.
But when the kids show up, White is all business in seeing to their safety.
He holds aloft his stop sign to ensure all manner of vehicle is aware of the children – up to 130 this year – and safely escorts them across Madison Avenue.
“This is something I really like doing,” said White, noting how the kids warmed up to him.
“A lot of them like to high-five me,” he quipped.
Richard Chase filled in for White a couple of days when he was gone for medical appointments. Otherwise, White, with wide-brimmed hat and infectious smile, was a fixture at the corner.
Romans 13:8 admonishes: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law.”
“That’s my favorite Scripture,” said White, 64, who admits he’s turned a leaf in his later years.
“It’s hard to walk in the light,” he said. “Satan wants to destroy your faith, but good things come from above.”
WHEN HE was in high school in Minneapolis, Kan., White was a bit of a renegade.
“I got kicked out of school my junior year because I just quit going, but that let me finish up with my brother, Ron, who is a year younger,” he said.
Out of high school, he joined the Army, learned to be a tanker at Fort Knox and was deployed to Germany. While overseas he was working on a car and it fell on him, injuring his back so that he now depends on disability payments.
Back in the states, he volunteered to be a chaplain’s assistant at Fort Bliss, Texas, and happened by a Campus Crusade for Christ event.
“That’s where I met my wife, Deborah,” White recalled, but marriage didn’t occur right away.
A few months later he was in a Wichita hospital for treatments. Deborah came to visit – by then he had embraced Christianity.
“Somewhere in the Bible it says something about flipping a coin,” White said. Staying true to the Scriptures, he proposed to Deborah that they flip a coin to determine whether they should marry.
“Three times in a row the coin came up for us to marry,” White recalled.
It also was at the Wichita hospital a doctor examining his back remarked how well previous surgery had repaired damage.
“I never had surgery,” White said. “God did it. He healed my back.”
“MY FAITH is important to me,” he said.
The Whites attend Iola Baptist Temple, because it has Sunday and Wednesday evening services in addition to Sunday mornings.
White said he recalled a refrain that proposed “people go to church on Sunday morning for themselves, on Sunday night for others and Wednesday night for God.”
“God and country” is more than a slogan for White.
He seldom is seen without some visage of patriotism; red, white and blue are his favorite color combination.
In local parades he often rides a bicycle decorated to the hilt with flags and patriotic banners and in his affinity for cars – a made-up 1974 Cadillac pickup is his latest favorite – “I like to cruise for Christ.”
“I like the Vacation Bible School theme this year,” he said: “Everything is possible with God.”
