Saturday, June 20, 2020

In Fond Memory of Max Garrott

Last month I wrote (here) about my father-in-law, who was born 110 years ago in May. This post is about Max Garrott, an esteemed friend and missionary colleague, who was born on June 20, 1910.
Previously, I have made blog posts about two good missionary friends and colleagues at Seinan Gakuin University, Calvin Parker (1926~2010) and Bob Culpepper (1924~2012). This article is about the man I always called Dr. Garrott, a man I respected greatly from the time I first met him until his death less than nine years later. 
Meeting Max
June and I had the privilege of attending the Eleventh Baptist World Congress, which met in Miami Beach, Florida, in June 1965, just a year before we were appointed missionaries to Japan. Dr. Garrott, his wife Dorothy, and his youngest son Jack were there, back from Japan for a missionary furlough, as it was called then.
I was impressed with Dr. Garrott at that first meeting. Then we saw him and Dorothy again in 1967, the year after we arrived in Japan. On our way from Tokyo, where we were in language school, to Fukuoka, where we were planning to move the following year, we spent a night with the Garrotts in their home in Kokura.
Contact with Dr. Garrott was then quite limited until he became the Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin in April 1973, where I had been a university faculty member since September 1968.
Max’s Brief Bio
William Maxfield Garrott was born in northeast Arkansas, the son of a Baptist minister. A precocious child, he graduated from high school at the age of 14 and Hendrix College in 1929 when he was 19. Five years later he had finished his undergraduate and doctoral studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Dr. Garrott arrived in Japan as a missionary on 9/9/9. The year was Showa 9 according to the Japanese calendar, the ninth year of Emperor Showa, known in the West as Hirohito. It was 1934 by the Western calendar. Before long he began his work as an educational missionary, mainly teaching New Testament and Greek.
Just before Christmas 1938, Max and Dorothy Carver, who had served as a Southern Baptist missionary to Japan since 1935, were married.
After April 1941, Dr. Garrott was the only SB missionary remaining in Japan, and soon after the Pacific War began he was interned until he was able to leave Japan in June 1942. In October 1947, Max and Dorothy arrived back in Japan with their three children at that time.
Seinan Gakuin, founded in Fukuoka City by Southern Baptist missionaries as a boys’ school in 1916, elected Dr. Garrott as the sixth Chancellor in 1948. Seinan Gakuin University was established the following year, and Dr. Garrott was chosen to be the first president. He held both offices until 1952.
Then after ten years as Chancellor of Seinan Jo Gakuin (1962~72), the girls’ school started in Kokura by Southern Baptist missionaries in 1922, Dr. Garrott was elected in 1973 as the 11th Chancellor of Seinan Gakuin. He served in that position until his untimely death in June 1974, just a few days after his 64th birthday.
My Fondness for Max
Since Dr. Garrott was 28 years older than I, and five years older than my father, I thought he was a rather old man in 1973~74 when I was 35. I remember saying that year that when I got to be an old man in my 60s, I hoped I would be like Dr. Garrott.
I admired him in many ways: he was a devout disciple of Jesus Christ; he was a scholar; he had a sharp and inquisitive mind; and he was deeply interested in the physical as well as the spiritual needs of individual people and of society as a whole.
Indeed, I hope that to some degree I did become, and am, the sort of “old man” such as I thought Dr. Garrott was. At any rate, even though it has been 46 years since his death, I remember him with great fondness today on the 110th anniversary of his birth.

12 comments:

  1. Thinking Friend Glenn Hinson, who was long a professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, send the following comments and question:

    "A lovely remembrance, Leroy. I am not sure I ever met Dr. Garrott, but I often heard him praised. Was Dorothy the daughter of W.O. Carver?"

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    1. Thanks for reading and responding to this morning's blog post, Dr. Hinson. Yes, Dorothy was the daughter of W.O. Carver, which is one of the matters I would like to have included in the article, but didn't because of not wanting to make it any longer.

      (To those who don't have a Southern Baptist heritage, Dr. Carver was one of the best-known professors at Southern Seminary throughout the twentieth century. In 1900 he became head of the newly founded Missions Department at SBTS in 1900 and held that post until his retirement in 1943.)

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  2. Thinking Friend Kelly Malone, who was a Southern Baptist missionary in Japan for several years and who has for many years now been a professor at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri, sent the following comments by email:

    "Thanks for your blog on Maxfield Garrott. Although I never met him, I have great admiration for him. During my days as a student missionary in Nagasaki, Max's son Jack lived and served in Omura. And then when Molly and I moved to Kokura in 1992, our first residence was the 'Garrott house' up on the hill, so I do have those connections.

    "Dr. Garrott seemed to have had an extraordinary mind, which he dedicated to the service of the Lord and the Japanese people."

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  3. Thanks for your comments, Kelly. It was the "Garrott house" that June and I had the privilege of spending the night with the Garrotts in 1967.

    Jack and his wife Cathy still live in Omura; he has been pastor of a Japanese church there for many years.

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  4. Just now I received these kind comments from local Thinking Friend Jerry Cain:

    "This is one of the sweetest things you have written. I begin this day with a devotion that introduced me to Dr. Max Garrott. Thanks for this introduction."

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  5. Jim Leavell was a Southern Baptist Journeyman who served in Fukuoka, Japan. He posted these comments on Facebook:

    "Thank you for this summary of Max's life and your interaction with him. I admired the Garrotts and wish I had had more contact with them. We left Fukuoka in 1969 at the end of our Journeyman tenure. I do not recall much contact with him when we were back in 1973-74. My loss."

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  6. Really enjoyed reading the Max Garrett blog today, Leroy. Having known Max since I was five years old, I was surprised to read that he was born in northeast Arkansas, which is where my dad Ernest Hollaway grew up in Corning. Also didn’t realize that Max attended Hendrix, which was my grandfather Hollaway’s school. Small world.

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  7. Here are comments from Thinking Friend Lydia Hankins, who served in Japan for many years:

    "Thank you, Leroy, for this. When I arrived in Fukuoka in 1975, Dr. Garrett had just passed away. There seemed to be a palpable hole in the expat community. When I finished language school later in Tokyo and began working with a Japanese pastor, his encouragement to me was 'to be like Garrott sensei' (with language)."

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  8. Thinking Friend Vicki Price was a missionary colleague and friend of June and me when were in language school in Tokyo (1966~68). She comments,

    "I didn't know Dr. Garrott as well as you did, since you had a closer school connection. However, when we took our trip throughout Japan that they provided us in those days, we spent a night with them as well. I certainly learned to recognize his excellence and to appreciate the family."

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  9. Thank you for this touching tribute to my father. I would make one small correction: He was not "able to leave" Japan in June, 1942, he was given no choice about being one of the Americans on a prisoner exchange ship, the Asama Maru, which transferred him to the Swedish ship, the Gripsholm, in Mozambique.

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    1. Jack, thank you for reading and responding to my article about your father. I was aware of the "prisoner exchange," but since he had been in internment for months and since your mother had been gone for Japan for an even longer period of time, I assumed he was reluctant to leave Japan but happy to do so given the circumstances.

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  10. Yesterday I received an email from Claudia Kruer Sherer, who was a long-time missionary in Japan with her now deceased husband and also with his parents. June and I knew both generations of the Sherer families and were delighted to receive the email with the following comments about Dr. Garrott:

    "Throughout my childhood I heard many fond stories of the Carver family and the Garrott family from my parents, Arthur and Lucile Kruer. (Daddy was born in 1899 and Mama in 1907.) At Southern Seminary, Daddy had the privilege of studying under Dr. W.O. Carver, Dottie Carver’s esteemed father. During Mama’s first teaching experience in Conway, Arkansas, her pastor was Maxfield Garrott’s father.

    "My parents’ adoration of missionaries including Maxfield and Dottie had impacted me by the time I felt the Lord’s clear calling to missions when I was eleven years old.

    "A few years later when Bobby Sherer and I were dating, I sat in the living room of his missionary parents, Robert C. and Helen, spellbound by the magnificent ways God had called them to Japan. Helen had been a young volunteer to missions, praying about her own future, when Bob and Helen attended Foreign Missions Week at Ridgecrest Baptist Assembly. They heard missionaries from around the world tell of the great response to the Gospel in their countries of ministry.

    "Then Maxfield Garrott reluctantly with tears came to the podium, following his Japanese internment from December 9, 1941, until his prisoner exchange in June of 1942. When he was finally able to speak, he shared the suffering that Japanese Christians were enduring, and challenged 'If you want to share the Gospel in the most difficult place on earth, come to Japan.'

    Dr. Garrott’s words led Robert C. Sherer to Japan. Robert C. and Helen Sherer arrived as missionaries in December of 1948. Years later at Amagi Baptist Assembly, 14-year-old Bobby Sherer responded to God’s calling to missions. Bobby and I arrived as missionaries in January of 1972, once more blessed by the sweet influence of Max and Dottie’s heritage, sacrifice, and love."

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