Posted on 01/22/2015 6:20:28 PM PST by Gamecock
WALDRON, KS — On the edge of Kansas’ windswept prairie, near a nondescript grave, sits the most recent token of affection.
It’s a tube of lip gloss.
Since her death on July 20, 2007, fans and friends of Tammy Faye Bakker Messner occasionally make pilgrimages to where the ashes of the Christian television celebrity were laid to rest. There, they leave the types of cosmetic items – lipstick, mascara – that helped give Tammy Faye her distinctive look.
In a Harper County cemetery, remote and unmarked, Tammy Faye’s gravestone is far away from the glamour, controversy and cameras that followed the woman who helped build three Christian television networks: the Christian Broadcasting Network with Pat Robertson; the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Paul Crouch; and Praise The Lord ministry – and ultimately the ill-fated Christian theme and water park Heritage USA in Fort Mill, S.C. – with Jim Bakker, her first husband.
“I took her down there and showed her Waldron, she thought it was a quaint little community,” said her husband, Roe Messner, a mega-church builder who for decades was based in the Wichita area and in more recent years moved to a suburb of Kansas City, Mo.
“She was glad to see where I grew up and all. She thought it was kind of neat.”
‘A personal thing’
Waldron the town is a throwback in time. Houses, storefronts and garages are in varying degrees of neglect along the dirt-covered streets that lie quiet until a passing vehicle stirs up rooster tails of dust.
It was once a thriving town with a railroad, two banks and two newspapers. Its population is now 10.
“It is a nice quiet place to live,” said Mayor Shirley Nelson. “Most people here are second and third generation, raised here or very close by.”
It is a tight-knit community where neighbors watch out for one another and are both protective and proud of their town’s most famous celebrity.
Roe Messner grew up in Waldron. He buried Tammy Faye’s ashes next to his mother, Nellie. When it is his time, Messner – who is in his eighth decade – said he will be buried next to Tammy Faye.
“That’s our family plot,” Roe Messner said Tuesday. “I buried her next to my dad and mother. My little brother is buried there.
“The press never did know Tammy. It is a shame what the press had to say. She was not anything at all about what has been written.”
Harold Waldschmidt, the cemetery sexton, said he’s seen the lipstick and mascara when he mows.
“I don’t bother it,” he said. “I feel like that is a personal thing.”
‘She was so sharp’
In the late stages of the failing Heritage USA and PTL empire, Tammy Faye was often portrayed on TV in tears, mascara running down her cheeks. She divorced Jim Bakker in 1992 while he was in prison for defrauding millions of his followers and after his widely publicized infidelity with Jessica Hahn.
In the meantime, Messner – who had been the chief builder of the Heritage USA theme park – was convicted of bankruptcy fraud and spent two years in prison.
Tammy Faye married Messner in 1993. In 2004, she appeared on the reality show “The Surreal Life” and re-emerged as a television and cult personality, this time embracing gay men infected with the AIDS virus and appearing alongside ex-porn-star Ron Jeremy.
Her faith never wavered through controversy or failing health.
“You wouldn’t believe when Tammy passed away, you know those big mail sacks?” Messner asked. “I got 12 mail sacks the week she died. It was literally thousands and thousands of sympathy cards.
“She was the most common, down-to-earth person you ever saw. The press always made her out to be some nitwit type of person. She was totally different. Her IQ was 165. She was so sharp and different than everybody thought she was.”
Even now, he said, people will sometimes write and say they have visited her graveside.
“I was down there this summer, and I could see several people there had left stuff,” he said.
The pilgrimage
Getting to Waldron, which is about 95 miles southwest of Wichita and nearly on top of the Oklahoma state line, requires back-roads determination.
Washboard roads slow SUVs to covered-wagon speeds. There are seldom any road signs, and cellphone coverage is spotty.
“You have to be kind of familiar with the area,” Nelson, the town’s mayor, acknowledged. “Some roads you can’t take all the way.”
She pointed recent visitors down the road and to the right, to the unmarked cemetery.
“I’m tickled to death,” Nelson said of people who come to visit.
“I never did meet Tammy Faye,” Nelson said, “but I always heard stories about her.”
Until I watched that last interview the only thing that I knew about her were the jokes.
The interview changed my mind-——and she was so ill it was tough to watch.
.
Name it and claim it, blab it and grab it!
What’s Jim Baker doing now?
I think she died a few days after that interview....so she was of course dieing when she spoke.
She looked like a Holocaust victim, but that’s often what cancer does. My mom was a heavy woman and she was like that when she died...
Since she had it in her lungs, and you can tell she had gasping trying to talk, they often die from suffication basically...oxygen can only be given for so long and so much. Then it doesn’t help any longer.
Same here. That interview changed my opinion of her as well.
Not much of a SC connection.
You do know that they committed adultery together, right? That it caused Roe's wife to divorce him, and his business to declare bankruptcy? That he left bad debts all over the country, including here in town? That his ex left town too, renting out the house (all that was left of the Messner empire) for income to get by?
I don't know if either one of them is in heaven. Jesus Saves, and got forgives, and they both needed it.
**I think I’ll leave the judging of Tammy Faye up to Jesus, and not chime in with the crude jokes on here about her.**
Good for you! Some of these self righteous posters are showing you the abundance of their hearts with their posts. They are purty durn close to perfection, jist like them thar Pharisees.
**Shame on some of you!**
Well said.
I’ve read more respect for celebrities on here than what I’m reading in this post. And, I’m talking about the Hollyweird kind.
You do know that their empire was located in Fort Mill, right? This includes the broadcast facilities and a Christian amusement park known as Heritage USA.
Their mansion was in Tega Cay, SC.
**Shame on some of you!**
“Well said.”
It has always puzzled me how the “holier than thou” crowd can claim the right to elevate corrupt, degenerate, thieving people to Heaven and then turn right around and shame anyone who dares to reprove and rebuke such behavior.
There is no “shame” in calling evil what it is. None of us have the right or ability to condemn anyone to H-ll but neither is any of us qualified to judge who’s going to Heaven.
The poor people who were victimized didn’t have the discernment to know good from bad or the fortitude to tell others about it. They didn’t “judge” either nor would they listen to those who were trying to prevent them from being duped. How many, do you think, Miss Tammy helped to bamboozle into thinking they could buy their way to Heaven by pouring their last dime into the pockets of these two shysters? Why don’t you reserve your “shame” and, oh yes, “judgement” for people like them.
Well, A2F, I guess I alone was worthy of your disdain, since you didn’t reply to Catsrus, who made the statement, “Shame on some of you!”.
To which I replied, “Well said”.
Is it because I used the word ‘Pharisee’ for a comparison to, as Catsrus put it, ‘some of you’?
**It has always puzzled me how the “holier than thou” crowd can claim the right to elevate corrupt, degenerate, thieving people to Heaven**
I said nothing to elevate sin or sinners. It is proper, for those professing Christianity, to humbly point out sin, and move on, remembering our own past.
Are you saying that those people were sinners to a greater extent than you ever were? Have you posted your past (in great detail) for all to see? We are to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Maybe it’s just me, but I fail to see anything close to humbleness with the poster of this thread (and many others threads he has posted as well).
WWJD....really? Would He post a story like this, KNOWING it would generate MORE pharisee-style condemnation of the souls involved? Would Jesus spend a considerable amount of time (and many similar posts), pointing out the sins of just the more notable ‘blind leaders of the blind’?
Who did Jesus Christ rebuke the most harshly.....the Pharisees; the ones who (outwardly), were nearly blameless (inwardly they were full of dead mens bones).
The Lord said that it was what came out of a man that defiled him. Posted topics like these, with some added judgements of the sinners, remind me about story of the prayers of Pharisee and the sinner.
**Why don’t you reserve your “shame” and, oh yes, “judgement” for people like them.**
‘Like them’? Because the Lord tells us to be no respecter of persons. Pride is a sin, just like greed, deceit, etc.
Thank you for expressing your feelings.
Well said, and to your post I’ll add an AMEN!
I suggest you haven't read too many of my posts then.
The irony here is your statement puts you in the same boat you accuse me of being in.
Grace and Peace.
**The irony here is your statement puts you in the same boat you accuse me of being in.**
I have yet to start a thread on any subject, much less one focusing on large assemblies with erroneous leadership. You seem to have an obsession with those people, and your threads sometimes tend to encourage mockery by some commentors (including yourself). If you feel that you have a good reputation for humbleness as a whole, then those type of threads are doing your ‘batting average’ a disservice, imho.
Just politely point out by the scriptures (which at times you do) where Osteen etal are in error, and move on. When mockery enters into it, humbleness departs.
Lord bless!
You seem to have a milquetoast reading of how false preachers are dealt with throughout Scripture.
Not hardly. I feel that Jesus Christ’s rebuke of the scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites certainly is quite forceful. But, even he had respect toward what they did right (IF they did right), then of course blistering them for leaving the more serious matters undone.
Jude verses 3-19 offer some of the most scathing rebukes to false teachers in the NT. Jude doesn’t evolve into petty personal digs.
It’s the slippery slope of mockery, such as making fun of physical appearance, and in jest, belittling intelligence levels, and such like, that turn a thread into a competition of comedians, instead of instructions in righteousness.
I like the description of Samuel in 1Sam. 3:19; “..the Lord was with him, and he did not let his words fall to the ground”. His words weren’t meaningless and wasted.
I would like to get better at not wasting words. I trust God will help us both in that matter.
I think the articles you post about the false teachers, false prophets and the world friendly church of the present day are valuable warnings that need to be discussed. Please continue and let those that truly want to feel un-decerning and “non-judgemental” as to who is good or bad do what is necessary to be so in truth. That means keeping their keyboards shut.
19 Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
20 For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
21 Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
King James Version (KJV)
by Public Domain
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