ROANOKE — A couple of hundred would-be mourners gathered at Rosalind Hills Baptist Church in Roanoke on Wednesday, June 18, to celebrate the distinguished life of Miss Alma Hunt at her funeral service. Because this faithful and energetic woman had touched so many across the span of nearly a century, the death of this 98-year-old Virginia Baptist saint brought grief to the hearts of every person in attendance.
Tom Stocks, former pastor of Rosalind Hills where Miss Alma was a member, presided. Recalling how Miss Alma liked to be in charge, he informed the crowd that the service, planned by Miss Alma herself, had been amended about 17 times. She didn't imagine many people would attend, because, as she told Stocks, “Honey, all my friends are dead.” Alma Hunt was right about most things, but she was wrong about the number of her contemporary friends.
Although tears rolled involuntarily from many eyes, as the service progressed laughter predominated. Miss Alma's life could not be remembered without it, for nearly every memory of this precious person known as “the winsome elf” by members of the WMU national staff during her 26-year tenure as executive secretary, was laced with humor.
But behind the humor were the remarkable elements of an exquisitely lived life. Among those events were many firsts. Catherine Allen, a former staff member of the national WMU, shared that Miss Alma had been asked to officiate at the funeral of a friend. Despite her initial protests that preaching a funeral was not something women did, she at length agreed. She wore a red dress to the funeral. And a red hat with a veil. She always believed that sadness should not have the final word at a Christian's funeral.
Earlene Jesse, who led Virginia's WMU from 1992 to 2006, recalled, “Once needing a room at the Baptist General Association meeting in November, she came to Virginia Beach and checked in as Earlene Jesse and took my room. I had to produce ID to prove who I was and they even got the manager who went with me to unlock the door and see who was in my room. When the door opened, there was Miss Alma's head poking out from a mound of covers on the bed. ‘Earlene is that you? I came to Virginia Beach from Roanoke and I didn't have a room. I hope Mike isn't coming too, or we might have to string a sheet.' ”
“Alma encouraged visionary possibilities that were being birthed within my soul at the time,” Jesse remembers. She went on to share that some of the ministry initiatives that were the hallmark of her tenure with the WMUV were given creative life on a night when she and Miss Alma were stranded and spent much of the night in conversation.
Charles Fuller, who had been Miss Alma's pastor for years at Roanoke's First Baptist Church, shared that he searched for a Scripture that seemed to speak of Miss Alma and found it in Romans 16:1-2: “I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea: That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succourer of many, and of myself also.”
He affirmed that he had been among those succoured by this deeply spiritual servant of the church. “She sat about four rows back on my left. Here was a person who was known all over the world, had spoken all over the world — yet here she sat with her Bible open on her lap hanging on my every word. I was never so humbled,” he said.
John Upton, executive director of the BGAV, also affirmed this aspect of her life as he recalled the last time he visited her. They had planned to go out for lunch, but when he arrived, although she was dressed for the occasion she had taken to her bed. He was not sure she even knew who he was, but then she took his hand, looked him in the eyes and said simply, “Lead. Just lead.” These were her last words to him.
But it was Miss Alma's mother who indirectly established the backdrop of her entire life and ministry with words uttered years earlier to Catherine Allen. Asked how she and her husband had managed to raise such a distinguished daughter, Ma Hunt said simply, “Honey, she's just what the Lord made her.”
Speakers and mourners alike affirmed the simple truth of those words. Alma Hunt was just what the Lord made her. And he made her just exactly right.