In 1942 Alma Cree finished business school in Henderson, N.C, and did the unthinkable.
She had grown up hearing about the Foreign Mission Board and imagined that it would be “a good place to work.” She wrote a blind letter to the FMB and it landed on the desk of the treasurer,
E. P. Buxton, “who did the hiring and firing.” He took a chance on the young woman, writing her to come to the board's headquarters in Richmond. At the bottom of the letter he inquired if she was related to a boyhood friend of his, James A. Cree. Of course she was. He was her father.
Alma Snow
In the '40s it was bold for a young single woman to leave her parents' home and strike out on her own. “My parents were astounded that I would do such a thing,” laughs Alma. But in the wartime atmosphere of '42, it was high adventure for a 20-something-year-old. She got a room in a private home not far from the Mission Board and immediately found a church home. She joined First Baptist Church where many people were drawn by the magnetic personality of the pastor, Theodore F. Adams.
She also joined a popular gathering at church for young people called The Forum. On her first Sunday at her new church she met Linwood Snowa; but it was a year before the young folks began dating. In fact, it was The Forum that instigated the first date, which was a visit to a local ice cream shop.
The young woman's first work at the board was shaving Edison cylinders for the dictating machines. The romance of foreign missions was not lost on the young woman. One day Bill Wallace walked into her office. In time, he would become one of the legends. “It was a thrill to meet the missionaries when they would come home,” Alma muses. “I worked with Dr. Maddry. He really kept up with things. One day he came by the switchboard where I was working and told me that while he was at Ridgecrest he heard that I had become engaged to marry Linwood Snowa.
“I worked under Dr. [Theron] Rankin when he came back from China. He said that the thing that kept him going was ‘if God is for us, who can be against us.' When I went to work in the treasurer's office, the figures were so big that I hardly knew how to write them down! I had to balance the deposits every day. One of my jobs was to make up the report for the Lottie Moon Offering and take it down to Dr. Cauthen; and if he was in the office, he would say, ‘Come in and tell me about it.' I consider it a privilege to have worked under Dr. Cauthen.”
For a Southern Baptist of the times, there was no greater sense of mission, purpose and meaning within denominational life than “the Foreign Board.” It was the ultimate fulfillment to work under the same roof and for the same great common cause alongside these giants—Maddry, Rankin, Cauthen—and to feel that your contribution, no matter what the job, was part of a worthy enterprise. Alma Cree Snowa also attended the same church of most of the board's executive leadership. She was in a Baptist heaven! She was among the few who worked at three of the board's different locations in Richmond.
But after she married, she also stopped working to raise a family of two sons. She concentrated on the roles of wife and mother. Like many of her generation, she learned practical marriage advice from Esther and Ted Adams. She still remembers the pastoral couple's adage: “Don't yell at each other unless the house is on fire!”
Alma also found opportunities for spreading love through her church activities. She and Annabelle Stith were the first nursery workers. They helped organized the first nursery out of a practical need. She had a baby and didn't want to stay away from church. When the children grew older, the two women organized the first Cub Scout den. Through The Forum, the two women joined others in urging the pastor to allow some younger men to serve as deacons. In 1952 Annabelle's husband, Ezra, was selected to be that token young deacon.
Alma served as coordinator of the children's work on Sunday mornings. Finally, after about 25 years of work with children, she joined the staff of the church library.
There was yet another opportunity for service. “I think the most significant part of my church life was when I was elected as one of the first women deacons. Some of the deacons welcomed us warmly at the deacons' meeting but some gave us a cold shoulder. However, even those mellowed when the women began serving refreshments at the meetings.”
It was Ezra Stith—remember the first young person to serve as a deacon—who presented the motion to elect women. In Baptist life of the '70s, it was no small decision. Alma Snowa, Virginia Sanders and Betty Allen were the pioneers. Buddy Hamilton, a long time leader in the church, reflected that after the women were included, the deacons' meetings became quieter. He explained: “We didn't have the rambunctious discussions and it was a more business-like organization.”
After all these years, Alma Snowa looks back with satisfaction. “I feel a sense of pride that I pioneered so that many young women can be deacons.” It has been yet another way of spreading love.
In 1966 Alma's father, then nearly 90, set an ultimate example of spreading love. James A. Cree had worked as manager of “five-and-dimes” and had accumulated a modest life savings. One day he walked through the rain to the headquarters of the “Foreign Board” and straight to the office of the executive secretary, Baker James Cauthen. As Cauthen later explained, the elderly man “had felt a strong impression to come with a word that had been ringing in his heart.”
Cree wanted to tithe his life savings and gave $1,000 with a stipulation. The message on his heart was to “spread a little love.” He asked that the message be placed somehow on the mission fields. “There are so many languages and so many different conditions, but in all of them it would be good to ‘spread a little love.' ” Posters were printed and distributed with the simple yet profound message: “Spread a Little Love.” It was a life's motto which the old man's daughter continues to act out in her daily walk.