Walking Together Through Life
A Livingston Family Memoirs
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
June 6, 1955 was a balmy day on the beautiful campus of Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. Tall hardwood trees shaded the ground. The occasion was the annual commencement service for the graduates of the University, one of the most famous institutions of the United Methodist Church. That afternoon over one thousand people were seated on folding chairs lined up row on row behind the graduates and facing the long pillared porch at the rear of Meade Hall. Administrative officers and other dignitaries were seated on the porch. I was seated with my wife and three children in one of the rows reserved for the graduates. I wore a long black robe trimmed with blue velvet with three blue stripes on each sleeve. At the very end of the ceremony of presenting diplomas to the college and seminary graduates, President Fred G. Hollaway turned to Dr. John Paterson and requested him to bring George Herbert Livingston to the platform. Within a few moments, Dr. Paterson was escorting me to the platform, presenting me to the President and Dean Stanley R. Hopper. Dr. Hopper announced to the audience that I had successfully completed and defended before a committee of three faculty members a dissertation entitled, “The Hebrew Prophetic Consciousness," thus earning the right to possess the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The two men then lifted a hood bearing the colors of Drew University over my head and on my shoulders. Next, they placed a black, flat academic hat with a shiny golden tassel on my head. The Dean announced I was henceforth Doctor George Herbert Livingston. Dr. Paterson took my arm and escorted me from the porch to my seat. I embraced and kissed my lovely, loyal wife, Maria, and hugged our three children while the audience clapped and clapped.
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
I am ninety- four years of age, and I have begun looking back over seventy-four years of being an ordained minister. I decided I should write a testimony of what God has done in the combined lives of my wife Maria and myself. We were married for almost seventy-two years when she died in 2009. This volume has the history of a long successful marriage. At the beginning if the Great Depression, both of our parents lost control of their farms and had to depend on the government for income. Both of us were penniless farm teenagers. Taking a clue from the Scriptures that often refers to the experiences of life as a walk; we have used that term for our life together. We started lives in the valley of poverty and moved uphill from one achievement to another. This book is the story of that journey. The main part of this book is a record of being a minister, a professor and over two decades of retirement. Without the expert assistance and encouragement of Maria, this goal would not have happened.
About the Author
AUTHOR BIO George Herbert Livingston was born in Iowa and grew up in Wisconsin. He graduated from college and married Maria Saarloos in 1937. Two weeks after the wedding he became pastor for the next eight years in churches in both Wisconsin and Iowa. Because of tuition grants, he took his family to Kentucky for studies at Asbury Theological Seminary for three years. For the next three years he pastored churches in the state of New York, and completed graduate studies for his doctors degree at Drew University in New Jersey. For two years he was Dean of Wessington Springs Junior College in South Dakota, and for thirty-four years was Professor of Old Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He was a co-founder of the institution now known as the Jerusalem University College. Maria and he spent seven months on a world mission trip. He helped produce three major English translations of the Bible and has written a number of books and articles on Old Testament themes. He was a husband, and minister for over seventy years; a pastor for fourteen years, a professor for thirty-six years and has been in retirement for over twenty years. He has been the father to three children, eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.