Amazing Grace being sung at 9:15 A.M. on Sunday mornings at Alamo Village by Brother Joe and the kids that were working there during the summer was a Village tradition.
The harmony that rang out each Sunday was unbelievable. Followed with a sermon by our beloved Brother Joe...
I really never thought of Brother Joe as a preacher, I considered him a friend and philosopher. On Sunday mornings in that little Village church we would hear of Joe's travels in China, and about his early days, when he had to learn to drink his coffee black because he couldn't afford milk or sugar.
We heard him talk about the many droughts he lived through in Texas. We also heard about the many friends he had made during this journey called his life.
Joe Townsend had a wonderful way of taking us along with him on Sunday mornings as we would listen to him reminisce about his past adventures. Then he would tie those stories up in a neat little package. The string being the moral lessons he had learned along the way...
Leaving us, (his kids) with an example to use if we chose to.
What I dearly loved about this man was that he never required you to follow his example. He just offered it like a cool drink of water each week.
I was one who drank from the cup that was offered, and I will always be grateful that this man was part of my young life. I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way.
Brother Joe passed away a few months after I took the picture of him that is on this page. I was asked to sing at his funeral... I had to say no, I knew there was no way that I could sing the only song that would be appropriate to be sung on that day, "Amazing Grace".
On the day that I went to his home to take this picture he was surprised that I would want him to have his own page on this "Alamo Village Reunion Site". In fact he was surprised that I wanted to include him at all.
It was then that I told him how loved and cherished he was by all of us who had ever worked at Alamo Village, and that he was as much a part of the Village experience as Happy or Virginia were. His words after hearing that was...
"I never knew"
He never knew who he was to us all those years. But I stood in for all of you who couldn't be there that day, and I told him how we all felt in your stead.
K.K., Sherry Lynn, and I visited him a few months before his death. We also echoed your voices to him and again we told him how loved and admired he was by us all...
Brother Joe is gone now but he will never be forgotten by the hundreds of kids who have spent their summers at Alamo Village. And I am so thankful that before he left this world that he got the chance to know how he touched our lives...
"Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see..."
Penny Campbell-Loewen
