Garden Valley Christian Artist Retreat, Part Two
I am continuing with the every Monday in June posting of my experiences at the Artist Retreat hosted by Melody Green at Last Days Ministries in Lindale, TX, 1985 & 1986.
I have a great story (wasn’t so great at the time, but hilarious in hindsight). Buck and Annie Herring had a very nice complex, a combination of an apartment, studio, rehearsal hall, racquetball court and touring bus garage bay. A big metal building housed all that on a 100 acre wooded tract. A beautiful setup. Being as I lived in Lindale at the time, I became a regular participant in a weekly game of wallyball, which was like volleyball, only played on a racquetball court. It created wild action, as all the walls of the court were in play. The ideal layout was 4 players on each team. We carried on with the regular game during the week of the Artist retreat, so some of the Artists attending were invited to play with us. It was very cut throat competition, these guys did not mess around, it was serious business.
We had rotated positions, and I was at the left side of the net. In the course of play, I was directly across from Jack Ward (brother of Annie, Nelly and Matthew Ward). We both went up to get a crack at spiking the ball at the net, and when we came down, Jack landed directly on my foot, which was at an awkward angle, and it snapped my ankle. The sound of the bone crack reverberated in the court. I went down in excruciating pain and briefly passed out. When I came to, there was a sea of faces about a foot in front of my own face, it was cloudy at first. As my vision gradually focused, out of the mist emerged the faces of Buck, Annie, Matthew, Dallas Holm and Mylon LeFevre all praying and looking extremely concerned. I thought to myself, “so this is heaven’. 😱😂
I spent the last 2 days of the retreat in a foot cast, but I didn’t miss a thing, even played softball! Other great memories include having coffee at a table with Andrae Crouch, and a game of water volleyball in the pool with Phil Keaggy. Afterwards, me and Phil sat on the edge of the pool, feet dangling in the water, and talked about The Beatles for almost an hour. We both were devoted Beatlemaniacs, so it was a great discussion!
For the featured artists today, I have circled the performers in the picture. This first one is from Petra, and the lead singer is Greg X. Volz. At the time of this photo, Petra had just released the Beat The System album.
The three members of The Second Chapter of Acts pictured are Annie Herring, Nelly Greisen and Matthew Ward. I always loved the song Yahweh, which features Phil Keaggy on guitar and a monster lead vocal by Matt.
And this last one is by Andrae Crouch, who was not in the picture, both he and Phil Keaggy left the day before the group photo at the end of the week. Andrae is in fine form here, this was shortly before his death. Maybe the last live concert he did, I’m not sure, but close. The backup singers are fabulous, led by Tata Vega, who was also at the retreat with Andrae.