An e-mail from Ms. Dede Hamlin came to me, saying, “Hello Everyone. It's that time of year again. Time to celebrate an extra special friend, Miriam Jones, 108! Can you believe it?”
I met now-108-year-old Ms. Miriam Jones in 1989 at Sandhills Assembly of God (AG), Southern Pines, NC. She was, as I recall, the lady who phoned AG headquarters and asked about starting that church.
“Sandhills Assembly began in the mid-1970s with a handful of people from various denominational backgrounds who had begun to experience Charismatic worship and teaching, along with manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit,” the Rev. Bryan Rainbow wrote in 2008, while serving as the church’s pastor.
The group gathered in house meetings and then at a Holiday Inn for Sunday morning services before inquiring about founding a church.
In Oct. 1976, the group was recognized as an NC AG district-affiliated church. On Sept. 25, 1977, the Rev. David Hicks became the church’s first pastor. They built a church house on 6.5 acres on Hwy. 1 in Moore County, NC.
I interviewed Miriam Jones when she was 86 years old:
“My parents read the Bible regularly and lived as Christians but never had devotions and prayed with us,” said Miriam, who was born Miriam Kennedy Sloan in Wilson, NC, in 1913. “Father ((W. J. Sloan) was a Missionary Baptist who read the New Testament in the original Greek, and Mother (Mary Long) was a Primitive Baptist.”
Her father was a school principal; her mother taught piano and directed chorus.
“My sister and I were taught the discipline of memorizing one Bible verse each Sunday before we could see the funny papers,” she recalled, referring to the Charlotte Observer comic section. “I was adventuresome and had many peach-tree switchings for disobedience, but I felt their loving concern. I was taught to be careful of my diet. Father bought the first book on diet by Mr. J.H. Kellogg. We had wheat boiled in water for breakfast. It was hard to chew, but sugared- and creamed-up, it was good.”
Miriam, preparing to teach, graduated from The Women’s College of UNC (now UNC Greensboro) and enrolled in Columbia Univ. in New York during the Depression. She met her husband-to-be before he enrolled in Columbia Medical School.
“We were mostly unchurched,” she said, adding that her exposure to Darwin’s theory of evolution in college took her away from Christ, even though after her husband became a doctor, they sometimes took their four children to a Baptist church.
Miriam says they lived in Nyack, NY, when she began Bible study and read the Bible through several times before she “accepted Christ.” While attending an Episcopal church in New Rochelle, she participated in a responsive reading of the Ten Commandments. The recitation ended with this group response: “Incline my heart to obey this law.” She was touched when she said those words and was moved to greater Christian service.
Through the Rev. Harold Bredesen’s influence she experienced a “baptism in the Holy Spirit” and began attending White Plains AG in White Plains, NY.
Her husband built a retirement home in Pinehurst, NC, in 1972, but before the home’s completion said he “wanted space” and had lost interest in their 35-year marriage. “I told him it wasn’t right for us to divorce,” Miriam said. “A woman feels totally unattractive and unacceptable at a time like that.”
In the mid-1970s, Miriam, whose four children were grown, moved to the Sandhills alone. “The Lord helped me through many a trying time with too many coincidences not to see his hand,” she said.
To celebrate Miriam’s 108 years, a daughter set Sat., Aug. 28, 2021, as party day. At 2:30 p.m., a car-parade of family and friends planned to motor past Ms. Miriam’s assisted-living facility in Raleigh, NC. The party was to begin inside at 3:00.
“It’s difficult to talk to her sometimes now, due to hearing and cognitive issues,” Dede wrote. “Ms. Miriam is very lonely. If you remember our loving, outgoing, full-of-life Miriam — she's depressed now. I called one day … She said she had been weeping because she’s so lonely and is so far from her friends that she loves so dearly. …Her family visits her often. She has a dear lady that stays with her maybe 5 hours each day for 4 days a week. But she misses her friends.”
Miriam often talks by phone with Ms. Wren Roberts, 94, who attended Sandhills Assembly, has dementia, and lives with her daughter, Linda Sealy, in Summerville, SC.
Dede says, “Linda helps Ms. Wren call Ms. Miriam almost every day. They may not know who each other is, or remember that they talked, but in their spirits, they know they’re dear friends.”
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