Tag Archives: Rob Shearer

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Elizabeth Lee Clarkson Waitt Shearer, 1920-2008

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Elizabeth Lee Clarkson Waitt Shearer 1920-2008

Elizabeth Lee Clarkson Waitt Shearer

Elizabeth Lee Clarkson Waitt Shearer, 87, of Lexington, died Monday, April 7, 2008.

She was born in Washington, D.C., the first-born child of the late Bessie Virginia Clarkson and Lee Massey Clarkson. Lee Massey Clarkson was director of Public Health for the State of Georgia, and later taught public health at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Betty (aka “Betty Lee”) grew up in Atlanta, Ga., graduating from Girls High School in 1938. She attended Agnes Scott College, and worked for Southern Bell Telephone Company.

In June of 1941, she married Robert Graham Waitt, who had just graduated from the United States Military Academy. Graham was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant upon graduation and four years later, in 1945 had attained the rank of Lt. Colonel, and was serving as the Executive Officer of the 652nd Engineering Battalion (topographic) attached to General George Patton’s Third Army. He later served on General MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo during the occupation of Japan. Betty and Graham were very active at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta, where they served as co-superintendents of the Sunday school. Betty was also very active in St. Hilda’s Circle. She enjoyed playing bridge with her friends and volunteering in the community. Mr. and Mrs. Waitt had four children: Virginia, Elizabeth, Robert, & Miriam. Graham died in 1960.

In 1964, Betty married Vernon Hill Shearer (Don), after which she became an active member of the First Presbyterian Church. Mr. Shearer died in 1997. In 2000, Betty moved to the Kendal at Lexington retirement community where she quickly made many friends and led an active social life.

Betty enjoyed and excelled at creating a home for her family and was devoted to her children. She took great delight in entertaining her many friends and the friends of her family.

She is survived by her children, Virginia Atkinson Waitt Saunders, Elizabeth Graham Waitt Tomlinson, Robert Graham Waitt Shearer, and Miriam Clarkson Waitt Shearer; two sisters, Jean Theodosia Clarkson Rogers of Atlanta, and Charlotte Sayre Clarkson Jones of Memphis, Tenn.; 19 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Friday, April 11, at 3:30 p.m., at the Lexington Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Virginia. A second memorial service will be held on Monday, April 21st at 12:00 noon in the Atlanta area at St. James Episcopal Church, 105 Church St., Marietta, Ga. A graveside service will follow at Marietta National Cemetery in Marietta.

Memorial contributions may be made to a charity of choice, Rockbridge Area Hospice, the Lexington Presbyterian Church, or Habitat for Humanity.

This obituary appeared as part of the April 9, 2008 online edition of The Lexington News-Gazette.

And also in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on April 13, 2008.

Here’s a link to the guest book (which will stay online for a year) for Elizabeth Shearer.

Here is a photostory of photographs from her childhood in Atlanta, marriage to Graham Waitt, raising Virginia, Elizabeth, Robert, & Miriam; second marriage to Don Shearer; and her final years in Lexington VA. that I have also placed on Youtube.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKIoynIaUoc
Elizabeth Lee Clarkson Waitt Shearer 1920-2008

book reviews

Some Thoughts on Adoption

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To the left is the cover of a new book I reviewed this week at GreenleafPress.com. If you have any connection to any of the “Families with Children from China,” you’re going to want to read this book. It will make you cry.

Ada has three names. Wang Bin is what her caregivers called her at her Chinese orphanage. Ada is the name given her by her American parents. And there is a third name, whispered to her by her Chinese mother:

“My first name was whispered to me by my first mother, when I was born. It’s someplace in my heart. I don’t know how to say it. I wish I could.
I didn’t see my first mother long.
I never saw her again.
I am from someone I don’t even know.

She is my China mother, and far away I have a father, too. They made my hands and my eyes and my dark hair, all the parts of me I can touch and see.
But they took me to an orphange.
I don’t know just why.
My heart tells me they were sad.
China is crowded and not rich.
It has rules about how many children a family can have.”

There is much more. The story is simply told with illustrations done in watercolor and colored pencil in a style the illustrator calls “ethereal realism.”

It is a gentle book, but with a powerful and moving message.

Cyndy and I have two adopted daughters from China. We adopted Corrie in 1997 and Sarah in 1999. Because I think adoption stories can be a great source of encouragement to other families, I’ve previously posted their stories on the Greenleaf Press website. you can read Corrie’s Story here, and Sarah’s Story here.

China continues to be one of the largest international adoption programs, with about 7,000 adoptions to US families each year. In the late 1990’s, the rate was about 4,000 adoptions per year. There are interesting statistics available from the US organization Familes with Children from China (FCC). Since 1985, there have been approximately 70,000 adoptions by US families of children from China.

There are three relationships which the Bible uses to describe our relationship with God. One is marriage – in Ephesians, Paul describes Jesus as the bridegroom and the church (us) as the bride. He teaches explicitly that marriage is a picture of our relationship to God. The second image is parent-child, or more specifically, father-son (to be very politically incorrect about it). The parable of the prodigal son is the best-known illustration of the analogy, but far from the only one. The third biblical image of our relationship with God is adoption. Paul writes of the “spirit of adoption” by which we are able to call God “abba.”

I understand all of this much better as the father of two adopted daughters. Occassionally folks have asked us whether it was hard to adopt. The answer is, being a parent is often hard. Being an adoptive parent is hard in different ways, but not any harder or easier than being a birth parent. Sometimes folks ask us if we had noticed any difference in our feelings for our adopted daughters. The answer to that is no. Loving our sons and daughters is as natural as breathing for us. We try to understand and love each of them as individuals, but we’re bonded as strongly with our adopted daughters as with each of our other children.

God has adopted us into his family – and given us a new name! Part of our response to God’s love is to seek to worship and serve him. And God says true worship, true service, is to care for widows and orphans.

Christians through the centuries have taken the example and the biblical call to care for widows and orphans seriously. It runs counter to the zeitgeist (the “spirit of the age”), but it is our call – and there are rich rewards. For any families who are thinking about adoption, I offer encouragement. If you sense God tugging at your heart, don’t ignore the tug. Get more information and pray about what God would have you do. There are a wealth of resources on the internet. We gave our adoption agency the ultimate endorsement by adopting through them a second time two years after first adoption. I recommend them highly – Children’s Hope International and their subsidiary, China’s Children.

-Rob Shearer
  Director, Schaeffer Study Center
  Publisher, Greenleaf Press

book reviews, Civil War

Team of Rivals – a review by Rob Shearer

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Team of Rivalsby Doris Kearns Goodwin

I just completed the book this month. Took longer than I had thought to finish it, NOT because it lacked interest – just because I had too many distractions over the past six months.

Its a magnificent book. Very well written, and with the focus right where it should be – on the individuals who played major roles in Lincoln’s administration. The book is actually an exercise in multiple biography and it works extremely well.

In 1860, there were four candidates for the Republican nomination for President. The front-runner, who everyone expected would be nominated, was Senator Seward from New York. Also in the running was Governor Chase from Ohio, Judge Bates from Missouri, and a relatively unknown lawyer from Illinois, who had served a single term in Congress fourteen years before – Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was nominated on the 3rd ballot at the Republican convention of 1860 and went on to win the presidency. Then he did something extraordinary. He appointed all three of the men who had been his rivals to his cabinet. Senator Seward became his Secretary of State. His other cabinet appointments were made with what seemed to his friends as a careless disregard for his own political fortunes.

Goodwin shows how Lincoln suceeded in managing his “team of rivals,” when everyone expected him to be a weak president who would be dominated by the stronger, more experienced politicians he had appointed.

Perhaps the most startling appointment Lincoln made was Edwin Stanton to be Secretary of War after scandal forced his first Secretary of War to resign. Stanton was a high-powered Washington attorney who had served briefly in the Buchannon administration. More significantly, he had been the lead attorney on a famous patent case (the McCormick reaper case) in 1855. Lincoln had been retained as a local attorney when it looked like the case would be tried in Illinois, but when venue was changed to Ohio, Stanton contemptuously dismissed Lincoln from the defense team and then snubbed him. Any attorney other than Lincoln would have held a grudge for life. But Lincoln set aside any resentment he might have harbored and appointed Stanton as his Secretary of War – and over time the two became friends and Stanton completely reversed his opinion of Lincoln.

Goodwin also does an excellent job of explaining the political context, intent, and effect of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation is usually either elevated to a status alongside the Declaration of Indpendence and the Constitution (if your sympathies are with the Union) or dismissed as a crude and calculated political ploy that freed not a single slave because it was simply a public relations trick (if your sympathies are with the South). Goodwin explains at length Lincoln’s reasoning for the details of the Proclamation and the timing of its signing. It WAS designed for a political purpose – Lincoln hoped it might persuade at least some of the Confederate states to return to the Union. But, it was also a consistent extension of Lincoln’s evolving policy to deal with the issue of slavery.

Goodwin’s book is excellent biography (not just Lincoln, but also Seward, Chase, Bates, and Stanton) with its focus and tone on the human and personal dimensions of Lincoln’s presidency. Its also a study in political wisdom. Lincoln’s magnanimity is what eventually led to his nomination and election as president – and successful conduct of the war. Finally, it is a study in management principles with applications even now to how leaders should choose key lieutenants and manage them.

Highly recommended.

-Rob Shearer
  Director, Schaeffer Study Center

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[ding, ding] You are now free to blog about . . .

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For a variety of reasons, I have held myself back from the blogging phenomenon which took off over the past six years (see especially Instapundit).

From November of 2000 to May of 2007, I was the City Manager of Mt. Juliet, TN. Because of my obligations as City Manager, I chose not to start a blog and refrained from making political, cultural, and religious comments on the internet.

But, its now June of 2007, and I’ve been set free.

Since 2004, I have also been the Director of the Francis Schaeffer Study Center in Mt. Juliet. For the past three years, the primary work of FSSC has been to co-ordinate a high school program for homeschooled students that, over four years, gives them a chronological overview of the History, Literature, & Art of western civilization from ancient times to modern. We graduated 16 seniors last month, and will start our fourth year of classes in August.

My intent with this blog is to provide my $.02 worth on the issues of the day. I’m inspired primarily by three people: C.S.Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Ronald Reagan. It’s in the intersection of those three that I think I may have a few things to offer.

-Rob Shearer
  Director, Schaeffer Study Center