LAUREL HILL — Folks in present-day Okaloosa County have been attending area churches since the early 1940s. One of the earliest churches in the entire state was Yellow River Baptist Church, constituted June 14, 1840, in Oak Grove.
Getting to church wasn’t always easy, for both the faithful and the pastor. Neighbors would load into one another’s wagons, or, if they lived within walking distance, would make the trek on foot.
The advent of the automobile made church-going easier, though no less bouncy, especially over rural Okaloosa County’s rough roads.
In Laurel Hill, countless residents still remember riding to church and Sunday school with “Miss Maude,” who was a devout member of the Presbyterian church.
Throughout the late 1930s, 1940s and until she married and left town in 1957, Maude Campbell drove around the community every Sunday morning, gathering children, packing them into her two-door Ford sedan and whisking them off to church.
KIDS’ GIRLFRIEND
“She was our girlfriend,” the Rev. Donnie Cadenhead said. “At that time she was probably in her fifties, but she was our girlfriend.”
Cadenhead, today pastor of Victorious Life Church on Blueberry Curve north of Crestview, said it was thanks to her and her family that he is where he is today.
“Our parents weren’t active in a church so we most likely wouldn’t have gone to church if it hadn’t been for Miss Maude,” he said. “She had a great influence on us.”
Cadenhead still has fond memories of Sunday mornings packed like sardines in the two-door Ford.
“I think one Sunday we had 23 kids in that car,” he said. “We would all sit in one another’s laps. We didn’t have seatbelts in those days.”
Cadenhead said Maude Campbell wasn’t the only member of her family who influenced many a Laurel Hill child.
“Miss McDonald Campbell and her mother, Miss Christian, and Miss Bertie Ann Campbell, who became a school teacher, had a great influence,” he said. “And there were Mr. Clyde and Miss Louise Campbell, who ironically, didn’t have children of their own.
“The Campbell family really had a lot of influence on us.”
LIPSTICK MEMORIES
Maude Campbell purposely wore a heavy coat of lipstick to leave her mark as she’d give the children affectionate kisses when she’d drop them off after church.
“She made sure we got some of that lipstick on our little cheeks,” Cadenhead said. “We made like we didn’t like it, but we loved that lipstick and wore it home proudly.”
One day in 1957, Archie Champion, a salesman who sold goods to Miss Maude’s grocery section of Campbell Company, won her hand, and legions of young Sunday school children were devastated.
“She got married on us and it broke our hearts,” Cadenhead said.
From then on, Laurel Hill’s children of God were in the loving hands of Miss Maude’s relatives.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: OKALOOSA COUNTY CENTENNIAL: Carpooling to church with Miss Maude