“…and the Two Shall Become One Flesh!”…or Maybe Not! The Unity Candle vs The Last Will and Testament
January 8
1:30-2:30 pm at Greencroft Community Center, Jennings Auditorium
Decades ago, my wife and I embedded a ritual called the Unity Candle into our wedding ceremony. Years later, we discovered that the implications of this “two shall become one” vignette ran headlong into an opposing concept commonly found in a Last Will and Testament. This presentation examines how we harmonized these two opposing concepts while creating a second issue that lingers, perhaps to this day.
About Jim Smith:
Jim Smith grew up about 160 miles north of here on a small farm in the northwest corner of Muskegon County, Michigan. After graduating from high school in 1963, he earned a BS in Biology from Bob Jones University. About two weeks after graduation in 1967, he and Sherry Weldy were married at the First Christian Church in Wakarusa. During that summer, Jim worked as a general laborer helping to build the first building here on the Greencroft campus.
He then spent two years at Clemson University, working toward an MS in Zoology; some years later he completed an MBA at Liberty University. During the Viet Nam era, Jim was an officer in the US Air Force, serving three years in the Air Training Command near Denver, Colorado.
Following separation from the Air Force, Jim and his family relocated to this area where he took a position in Project Management with the Ames Division of Miles Laboratories. Ten years later, he accepted a marketing position with Zimmer, Inc., an orthopedic company in Warsaw, Indiana, working primarily with total hip and total knee implant systems. He retired from Zimmer in February 2004.
In 2002, Jim joined the board of the Pumpkinvine Nature Trail here in Goshen; after his retirement from Zimmer, he served as Executive Director until leaving the Board in 2011. During his time, among other things, Jim helped resolve critical property issues on the Pumpkinvine Corridor, raise public awareness for the project, and raise funds to include the writing of grant requests for building much of the trail.
Since his retirement, Jim also served three years on the Goshen City Plan Commission, the majority of that time as the Commission president.
For 11 years, Jim served as chairperson of the steering committee of New Perspectives on Faith, a ministry of the Outreach Commission at College Mennonite Church. Some of you here may have attended one or more of those meetings.
Jim and Sherry reside in Goshen where they just recently celebrated their 52nd wedding anniversary. They have two daughters, Audra, who lives in Fort Wayne with her husband and three children and Kendra, who lives near Charlotte, NC with her husband and two children.