Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 20, 1993 TAG: 9303200381
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LON WAGNER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BASSETT FORKS LENGTH: Long
MARRYING WORD AND DEED
FIRST THERE WAS William Branham, who may or may not have preached a man's right to have more than one wife. Then there was Daniel Gallimore, who heard in Branham's preaching a message of polygamy - and handed that message on to his son.\ It's Saturday night, and the five-piece gospel band is in full fury.
Elwood Gallimore puts aside his tambourine, steps up to the pulpit and grabs the microphone. He cradles it at the top and keeps his lips so close that his voice is distorted.
There is power, power, wonder-working power, in the precious blood of the lamb. . . Gallimore is singing.
Virtually all of the 80 people in the congregation are jumping up and down, waving their arms, clapping their hands, or running up and down the aisles.
Sabrina Simpkins, the 16-year-old girl Gallimore married "in the eyes of God" last November, is bouncing up and down like a high school cheerleader.
The song ends, and the old theater seats bolted to the floor of the Evangelistic Tabernacle stop shaking.
Clad in tight jeans and a black-and-white striped short-sleeved shirt, the polygamy-preaching minister soon has his congregation in the aisles. They're laughing uproariously at their leader's spin on his present predicament.
On the possible 30-year prison sentence he faces in Floyd County on charges of seducing and taking indecent liberties with Simpkins:
"I'm getting ready for it; look at my stripes," says the 44-year-old Gallimore, referring to his shirt.
On the investigators digging into his past, asking questions about his sexual history from 25 years ago:
"They don't have enough paper to put all the bad stuff I've done."
On the national talk shows trying to entice him to New York or Los Angeles to do a program:
"Every one of them call me and tell me they're different. They're better than the others. Phil Donahue said he had the best show; well, I seen it a few times . . . I didn't even LIKE him."
This is how Gallimore's sermons begin. Jokes are his warm-up, a way to update the congregation on his problems. He's had plenty of new material since he was indicted last month.
After 10 minutes or so, the tone gets serious. Gallimore is on fire. His face is red. His biceps and neck muscles appear ready to pop the seams of his polo shirt.
Nothing riles up Elwood Gallimore more than polygamy.
He preaches it. And he practices it. As much of the country has now heard, Gallimore - legally married for 26 years - and Simpkins were married on Nov. 24.
Since then, he's been criticized, cussed and arrested. Polite and humble in preliminary court appearances, Gallimore returns to his faithful fold five nights a week and unleashes his criticisms of the outside world.
The world has been particularly hostile since it found out about Gallimore and his flock. The congregation, though defensive at times, sees the backlash as nothing less than confirmation it has chosen the right path. And the right leader.
The media glare, the threats on Gallimore's life, the stares and snide looks at the mall: The Bible predicted God's people would be persecuted like this.
"It's tough," Sabrina Simpkins says. "I believe God will deliver him from this. It may take time. God works in his own time."
To this church, the end-time is here. Gallimore preaches it. Gallimore says he's looking for the Rapture tonight. If not tonight, tomorrow night.
"My granddad was just like that, real fiery," says Billy Paul Gallimore, the oldest of Elwood Gallimore's three children. "My granddad, he came out of a time when they had fireball preachers."
\ Dan Gallimore was a traveling tent preacher who took his message to the people in the hills of North Carolina, Tennessee and Southside Virginia.
As the story goes, it was 1968 when Elwood Gallimore's father, Dan, drove past an old store in Henry County. According to Dale Fields, whose father helped negotiate the purchase of the building, Gallimore got a signal from God that he should set up a ministry there.
"He claimed the building in the name of Jesus," says Fields, 37. Fields is now the Evangelistic Tabernacle's treasurer and Elwood Gallimore's right-hand man.
Dan Gallimore built a devout following by espousing the themes of William Marrion Branham, a Jeffersonville, Ind., minister who was believed by his followers to be a prophet.
His followers claim that a pillar of light followed Branham throughout his life, appearing over the Arizona desert once and another time during a debate.
In the early 1980s, Dan Gallimore began studying one particular sermon of Branham's, church members say. Over and over, he listened to a tape of Branham's 90-minute lecture entitled "Marriage and Divorce."
In that sermon, Branham claimed that all the world's problems were created by women.
"An immoral woman is a human sexual garbage can, a pollution where filthy, dirty, ornery, low-down filth is disposed by her," Branham preached. "Every sin that ever was on earth was caused by a woman."
Branham claimed that when Eve committed the original sin, God developed two sets of rules: one for men, one for women.
Branham, as Dan Gallimore interpreted it, endorsed polygamy in the sermon. But just for men.
"One male, many females: one buck deer, a whole harem of does; one bull, a whole herd of cattle, cows . . . one David, with five hundred wives, with a hundred children born to him in one year of different women - a man after God's own heart," Branham preached.
Branham's sons, who carry on his ministry, say the sermon was confusing, but it did not endorse polygamy.
Elwood Gallimore used to agree.
But one day, Dan Gallimore took his tape recording of "Marriage and Divorce" and told his son to get in the car.
"Daddy didn't believe it at first," says Sharon Rose Arthur, 23, Elwood's daughter. "But Poppa made him listen to the tape over and over till he did get it."
Elwood Gallimore remembers his father playing the tape on the 90-minute drive from their Pulaski County home to the church in Bassett Forks. That night, he preached a sermon on polygamy. On the way home, he played the tape again.
"By the time I got back, I believed it," Elwood Gallimore says, "but I was doing some arguing with it."
Years later, Elwood Gallimore - the eldest of Dan and Dorothy Gallimore's three sons - would learn his father always expected Elwood to carry on his ministry.
Before he died, Dan Gallimore was the subject of an investigation in Floyd County. A teen-aged girl had made allegations of abuse and neglect, sources say.
The investigation was never completed; the girl stopped speaking to authorities.
In September 1987 Gallimore was found on a Pulaski County road slumped over the steering wheel of his pickup. The truck was unscratched.
Gallimore died of an apparent heart attack, though no autopsy was performed.
Three nights before he died, Dan Gallimore sat down with his son, Doug, who said his father "told me how he wanted things to be after he was gone."
Doug Gallimore, 43 is one year younger than Elwood. He doesn't believe there was anything suspicious about his father's death. But he does believe his brother's preaching has little to do with his religious beliefs.
"What he's doing is for fleshly desire and not for the soul," Doug Gallimore says, "because he's always had some problems controlling himself that way."
\ Elwood Gallimore admits it. He's always had a problem with women - keeping them away, that is.
He dropped out of Dublin High School when he was 16 and traveled to revivals with his father.
"I'd always go in and sit down and try to pick up a girl," he says.
One night in Danville, he met Janice Turman, a girl from Floyd County. When he was 18 and she 16, they married.
A few years later, Gallimore started hanging around at wrestling matches in Roanoke. Promoter Pete Apostolou was in his heyday, and Gallimore says Apostolou encouraged him to try wrestling.
"Even around wrestling matches, Pete would come tell me, `Gallimore, you're the beatenest man I've ever seen; you just get all the women,' " Gallimore says.
Even some of the wrestlers' girlfriends would get word to Gallimore that they wanted to talk to him.
One fawning woman told Gallimore that with his dark hair combed back and his trademark long sideburns, he looked like a combination of Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty.
After Elwood and Janice Gallimore had been married two or three years, he strayed. He has admitted the affair to his wife, members of the congregation, an investigator on his case and just about anybody else who asks.
Gallimore was 19 or 20. The girl was 16 at the time.
Janice left him for a while and went to stay with her parents. When he left the 16-year-old and promised never to have an affair again, she said she would come back.
"I was a young and hard-headed and stubborn-headed boy then, and I wouldn't do it," Gallimore says.
"I let her go on to her mother and dad's, and in a few days I went and got her. She was ready to go home. I told her, `That junk's over with.' "
Gallimore says he admits the affair for two reasons: He wants to prove he's hiding nothing; and nearly everybody has made a mistake at some time in the past.
Judging from the questions he's been asked, Gallimore knows Floyd County and state police investigators might try to use his sexual history against him in court.
He and Janice have three children - Billy Paul, 25; Sharon Rose, 23, and Penny, 18. Investigators have questioned him as to whether he has two or three more children by other women.
Floyd County prosecutor Gino Williams says he may ask Gallimore to take a blood test to prove he has not fathered other children.
"All the sudden, I'm daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy," Gallimore tells his congregation, "and I don't know where this stuff's coming from."
\ Dan Gallimore's death left the church without a leader.
Elwood Gallimore almost had to be "conned" into stepping into his father's job, Billy Paul Gallimore says. Before Dan Gallimore died, his son wasn't even a devout Christian.
Church members recall the bashful Elwood Gallimore playing the organ when his father preached; he was so shy he wouldn't even shout "Hallelujah" or "Amen" with the rest of the congregation. "I was afraid if I yelled `Amen,' somebody might look at me," he says.
But Elwood Gallimore changed.
Usually a wisecracker, he grew thoughtful and serious after his father's death. He began studying the Bible.
The only way church members can explain Gallimore's metamorphosis into the charismatic, dominant, raging voice of the Evangelistic Tabernacle is as a spiritual transformation.
"I'm not calling him God," says Anthony Barker, 28. "I'm saying God's speaking through him."
Some church members believe the spirit of Joshua breathes through Gallimore when he steps into the pulpit. Joshua is the Old Testament prophet who succeeded Moses and led the Israelites to the promised land, and Gallimore's followers believe he will do the same for them.
Others just say "it gets on him." The "it," they say, is nothing less than "the anointing of God."
In five years, he's made the church his own.
He's combined Branham's "Marriage and Divorce," Dan Gallimore's demand for a traditional role for women in society, and his own charisma.
Gallimore's presence is powerful. He is 6 feet 2 and weighs 210 pounds. Three times a week, he lifts weights, which is another common topic of his sermon warmups.
One of the investigators, Gallimore says, referred to him as a "hunk." He likes the term and uses it often. Jokingly, he reminds the congregation often of his physical power.
"Johnny said he's willing to be my bodyguard," Gallimore says of church member Johnny O'Dell. "I told him he has to have a body first."
Even at the church's weekly Sunday afternoon softball game, Gallimore's strength is a focal point. He alone takes warm-up swings while several men stand in the outfield to shag flies.
"That's six," he calls out as one ball clears the fence. "When I get seven, we'll play." Seven is a mystical number in the Bible, particularly in end-time prophecies.
At the softball game, as at other church gatherings, the women segregate themselves. As the teams are chosen, four women who want to play stand against the backstop. After the men are selected, each team chooses two women.
In this church community, men and women have clearly defined roles. Men have short hair. Like their leader, several lift weights.
Women wear dresses, have long hair and shun makeup.
As part of the constant indoctrination to the church's beliefs, Gallimore calls men with long hair or earrings "sissyfied."
"I think the biggest problem today is not the women," Gallimore preaches, "but these sissy men that's afraid to put their foot down."
Women who wear makeup or have short hair are "bobbed-haired, painted-faced Jezebels."
"The Bible says for women to keep silent," he says. "Keep silent - that means, shut it up, lady - in all matters."
\ Services begin at 7:30 p.m., five nights a week. But usually by 6, a few carloads of people are waiting in the parking lot of the Evangelistic Tabernacle.
They get out, stand in groups, and talk. Men here. Women over there.
Stephen Dodson, 20, calls himself one of the church's caretakers. He stands in the parking lot and looks around for potential troublemakers.
"We don't allow no cigarettes on the lot or no women in britches on the lot," he says. In fact, several weeks ago church members evicted a woman television reporter from the parking lot for wearing pants.
In many ways, those who attend the Evangelistic Tabernacle feel under siege. Their beliefs are being challenged and laughed at; their leader is being threatened with 30 years in prison.
"I know what we got down here is the truth," Dodson says, "and I know we can't get it nowhere else."
Some families have left the church because of its belief in polygamy. "These few empty seats in here used to be full," Gallimore says.
After Gallimore announced he had married Simpkins, one seven-member family left and one family with three young girls left.
In this church, it's not unusual to marry at 16. Church treasurer Fields took his 16-year-old son and his son's 15-year-old fiancee to South Carolina so they could be legally married.
So far, though, only one man other than Gallimore is practicing polygamy. Anthony Barker, 28, who works at Guilford Mills in Greensboro, N.C., informally married Betty Price, now 32, three years ago.
Barker and his legal wife, Kelly, 27, have three children. Price has two children from a previous marriage.
For a while, the women lived in separate houses and Barker would spend alternating nights in his and Kelly's house and at Betty's house.
It wasn't easy telling Kelly he wanted another wife. "She said, `I ain't going to tell you I'm real joyful about it, but that's the word, and that's what we believe.' "
Soon Betty moved in with the Barkers. Making enough money to support his extended family, Barker told Kelly to quit her job. "We don't believe in women working," he says.
Why would a man want two wives?
"The main thing is you love them and care about them," Barker says. "Something might happen to one, then you have the other one for you."
But it wasn't Barker's polygamous lifestyle that focused attention on this church. It was Elwood Gallimore.
The church is now clearly cut off from the outside world. Billy Paul Gallimore says that's not a choice made by church members, but by those who disagree with them. He and his wife have tried to socialize with others.
"But we get to talking about the way we believe, then they get where they don't want us around," he says. "We hang together closer now than we did before."
Gordon Melton, a religion scholar based in Santa Barbara, Calif., says the Evangelistic Tabernacle may not be a cult, but "they're sitting right out there on the border."
Having services five nights a week - church was held nightly for about a month before Gallimore was indicted - separates the group from society, Melton says. Polygamy separates them even more.
"They had to theologically justify it and support it," he says. "When somebody runs afoul of the law, it's no big deal; it's the culture coming after them."
The closer that culture gets, the harder Gallimore preaches. God alone will be the ultimate judge, he says.
"There's a showdown coming, and I believe it's right in front of us," he tells the congregation.
"It's going to be God's word against the law."
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