ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607300015
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Guest Column
SOURCE: DON K. CLEMENTS
On July 17, my nephew, Matthew Alexander, went to be with the Lord by first falling 8,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island.
While each death in the crash of TWA Flight 800 was tragic, his story affected many people outside his family who need to hear it.
The story begins with his paternal grandparents, Bryan and Helen Alexander of Asheville, N.C. Bryan was a longtime elder in a Presbyterian church in the area and the head of one of the most spiritually strong families one could ever find.
In typical fashion he worked a full-time job at a dairy, returned home each night to farm a six-acre tract and still had time to be a faithful father and elder.
Helen was a typical prayer-warrior mother. (When she first met me as a prospective son-in-law, she immediately began praying that God would call me to the ministry - and I wasn't even a Christian yet! How's that for confidence in the power of prayer?)
She not only provided spiritual and emotional strength to her own family, but neighbors and friends in the church could always depend on her for support. She nursed a dying son, a dying husband, a dying sister, a dying friend in the church, and currently is the primary care giver for a sister in a local nursing home.
They had five children - Joy, Bill, Alice, Esther and James. I joined the Alexander family by marrying Esther in 1968. Since then I have seen over and over the spiritual strength in this family.
Matthew's mother, Tari, another Yankee with roots in Detroit as I was, joined this wonderful family by marrying James.
Tari and I have shared many laughs and tears as we've talked about the Alexanders, a family that has had the normal family crises and some special tragedies. In addition to normal family crises such as the mother and two daughters battling cancer, and Bryan's death in 1975, they have had several special tragedies.
The oldest boy, Bill had completed a Ph.D. in physics at the University of North Carolina and was doing post-doctoral studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer at the age of 30.
Apparently it was brought on through some radiated food experiments in which he participated while serving in the Army at a research lab. Bill died in 1970, and his death affected literally dozens of people directly through his strong Christian witness. For years the hospital staff talked about his commitment to the Lord.
James and Tari had six children - three daughters that he helped Tari and the Lord raise as his own and three more children with Tari.
Matthew was their only son. Although we didn't openly speak of it in the family, Matthew was clearly the pride of the Alexanders. We all sort of assumed that after completing his military obligations he would go into the ministry.
In a day and age with broken and dysfunctional families, Matthew was the kind of son most parents dream of having. While I'm sure the parents and sisters could provide evidence of original sin in his life, none of the rest of us could see any. He was the kind of boy who wrote his grandmother regularly!
Born in Augusta while his dad worked at an inner-city ministry, in typical "PK" (preacher's kid) fashion, he finished growing up in Troy, Ala.; Rochester, N.Y.; and finally Florence, S.C., where his father currently serves as pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church (PCA).
Matthew graduated from Florence Christian School in 1993 where he received the Christian Character Award. He went to Wake Forest on a four-year Army ROTC scholarship. At Wake, he was majoring in French with intentions to serve in Army intelligence (as his father had before him).
Continuing his studies in France for a semester was the purpose that put him on that fateful flight July 17.
As I've made notifications on behalf of the family, it has become very evident that Matthew made a tremendous spiritual impression on everyone he came into contact with. God had given him a full measure of the Alexander family's spiritual strength.
It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that while the world (and some of us in the family) might have looked at Matthew as the "pride of the Alexanders," the family's real pride is that spiritual strength that God has given us.
Strength to get through tragic events such as this plane crash. Strength to trust in Jesus Christ for everything, even the tragic.
As everyone else in the world asks what happened to cause Flight 800 to fall into the Atlantic, so too does this family.
But even in asking, we know the answer. It's the result of evil in the world. If it turns out to be a bomb, the sin will be personified. If it was merely a mechanical problem, the sin will be less easy to point out but just as real.
While we cry out in our grief at the loss of this precious child of God as result of evil in the world, his death will surely cause the family to draw ever more deeply from the wellspring of its strength in Jesus Christ. And that strength will enable us to always look for opportunities to share the Gospel with others - which will be the ultimate legacy of the pride of the Alexanders.
The Rev. Don K. Clements is pastor of Valley Presbyterian Church in Narrows.
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