A Tribiute to my wonderful brother Everette

By Ada Brownell

Note: My brother, Everette Nicholson's funeral was March 15.

Everette always called me his Baby Sister, usually at an octave above his normal speech tone.

He had lots of sisters, --five us, and two brothers.

Something happened in our family that had an impact on us all when the family moved from Kansas to Colorado. The pastor in a church in Fruita heard a big family was moving to town and asked the congregation to pray for us.  We got settled in, and my oldest sister, Marjorie, got an invitation to go to church with her. Mamahad a fit. "That's the 'Holy Roller' church!

Daddy said, "Let her go. I heard they teach children to obey their parents there."

So Marjorie went, and soon God sent a friend to the other older children: Virgil, Clara, and Everette, and they all accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior. But soon my parents, and eventually all of us became born-again Christians.

Being the baby of the family, I was privileged to have great role models. I was seldom punished, because I learned from the examples of seven siblings – saved,following the Lord, workaholics and achievers. I wanted to be just like them. What a blessing they were!

Everette was one of the six red heads in our family. Only Joe and our oldest sister Marjorie escaped. The fact red heads are always thought to have a temper, seemed to bother Everette. That might have been because our red headed mother frequently reminded  us of the scripture, “Be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath.” I only remember Everette losing his temper once in my life. He believed in self control.

But Mama used to tell the story about Everette having an encounter with a bull when he was a kid. The bull came up behind him and charged. Everette, still a child, got up, grabbed a board and faced the bull yelling, “Knock me down, will you?” The bull turned and thundered the other direction.

Mama was so proud of Everette. He was a pastor. In Mama’s mind you couldn’t have a better calling than being a pastor or a teacher, and all her sons fulfilled that, although she died before they reached all they would achieve.

SINGING

Because Everette and Elinora pastored in Colorado after I was married, we ran into them at fellowship meetings where they were scheduled to sing. Each time they insisted that I join them because they liked trios. Everette was a great tenor, and he could sing lead OR harmony. Elinora and I would go over the song with him a couple of times, and we were good to go.

When we moved to Missouri, I sang trios with them at Maranatha, at Praise Choir concerts at Central Assembly, and at Strafford Methodist Church where Everette, since he was retired, taught a Sunday school class and sometimes preached when the pastor was gone.

Everette was a great support with my writing ministry. He read through my book, Swallowed by Life, two or three times and told me how it blessed him.  He had read Confessions of a Pentecostal, years ago, other novels,. A couple of weeks before he went to heaven he told me he enjoyed my new fiction book, Love’s Delicate Blossom, where some of my characters are based on our extended family. He wondered why I didn’t use their real names.

“I read every word of it,” he said.

That was nearly 90,000 words. And with eyes 91 years old.

What a sweet, wonderful brother Everette was to me. I’ll miss him. But we sorrow not as those who have no hope for Jesus said, “He that lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:26). We’ll praise God for that blessing throughout eternity.