Mom played the piano in church Sundays. The choir would always swell to heart-bursting heights as her hands strode up and down the keys in perfect time. There were a lot of chords to be struck, and a rugged old bass line to hold it all up. God bent down to listen. It was very powerful.

We kids had to behave, meantime, and it was amazing how sharp an eye she could keep on us. She’d park us in the front row and make sure we were following along in the hymnal and actually singing. She also checked to be sure our eyes were shut during prayer (of course they weren’t).

Mom was God-fearing and God-loving (she still is, though her vision of him has mellowed). Then one Sunday in the chauvinist 1960s, she got elected to the board of our First Christian Church — a first for a woman in the history of that edifice in our North Texas town.

It was a short-lived revolution, though. Because as soon as she discovered that there was a surplus on the church’s books of a few hundred dollars, she made the outrageous proposal to use that money to buy a carton or two of Bibles for the poor black people who lived across the tracks. The pudgy white men, always anxious for board meetings to be over quickly so they could get home for that week’s Cowboys game, asked her what in blazes name was wrong with her. And quashed the idea.