When Rev. Carl Williamson retired after 25 years as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Cleveland, he and his wife, Sandy, believed that chapter of their lives had come to an end.
They were not leaving Cleveland as it was home, but they knew they needed to step away from Calvary and give whoever came next the freedom to lead the church without its longtime pastor sitting in the congregation. For a while, they did exactly that.
Then other churches began calling. One needed someone to fill the pulpit, and then another. Before long, the Williamsons were serving congregations in Huntsville, Saratoga and even Bear Creek Baptist Church, where Carl had pastored roughly 40 years earlier. Through it all, they continued living in Cleveland.
Then came a call neither of them necessarily expected. Calvary’s current pastor, Aaron Ferguson, wanted to have lunch with Carl.
“You have connections in Cleveland, and you have experiences that I don’t have,” Carl recalled Ferguson telling him. “Would you come walk beside me?”
So, after nearly three years away from Calvary, Brother Carl and Sandy came home to the church they love.
This time, however, their role is different.
The Williamsons are serving as emeritus pastors, allowing them to concentrate on the parts of ministry they have always loved most — visiting the sick and homebound, teaching the Bible, encouraging people who are struggling and simply being there when someone needs them.
“It freed us up to do what we really think we do best,” Carl said.
That, he added, is “just loving people.”
Carl and Sandy are the guests on this week’s Bluebonnet News “Headlines and Heartlines” podcast, where they talk about 49 years of marriage, decades of ministry, the accident that nearly took Carl’s life and the unexpected turns that eventually led them back to Calvary.
There was also fried chicken in a cemetery.
That story goes back almost 50 years, when Carl and Sandy were college students who knew each other through church but had not quite figured out they were supposed to fall in love.
Carl grew up in Brazoria, Texas, and originally planned to become a veterinarian. As a teenager, however, he began praying about what God wanted him to do with his life.
His pastor, Herman Coe, became his model for ministry. If someone was in the hospital, Coe went to see them, regardless of whether they were Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Pentecostal or had no church at all. If someone in the community needed help, he showed up.
“You don’t have to be a member of my church for me to minister to you or to care about what’s happening to you,” Carl said.
He and Sandy knew each other through church youth activities and later attended East Texas Baptist University in Marshall. Friendship eventually turned into dating, with a little encouragement from Sandy’s brother.
One of their early dates was at Scottsville Cemetery outside Marshall, Texas. Carl brought fried chicken.
“He took me a box of fried chicken to eat while we were at the cemetery, and 50 years later, I’m still going to cemeteries and eating fried chicken,” Sandy said with a laugh.
Their courtship also included King, an Alaskan Malamute that Carl brought home after spending time in Wyoming helping start a church. During one date, Carl leaned over to kiss Sandy.
“When I opened my eyes, that dog’s nose was right between us, and I still don’t know to this day if I kissed him or the dog,” she said with a chuckle.
Six months after they began dating, they married. Next July, they will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
For Sandy, marrying a preacher did not mean simply following Carl into his calling. She believes she had one of her own.
“From the time I was about 12 years old, God had called me to be a pastor’s wife,” she said. “I’ve never regretted it. It’s a calling for me just like it is for him.”
She also felt called to education, a career that eventually included classroom teaching, guidance counseling, building and central office administration and human resources, including many years with Cleveland ISD.
Music was another part of her life. Sandy went to college on a pipe organ scholarship before earning her degree in elementary education. She once wondered why God had given her those years of musical training.
“God has used the music in every church we’ve ever been in,” she said.
Her favorite church ministry, however, has always been teaching the Bible.
Long before the Williamsons settled permanently in Cleveland, Sandy had actually prayed that ministry would take them somewhere else.
“Lord, you know I don’t mind being a pastor’s wife. But would you just please not make it in … Livingston or Cleveland?” she recalled praying.
She had one other request.
“Lord, I don’t mind a parsonage, but can it not have wheels?”
Then she found herself in Cleveland, living in a trailer house.
“God has a sense of humor,” Sandy said.
The Williamsons later moved away, and Carl was pastoring in Bellville when Calvary contacted him about becoming its pastor.
By then, they had bought a piece of property they loved and were preparing to build a house. Carl wanted the slab poured. Sandy refused to move forward until they knew whether Cleveland was where they were supposed to be. Carl was certain it was not.
“Pour that slab. We are not going back to Cleveland, Texas,” he told her.
The slab was never poured and the Williamsons came back to Cleveland, though they now own a lovely brick home in town.
The early years at Calvary were not always easy. Carl followed David Weeks as pastor, and a new leader with a different ministry style brought some tension. During Carl’s first year, one woman approached him with a warning.
“You’ll not last over two years because I’m going to make sure of that,” he recalled her telling him.
Carl’s response to the story came with the timing of a man who has probably told it a time or two.
“I buried her that year.”
He stayed 25 years.
During those years, Calvary became increasingly connected to the Cleveland community. The church gymnasium frequenstly serves as a shelter during hurricanes and other disasters, sometimes housing people for weeks.
The night before Hurricane Rita struck in 2005, the Williamsons recalled having about 500 people in the church gym. They had another problem: feeding them.
Businesses were closing as the storm approached, but help came from throughout Cleveland. People from other churches and people with no connection to Calvary showed up asking what they could do. H-E-B, which had lost electricity, offered groceries. Walmart helped.
“You saw the best side of Cleveland,” Carl said.
Years later, Carl and Sandy would see that same side of Cleveland when they were the ones who needed help. On June 1, 2022, Carl went to get a haircut. That is the last thing he remembers before the crash.
Carl suffered a medical emergency while driving and was critically injured when his vehicle crashed on SH 321. Thankfully, no one else was seriously injured.
Carl’s injuries, however, were extensive and life-threatening. His ribs on the left side were crushed, eventually requiring reconstruction with titanium. His collarbones were damaged, and his head and face suffered severe trauma. He received roughly 100 stitches to his face.
Carl has never recovered a memory of the crash itself.
“I went and got a haircut, and two days later, I wake up and I see you,” he said, looking toward Sandy.
Sandy remembers much more.
She was working as interim executive director of human resources for Cleveland ISD when then-Superintendent Steve McCanless came into her office. She was meeting with a principal at the time, and McCanless told the principal to leave.
Sandy thought she was about to be fired. Instead, McCanless told her Carl had been in a bad wreck. Her first question was simple.
“Is he alive?” she asked.
McCanless assured her he was, but he was critically injured.
At HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood, Sandy waited hours to see him because of a mix-up involving information outside his room. When she was finally allowed in, she could barely recognize her husband.
“Carl’s head was the size of a basketball,” she said. “His eyes were swollen shut, and I didn’t see how anybody could live.”
At one point that first night, his blood pressure dropped and a code blue was called. Sandy walked out.
“I couldn’t stand there and watch it,” she said.
Through the power of prayer and healing from God and medical staff, Carl survived. As the days passed, something unexpected began happening in the hospital.
Nurses, technicians and other staff members started coming into Carl’s room asking if they could talk. Some asked the Williamsons to pray with them.
Meanwhile, members of Calvary brought lunch for the ICU nurses each day. After Carl was moved out of intensive care, Sandy returned with cupcakes to thank the nurses who had cared for him. One stopped her in the hallway.
“She said, ‘I’m just going to tell you that before I met you guys, I’d given up on God and given up on church,’” Sandy recalled. “‘After watching you and watching your church, I’m going to church Sunday.’”
The City of Cleveland also organized a prayer vigil at the hospital, drawing dozens of people who came to pray for Carl.
The couple who had spent years helping others through hurricanes, floods, illnesses and deaths suddenly found themselves being carried by the community they had served.
“There was such an atmosphere of love through it all,” Carl said.
For Sandy, the experience changed the question she asks during difficult times.
She stopped asking, “Why?” and instead began asking, “What?”
“What do you want me to do? What are you going to show us in this? What are you doing in the middle of this?” she said.
Carl eventually returned to the pulpit, but the accident left him with fatigue and limitations that remain today. Calvary gave him time to recover and continued taking care of the Williamsons. Eventually, Carl realized the relationship between pastor and congregation had changed.
“The role was reversed,” he said. “Instead of me helping take care of the church, the church is taking care of me now.”
In June 2023, he retired after 25 years as pastor.
The Williamsons stayed in Cleveland but stepped away from Calvary, believing the church’s next pastor needed the freedom to lead without the former pastor looking over his shoulder.
Ministry, however, continued. When churches without pastors called, Carl and Sandy went. Carl had told God that as long as he was able to serve, he would.
Eventually, Ferguson called and invited them back to Calvary. Carl is clear that returning does not mean trying to reclaim his old role. Ferguson is the pastor.
“He’s my pastor,” Carl said.
He also has a message for anyone tempted to compare Ferguson’s leadership to his.
“Don’t ever let me hear you say, ‘Brother Carl did it like that.’ You let him lead,” he said.
The arrangement has allowed Carl and Sandy to concentrate on the work they enjoy.
Carl visits hospitals and people who are homebound. He continues preaching funerals, particularly when funeral homes call because a family has no pastor.
“If they call me, that means they probably don’t have a church. They probably don’t have a pastor,” he said. “So it’s a chance I can walk into a hurting situation, and I can share the love of God with them.”
Sandy is playing keyboard again and teaching Bible study. The couple also plans to host a home Bible study and fellowship group.
Returning to Calvary has also reminded them how much time has passed.
Carl recently pulled out a church pictorial directory from 2001. As he went through the first five pages, he realized only one family was still there. Others had died or moved away.
Over the years, he has watched children grow up, become parents and bring another generation behind them. He has married couples and, years later, performed weddings for their children.
The Williamsons never had children of their own, though they wanted them and pursued medical treatments in hopes of becoming parents. Looking back, they believe their lives allowed them to become mentors and something like family to many others.
Now, they are content to see what comes next.
“God opens a door, we’ll walk through it,” Carl said.
For now, that door has brought them back to Calvary, where they can do what they have always believed ministry was supposed to be about — loving people.
To hear the full interview, click the YouTube link below:
Amazing story! My Dad proposed to my Mother in that same cemetery. They were at Camp Meeting beside that cemetery. The Church of the Nazarene own the property next to it. Ask them if they remember the big Tabernacle!