Also at age 5, Gene started school. Cottonwood School’s building stood about a quarter mile east of his family’s house on what is now County Road 2803. “We had 2 large rooms divided with folded sections,” Gene said of the school. “Each room had several classes. By the time I finished Cottonwood School we only had 6 grades. I remember playing softball, both boys and girls had to play to have enough.” And they played softball against kids from nearby Stockard and Big Rock. “I was the pitcher.”

Also during these early school years, Gene and his mother went to Sunday School and church “quite regular. Most of the time we just had preaching once or twice a month, usually young men in semenary (sic).” The preachers came from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, which was about 90 miles to the west. “I was saved when I was 12,” Gene noted. Being “saved” was how people at the time often referred to becoming a Christian. When a person professed faith in Christ, he or she would then be baptized and become a full member of the church. Cottonwood Church, which also stood east of the Foster home, did not have an official denominational identity, but it basically was a Baptist congregation with lay leaders. J.W. Williford was pastor of the church when Gene became a Christian in about 1938, and Williford, “baptized me in the creek, near Big Rock Ranch.”

Copyright © 2020 Ferrell Foster