"Flying Parson" Goes Back to the Pulpit

1919

Takes Old Man's Advice and Quits "Being a Fool."

NEW YORK, N. Y. — Lieut. Belvin W. Maynard, "the flying parson," winner of the recent Army transcontinental air race, announced here that he had resigned from the Army Air Service and will resume his work as a clergyman. He said he expected to be out of the service early in the new year.

"I am going to take the advice I received in an anonymous letter the other day and go back to my preaching," Lieutenant Maynard said. "In substance it said: 'I am over 80, but when I was a young man an old man told me not to be a fool. Now I am old and you are young, so I want to give you some advice. Don't be a fool. Go back to your pulpit and give up your flying and newspaper fame.'"

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 11.

Worry Causes Death

Illinois, 1916

Mrs. Marie C. Mueller, 43, wife or the Rev. E. L. Mueller, pastor of the German Evangelical church at Eight and Henry street, Alton, died of apoplexy yesterday at St. Joseph's hospital, in Alton. She had been suffering from a nervous breakdown which physicians thought was brought on by overwork in the church and by worry over the opposition of the members to her husband as pastor.

Three years ago, after her husband had been pastor of the church about five years, she received an anonymous letter telling her she was the cause of the members not liking the pastor. She is said to have worried constantly over that. Ten days ago the opposition to the pastor crystallized in a petition of thirteen members requesting his resignation. Before this petition was presented to the church the pastor handed in his resignation and it was voted on, the vote being 80 to 20 in favor of the pastor remaining.

—Edwardsville Intelligencer, Edwardsville, Illinois, April 14, 1916, p. 2.