Preacher sample

Rader's daughters (left to right) Wiliamine, Pauline, Harriet. Pauline was a missionary to India, where this photo might have been taken. Ca. 1931. Click on the image above to see an enlargement.

Excerpt (5-1/4 minutes) from tape T8 in Collection 38, oral history interview with daughter Pauline Rader Noll, recorded in August 1984.

NOLL: Coming now to question thirty, I think I'd describe my father somewhat as a preacher. His illustrations were the big point. The other fact was that he never...he never left you in doubt to the point that was was trying to get across. You couldn't help but listen to him. Much as I heard him, you pretty near knew some of his hermons...sermons by heart at the time. I wish I could really remember them. Was the fact that they always had a point, and the point you...you knew what is was and you knew why. There was nearly always an altar call, whether it was for salvation or for surrender your life or consecration. This, also, was made very definite in his sermons. Yes, I heard Billy Sunday preach a couple times when he had the great big tabernacle or tent that was down in the middle of Chicago. And mostly I remember him running all over the place, breaking chairs and what not. My father was not that dynamic or acrobatic. As I said he waved his hands and he talked and he moved. But he didn't...he wasn't flamboyant about it. He talk to you like he was talking to you...you, yourself and not a whole big audience. And people reacted to this in a way. They never...they sat on the end of their seats and listened because he had something to say and he said it forcefully. And this makes the difference. His style was not like Billy Sunday's although they were good friends and Mrs. Sunday was part of our tabernacle family at times even though she was in and out. And, of course, Homer Rodeheaver was around. Number thirty-one. Well, I could probably do a whole cassette on my father's humor, which was very normal and natural coming from the west and being a...a Methodist minister's kid. And being such a human being himself, his humor was very fantastic. He always had jokes of some kind going and we had family jokes by the dozens that he could say one word and we'd all be laughing because it was some joke that had been in the family for a long time. Which I think when families are close, there always are these jokes. Maybe I could tell you an incident here and maybe it has nothing to do, but I guess I'm rambling this afternoon. But I remember one joke that he used to bring up to us a lot was about, as he called it, the idiot family. They had finally decided to separate the furniture and they all...the only way they could separate it and make out to who it was to go to, they threw it all out on the front lawn and then separated it. Then he had another joke about the family and how all of the family had gone to school and so it got down to the last little boy. And he had heard about "A" all his life, he had always heard about "A" and he didn't know what "A" was. So when the teacher the first time he went to school, his teacher made a great big "A" on the blackboard and he looked up and said, "My God, is that 'A'?" And of course, they way my father told and so on, it was a great joke. And it got to be a family joke too because it seemed to fit so many circumstances. And I can remember once in church which we had heard about this man who was going to preach and how great he was and so on and so forth. And it went on and on about how fine he was. Well, the day came when the man came and spoke and I happened to be in the choir at that time and I was sitting right behind my father and this man was going on and he really wasn't saying anything. And I leaned over and said to my father, which was right in his ear, "Good God, is that A?" And I'll never forget how he shook. He sat there and he shook and shook with laughter. And he choked and he did everything he could think of not to show that he was laughing. And of course, I pretty near had the giggles too. And when we got home that night, I can tell you that I got a lecture-and-a-half about doing something like that right in the middle of church. But, somehow or other you can't resist it. But that was the type of humor he had.