Will You Trust Us With Your
$20 Bill ?
Dear Friends,
Buddy Odom here with Kathie to ask for your help.
We live on the western side of the Smoky Mountains where Helene damage
is quite minimal compared to other areas in Upper East Tennessee and
Western North Carolina, which you have undoubtedly seen on news feeds.
If you would like to hear our story, read on. But this is a newsletter
asking you 2270 subscribers, Will you trust us with your $20 bill?
From 1997-2004 we lived in Asheville, NC, where we raised our three
kids. We still maintain deep friendships and have full access to boots
on the ground. 100% of your $20 will immediately find its way to the
hardest hit and neediest of the needy mountain folks... we promise.
This is a straight appeal for hard cold cash which we unashamedly
request of you. It may be sent to my Venmo account: @clarence-odom-2
If you need to give another way or just want to talk or pray with me,
my email address is: odombuddy@gmail.com
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I met her in a friend's dorm room at UT in 1980 and, not soon enough, I
asked her out. And we drove. First to dinner at Wilson's restaurant in
Townsend for fried chicken and country ham. It was a booth over to the
left. As we talked and talked and talked, a button was pushed in me.
You see, I'm what's called a Whiskey Priest, a term from Graham
Greene's 1940 novel, The Power and the Glory. It has come to define
well-meaning followers of Jesus who are idiots... me.
With her never-ending kindness, Kathie, the button-pusher, reached over
that booth with her words and touched a goodness in me which was (and
still is to a degree) hidden. She pressed a seed into my ground. She
didn't make it grow, but she put it there.
Leaving most of our food on the plates, we lowered ourselves into my
cheap-ass Toyota Corolla and wound our way through the mountains for
hours on end. I heard about her twin siblings, her love of beauty and
all the things a 20 year-old woman dreams of. Kathie heard about my
dad-less family, my love for the risky and all the things I hope for
too.
At 3am we found ourselves back on campus walking and talking. The back
of our hands kept bumping against each other sending shock waves
through me. I reached and she took hold. 44 years ago.
She didn't kiss me that night. (I tried but only the cheek was
offered). I picked her up a few hours later when it was daylight and we
headed back to our mountains. By a creek near Elkmont we set up her
camera for this shot in my blue coaches shorts. Five weeks later I
asked her to marry me.
Odom Family 4 (1)
Kathie put on her mother's wedding dress. I got a haircut and rented a
cheap-ass tux. We piled into my brothers Toyota Corolla and drove to
St. Petersburg, Florida. She may have been thinking of children, but
mostly I was thinking of the act that got them here. Next, life
happened.
Our journey has been like a wedding cake covered in sprinkles, each one
representing a person that we have been given. Kathie says we are
people-people and she's right. We do like our space and quiet but, do
you remember that button she pressed in me, that goodness? It was a
button that pushed me out the door toward others.
Odom Family 1 (1)
We lived the vast majority of our life in Knoxville, Tennessee, where
we were involved in running small businesses and the ministry of Young
Life. When the oldest of our three kids entered high school, we moved
over the mountains for a wonderful seven year stint in Asheville. The
kids eventually jumped into college and we headed back to Knoxville
(twenty years ago) so I could do that people-people thing with a
non-profit called Echo Resources, which is what I still do.
And Kathie picked up a paint brush. For her 50th birthday in 2009 I
gave her a plein air workshop in, you guessed it, the mountains... just
over the North Carolina border into Brasstown. Since then our lives
have been so sprinkled with artists that you can hardly see the cake
anymore.
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You are one of those sprinkles which make us the richest couple you
will ever meet.
Will you trust us with your $20 bill please?
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