…and half the fun was getting here!
This website brought to you in part by the following sponsor:
Find out how to advertise here - Email us! [email protected]
“With someone like you, A pal good and true,
I’d like to leave it all behind and go and find
A place that’s known to God alone
Just a place to call our own
We’ll find peace and rest somewhere in the West
And let the rest of the world go by.”
That was the theme song for Joe and Pearl Palmer as they neared retirement and were searching for the right location to spend their golden years. They finally found such a place in Gallatin. According to them, half the fun was getting here.
Their paths merged at a Bible college, but their spiritual journeys began much earlier and each in its separate way.
For Pearl, it was a dramatic experience. She was 10 years old when she became deathly ill with German measles.
“My spirit left my body and was floating near the ceiling ready to enter a tunnel,” she recalls. “There was a bright light at the end of the tunnel. It was like an invitation. I was ready to go.”
Then Pearl heard her mother at her bedside calling her name.
“I realized my mother wanted me to come back. I remember re-entering my body. It was a conscious decision. I thought, she needs me; okay, I’ll go back. Then I remember answering her and opening my eyes.”
That near-death experience would hold special meaning to Pearl all of her life. She felt she’d been left to dwell on the earth a little while longer for a reason.
After high school, Pearl taught kindergarten through eighth grade in a country school for $10 a month. The students helped her with some of the janitorial duties, which was included in her daily work load.
Pearl said, “Older children carried in drinking water, cobs and coal for the furnace, and swept the outdoor johns.”
In 1939, she accepted God’s call for Christian service and entered Wheaton College.
For Joe, the decision to enter the ministry was more subtle.
Joe grew up around St. John in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, where his father was a commercial fisherman and farmer.
“We’d set the net in the evening and fish it in the morning about 6 a.m.,” said Joe. “My father would clean the fish. Some were smoked and others were packed in ice in barrels and sent to market.”
Two or three steamships passed the Palmer home every day and stopped to load or unload passengers and freight. Once a week, Joe rowed the boat across the cove and walked a mile to Tooleton to get the mail.
“Each evening I lit the lighthouse near our home and each morning I’d walk up the stairs to extinguished the flame,” he said.
When Joe was just 12, he quit school to take care of the farming and fishing. Four years later, his father died, and six months later his mother died.
An older sister helped sell the farm and used some of the money to pay Joe’s expenses to complete high school. After working three years at a brush manufacturing job, Joe, 25, accepted God’s call to the ministry, and left for Wheaton.
Though Pearl and Joe had both entered Wheaton Bible College in Illinois, it would be three more years before their paths would cross.
They both had to work their way through college. Pearl stayed in a private home where she worked 40 hours a week for room and board. During the summers, she worked as a waitress on a cruise ship.
“Only rich people vacationed on the cruise ships,” says Pearl. “Tips were excellent. They helped pay my tuition.”
In the summer, Joe followed the harvest, operating a wheat combine, starting in Kansas and moving north to Montana and Washington. During the school year, he worked as an electrician and barber.
One day during their senior year, Joe was working an electrical job on the third floor of a college dorm.
“I saw a young lady walking across campus. She was wearing a coat I knew she’d bought in Canada. I said to myself, ‘That’s the girl for me.'”
Joe later caught up with the girl in the Hudson Bay coat.
From that point forward, and for the next 30 years their journey would be side by side.
They finished out their schooling at Wheaton, where many of their classmates would go on to become world missionaries, including Billy Graham.
Two years after graduation, Joe and Pearl were married at the Wheaton Bible Church on Aug. 14, 1945. For the young couple it seemed the whole world enjoyed the day with them. It was V-J Day, church bells rang out and people gathered in the streets to celebrate the Victory over Japan.
During the next 15 years, Joe served as pastor in Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa. To help out with expenses, Pearl taught school for one year in Coralville, Iowa. That decision did not set well with some of the church congregation. They thought a pastor’s wife should be a stay-at-home mom.
“It was amazing to me that they felt that way,” said Pearl. “We had four children and bills to pay.”
They resigned and moved to Lansing, Ill., where Pearl taught fourth grade and Joe taught sixth grade, and later became an elementary principal and director of special education. They were at Lansing for 25 years. During that time, Joe served as pulpit supply and interim pastor.
While their children were small, the family began camping. Most of their camping experiences were pleasant.
One trip didn’t go so well. After being eaten alive by mosquitos and nearly burning up their tent, the weary Palmers returned home to find out a bit of good news. Joe had earlier bought tickets from the boy scouts. He’d won a fiber-glass boat.
Pear said: “Joe was razzed about being the gambling preacher — but we kept the prize.”
Traveling by car or plane, the Palmer’s have visited all 50 states and nine Canadian provinces.
Traveling seems to be in both their blood lines. According to family historians, Joe’s ancestor was Pilgrim White —: the last baby born on the Mayflower. William Palmer arrived in 1936.
Six Palmer sons were alive during the Revolutionary War. Three of those sons were Loyalists and three were Patriots.
After the Revolutionary War, England’s King George III offered 160 acres of free land to Loyalists in exchange for building their homes and staying. The three Loyalists Palmer sons accepted and moved to New Brunswick, Canada.
Pearl’s grandparents lived in Sweden. Her mother’s father delivered bakery supplies each day to Gustafson Adolphus, King of Sweden, and was often invited to join family worship in the palace.
During the 1880’s after the Homestead Act was passed in America, Pearl’s family came by steamship. The family spent their first winter is Nebraska in a sod house. Pearl’s mother and her cousin were pioneer missionaries. Pearl’s father was a rural mail carrier in Gothenburg, Neb. Later he and his wife went to Moody Bible Institute. He served churches in Nebraska and California. Later, they built a home in Gothenburg.
After spending Easter vacation in 1974 with their daughter and family in Lee’s Summit, Joe and Pearl took a jaunt north on I-35.
They stopped at realtor’s office and described to the salesman what kind of retirement home they had in mind:
“We’d like about 40 acres with no buildings, partly wooded, with a hill where we could build our home overlooking a main highway, and a creek running through it.”
He showed them the property on Hwy 69 that morning.
That noon, they drove around Gallatin took a tour of the First Baptist Church and had lunch at McDonald’s Tea Room, and then drove back to the farm. They said, “Thank you, God.”
On July 17, 1980, with the help of their family they moved from Lansing, Ill. They lived in the truck camper with no air conditioning while their house was being built.
Soon Joe was Pulpit Supply in Trenton and Gallatin. Pearl taught fourth grade at Gallatin for five years.
In November, 1980, they moved into the basement and in April, 1981, the home was completed.
In 1983, Lake Viking Church extended a call to Joe to be the first full-time pastor. He accepted. They held church in the clubhouse. Two years later, they voted to build their church. It was dedicated on Nov. 24, 1985.
Joe and Pearl served the Lake Viking Church from 1983 until 1992.
In August, 1995, their four adult children and their families hosted their 50th wedding anniversary at Lake Viking Club House. In 1997, they sold their farm home and moved into Gallatin.