Last week, we brought my father, Bill Fleming, a former pastor of the Kyle Methodist Church, home to rest under the canopy of a majestic live oak tree in the Kyle Cemetery.
He was not born in Kyle. He had no family there. But, from the time of his assignment in 1952 to the little Methodist Church on West Lockhart Street, Kyle was a part of him. During his brief tenure in Kyle, he and his wife, Idalou, and their daughters Linda and Debbie, shopped at the Bon Ton Grocery, and ate Sunday dinners at Dawson’s Restaurant. He volunteered as a trainer for the Kyle High School football team, employing the skills he’d learned working as a trainer for the Texas Tech football team. He practiced his sermons in the open pastures of Joe Stewart’s ranch, preaching to a beloved horse “Prince”. He made life-long friends with community members of all faiths, some of whom were there when he was laid to rest. Once he even advertised in The Kyle News for people to fill “slightly used pews” at the Wednesday night prayer meetings. And fill them, they did.
He loved Kyle – the colorful quiet beauty of the hill country that surrounded it and the kindness and fortitude of the people who inhabited it. It was one of the happiest times in his 61 years in ministry.
But Methodism is an itinerate system, and in 1955 the Bishop called and assigned Rev. Fleming to the LaGrange Methodist Church. When the news of his leaving got out, his church pianist and dear friend, Laura Belle Wallace, pulled up to the parsonage and bestowed on him a most amazing gift – two cemetery plots. She said, “I know you won’t come back as a pastor, but I’m going to see that you come back.” From that point forward, he told friends and family that one day he would return to the place he so often referred to as “heaven on earth”.
It is a tribute to the town and the character of her residents that someone who was there for such a brief time loved Kyle enough to want to be there forever.
On Sunday, April 24th, 2016 Bill Fleming’s soul went rejoicing to be with the Lord. On Thursday, April 28th, 2016 his body was returned to “heaven on earth” – Kyle, TX.
