out there in the dark. He hugged me and told me that everything was going to be OK.”

Clark's voice broke and her eyes filled with tears as she recalled how, during the years that followed, Arthur made sure she always had a ride to church and never missed out on any of the youth activities.

“I can't imagine, if something ever happened to him, having another pastor,” said Clark, who is still a Eureka First Baptist Church member even though she now lives in Monetta.

Arthur, 69, has a Master of Divinity degree from the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. He also attended North Greenville College (now North Greenville University) for two years and earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of South Carolina.

In 1963,a group from Eureka First Baptist Church contacted Arthur and asked if he could help out while the church was looking for a full-time pastor. He delivered his first sermon there during a prayer service in late August.

“I was 19 years old, and I had just finished junior college (at North Greenville); I thought it would be a very limited engagement,” Arthur said. “But then they asked me to come back on a week by week basis. Then, in October, they asked me to be their interim pastor. In January of 1964, they finally made it official.”

Because Arthur was still in school, he spent weekends at the church and his weekdays in the classroom. “When I drove back and forth between here and the seminary in Wake Forest,