October 29, 2001
Layman has pear-picking ministry canned & ready
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___SUNRISE BEACH--Curtis Randolph's special relationship with pears goes back more than 60 years.
___"When I was a little boy of I don't know--5, 6 or 7 years old--I stayed with a great aunt in North Carolina. When I looked out her window, I could see these pear trees. And whenever it rained hard and the rain just pelted down, it would knock those pears out of those trees. I would run out there barefoot in the middle of the storm and get me those pears. I've always just hated to see a pear go to waste."
___His wife, Mae, has arrived at almost the same conviction: She hates to see a pear--period.
___Forthe last 10 years, Randolph has been canning pears. His first year, he did "just enough for friends and the people at church"--156 quarts.
CURTIS RANDOLPH prepares a fresh batch of pears for canning.
___Now that number has skyrocketed to more than 1,200 quarts each year, plus an uncounted number of pints he gives to children. On an October Saturday afternoon, he had 1,057 quarts sitting on the porch of his frame house, with more cooking in his 15-gallon pot on the stove while he sat in his favorite chair peeling still more of the green fruit.
___"He's always doing his pears," Mrs. Randolph said. "When it's pear season, we don't go anywhere. We wait on the pears."
___Pear season for Randolph starts in August and extends through November. Many times he stays up all night while his pears are cooking.
___Mrs. Randolph really doesn't mind her husband's devotion to his canning, though, because she knows it is just one more thing that makes him the man he is.
___"He likes giving," she said. "I thought I liked giving, but he out-gives me."
___"He gives whatever he has to help somebody. Cars, trucks, clothes--whatever it is they need. He'd probably give me away, but I won't let him.
___He gives his pears to everyone. He takes them to his doctor's office for the doctor and staff, but he always takes a couple of extra cases to distribute in the waiting room. He takes them to the grocery store to give to all the cashiers. He takes them to his church, First Baptist Church in Sunrise Beach.
___And after the canning is done and they can begin visiting family, the Randolphs travel all over the country, distributing pears along the way. "These pears end of a lot of places," he said.
___One place they end up is in the home of every resident of Sunrise Beach. Whether Randolph knows them or not, they receive a quart. But after 10 years of this ministry, there aren't too many people he doesn't know.
___With having to buy the sugar and jars, the project does get expensive, he admitted, but he doesn't know how expensive.
___"A couple of times I've decided I was going to save my receipts, but I've always quit before I got finished. Now I don't want to know," he said.
___The canning business has been even more expensive on two occasions.
___"I've ruined two stoves cooking pears. If you get too much in the pot and the steam starts running down the sides of the pot and gets all over them burners, you can ruin a stove. I know; I've done it twice now," he said.
___Randolph may have used up two stoves, but he still uses his original knife for peeling.
___"Somebody tried to give me a peeler once, but I've done this so long that I can peel two pears while you're trying to set up a pear on a peeler."
___A 23-year veteran of the Air Force and president of the Sunrise Beach, Buchanan Dam and Highland Lakes Brotherhood, Randolph gives a simple reason for all the time and money he puts into his pears.
___What's most important is the other thing he puts in every jar--his love.
___Every jar comes with a label that says, "We love you, and Jesus loves you too." Or this year there is an alternate label with a Christmas reminder: "Jesus is the reason for the season."
___The only thing her husband likes giving away more than his pears is himself, Mrs. Randolph said. "He loves doing his pears, but he will stop doing his pears to help anybody."
___She recalled the time a man who was new to the community had to be rushed to Austin by helicopter after an accident. His wife was too distraught to drive and didn't have friends or family in the area to take the hour-long drive to the hospital. Randolph was the one called for the mission of mercy.
___The 67-year-old Randolph is constantly trying to find new ways to help people, his wife said. He started a widows' ministry at his church five years ago, and now a key event is the Mother's Day luncheon he heads. He worked in an after-school program, helping children with their homework. Randolph even rented a local civic center for a gathering of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews on Valentine's Day for an event he dubbed a "Love Connection."
___"He just does everything that is humanly possible," she said.
___His reply: "You never do as much as you can. You can always find a way to do more."
___"We were brought up to give," she agreed. "We were taught that you're supposed to give and not worry about what's going to come out of it. That's what we do. It's not a problem to give. It's not a strain to give."
___"We just call it sharing" he added.
___Because of this willingness to give, some people think they are financially well off, Mrs. Randolph said.
___"We are," he responded. "We're loaded. We've got two forks in there a piece, and we can only use one at a time. We've got two commodes, and we can only sit on one at a time. We're loaded."
___One thing they are not loaded with after December is pears.
___"We don't eat them, probably not even a quart," they said.
___Because for Curtis and Mae Randolph, giving is more blessed than just about anything.?
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