If heaven is filled with music, Larner arrived early

Updated: 3/02/07

If heaven is filled with music,
Bernice Larner arrived early

By George Henson

Staff Writer

MORGAN MILL—For the last 70 years, Sunday mornings have found Bernice Larner at a church piano bench. And she’s been blessed with every hymn she’s played, including her favorite, “He Keeps Me Singing.”

In addition to 62 years at Morgan Mill Baptist Church, Larner also was pianist for a church in Odessa for four years in the mid-1950s and in Azle for four years in the late-1960s.

While seven decades of making music for the Lord is quite of feat, Pastor Joe Rogers said it does not come close to describing Larner’s contribution to the church and the community.

“She’s still a big part of our Vacation Bible School,” Rogers said.

Larner acknowledged she helps with refreshments. But, Rogers countered, like everything else, that’s only the beginning. “You see her up and down the halls, taking care of everybody and everything that comes along.”

She also is one of the church’s leaders in missions efforts, Rogers said. The church that averages just over 100 worshippers each Sunday but gave more than $6,000 to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions this past year.

“I have worked in the Woman’s Missionary Union all these years, but I just love missions,” Larner said.

She also takes care of sending cards, flowers and gifts to the “sick, sad and discouraged,” she said.

Often it is Rogers who delivers those gifts. In his 10 years as pastor at Morgan Mill, he always has been struck by how Larner doesn’t send something generic, but something that perfectly suits the person and the occasion.

“Everytime they open that package, I’m amazed,” Rogers said. “I’m very careful not to say that anyone’s the best I’ve ever seen at something because I’ve been in so many churches with so many talented people, but she’s the best I’ve ever seen at that.”

And when the church’s prayer chain needs to be activated, Rogers starts one link, while Larner starts the other. “I just love to pray for my pastor and the staff and others,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Our big concern is that Bernice does so much.” Rogers said. “One morning, she calls me and says, ‘I’m moving.’ There’s this long pause while I’m thinking how do we fill all those positions she fills, but then she told me she was moving out of her house into a trailer because she thought the house had gotten too big. Then I could catch my breath again.”

Nobody seems to know how many people live in unincorporated Morgan Mill, located about halfway between Stephenville and Mineral Wells, but every one of them seems to know Larner.

When see sits down to lunch at the only diner in town, she repeatedly is interrupted, or more often, interrupts her own lunch to greet someone else. Not with casual greetings, but with the genuine joy of someone who hasn’t seen a good friend since yesterday.

It may stem back to days when the four churches in town would each have 10-day revivals during the summer. Larner would play for her church, the other Baptist church, and the Methodist church. “But the Church of Christ, they never asked me to play for them,” she said, laughing at the thought of playing in a church where instruments are prohibited in worship.

At Morgan Mill, she has been through 25 pastors and 10 paid ministers of music, and countless volunteer music leaders. And she still keeps tabs on most of them after they leave. Several have become missionaries, and she continues to pray for them.

She was the pianist 60 years ago when Holland Smith came to Morgan Mill as pastor. “After pastoring in Texas and Wisconsin for 22 years, I then served as a Texas associational director of missions for over 29 years. I have had the opportunity to work with many church pianists. Many were very good, but none ever better than Bernice Larner,” he said.

She even played in 2001 when she was diagnosed with rectal cancer. While undergoing weeks of chemotherapy and radiation, she never missed a Sunday at the piano bench.

“It was not easy to sit, I was weak and I probably didn’t need to be there, but I never missed a Sunday,” Larner said.

As for why she still plays, her answer is quick: “I guess it’s because the Lord still wants me to, and I just love to serve him.”

Her example has not been lost on her family. While her “sweetheart of 51? years,” her husband, B.A., died 15 years ago, she still is surrounded by family. Her daughters, Linda and Sandra, married brothers—Carroll and Mack Elston, respectively. Both men are deacons at Morgan Mill Baptist Church, and Linda Elston has played the organ there since the church first bought it 37 years ago.

While the church offered to pay the two accompanists several years ago, both declined, saying they already were being paid richly by being allowed to serve and reap the blessings God had bestowed.

“I have six grandsons—all Christian men who love the Lord—and 16 grands, and I’ve seen all but one of them baptized, and she will be soon,” Larner said with a broad smile. “That makes me about the richest woman that ever was.”