One verse memorized for the last 79 years—and counting

Posted: 10/05/07

One verse memorized for the
last 79 years—and counting

By Toby Druin

Editor Emeritus

WAXAHACHIE—Lucile Manning considers Romans 12:1 her life verse: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (KJV).

The verse has guided her life since August 1929, when at age 18 she responded to her pastor’s plea to “give everything to Jesus.”

Manning turns 97 on Dec. 17. She finds it difficult to get around now and quit driving a few years ago. Even though in a Waxahachie retirement center, there is nothing retiring about her mind—especially regarding Scripture. Almost every sentence she utters of any length is laced with Bible verses.

“I usually have a verse for almost any situation,” she said. “If I don’t, it bothers me, and I keep working until I find it.”

Beginning with Romans 12:1, she has memorized a verse each year for the last 79 years. This year it’s Jeremiah 31:3. Last year it was Matthew 6:15. In addition to the annual verses, she has systems of verses on various subjects such as trees, flowers, plants and animals. Currently, she is finding—and memorizing—all verses with the phrase “one another” in them.

Her memorization technique is simple. “I read a verse, pray about it, visualize what it says and what it means, and I find a key word or two and put it on paper and carry it with me until it becomes a part of me,” she explained. “You have to love God’s word; you have to feel it,”

she said.

A few years ago while recuperating from surgery, she was given a pillow to press against any painful area. She began making pillows with Bible verses on them and has given away hundreds of them.

Manning was born in 1910 in Bogard, Mo., northeast of Kansas City, the daughter of Frank and Delia Brody Mattox. Her father was a farmer and her mother had been a schoolteacher before marriage. Mrs. Mattox taught Sunday school and at home read Bible stories to Manning and her younger brother.

“She was a great teacher,” Manning said of her mother. “Dad was a farmer and lived the Bible. Three times a day he gave thanks.”

Manning accepted Christ as her Savior when she was 9. Nine years later, when she committed her life to serve Christ, her parents took her to their pastor, who said she needed to go to college and recommended Simmons College—now Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene—where he knew the president.

She completed college during the Depression and was able to go home only once during the four years due to lack of funds. When she graduated in 1934, she returned to Missouri and got a job in the Missouri Baptist Orphanage. She cared for 33 girls and got $30 monthly and her room and board.

One day several months later she got a letter from Simmons College stating she was one of five women who had been selected for scholarships at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. To keep it, however, she would have to work at the seminary and maintain an average grade of 90 or above.

“I looked for assurance in the Bible that I could do it,” Manning said. She found it in Philippians 4:19: “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

“ I thought that ‘all your need’ meant mental, too,” she reasoned.

She wanted a degree in theology from the seminary, even though women didn’t usually major in the course, which prepared men to preach, teach and serve as pastors. One asked her if she planned to get a soapbox and go down to the corner and preach.

“I said, ‘No, Sir, I want to learn the Bible,’ and he replied that I would have to study Hebrew and Greek. I said, ‘If the preachers can learn it, I know I can.’”

An evangelism course in the theology curriculum required memorization of 300 Scripture verses. She made the highest grade in the class, which won her recognition at commencement and a gold medal and $22.50 that she promptly spent on a New Testament and devotional books.

In addition to getting her degree in theology, she also found a husband at the seminary. She met Jack Manning early in her years there and they were married on Aug. 23, 1938. He served as a pastor in Texas and Oklahoma and as an Army chaplain in Europe in World War II and for many years was professor of church history at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif. Mrs. Manning taught school in Berkeley.

They retired in 1976 and moved to Waxahachie. They had been married 67 years when he died in 2005. They have two children—daughter Ruth Turpin, a travel agent in Fort Worth, and son Jack Jr., an attorney in Dallas.

Though the Bible is obviously central to her life, Manning has many other interests. She is an active member of the Waxahachie Garden Club, Shakespeare Club and Century

Club and was honored as First Lady of Waxahachie in 1999.

She studies the Bible daily using several translations, but her favorite for reading is the New King James Version, she said. For many years she taught a Sunday school class at First Baptist Church of Waxahachie. At present, she is leading one of her church members, Mitzi Marshall, in a study of Jeremiah.

When her granddaughter was a foreign exchange student in London, she became familiar with e-mail. Now, she daily sends and receives e-mails from missionaries and others around the world.

In 1998, at 87, Manning accompanied a team of fellow members of First Baptist Church of Waxahachie on a mission trip to Estonia. Leroy Fenton, pastor of the church at the time, led the mission volunteers on the trip.

“She endured like a champion,” Fenton said. “At an age when most people are sitting in a rocking chair or in poor health, she had remarkable strength and stamina. At one point, we went the wrong way and would have had to walk back about a mile or climb about 195 steps, almost straight up. She was adamant that she could climb the steps, and she did, stopping only once to catch her breath.

She proved herself to be “an ideal church member” during Fenton’s tenure, he added.

“In church, I don’t know of anyone who could out-work, out-pray or out-study her,” She has a phenomenal mind, is a great witness and is going to be involved in anything she can to make a difference. … No one is more committed to God’s work. She is courageous, always verbal when she needs to be, but always cooperative, with a sweet spirit.”

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