"Well, Luther, we have lived within two miles of each other for 80 years and never had a cross word." The speaker was Olie Hunter, and the occasion was a birthday dinner for my uncle, Luther Pond. When questioned by guests, both men said that as children they had argued and fought with other kids but both declared that never a cross word had been spoken between them from childhood to old age. At the time of this dinner, our subject, Luther Guthrie Pond, was living on the farm on Brushy Fork Creek near Bethpage where he had been born on August 6, 1880. For all those eighty years he was known as a kind, helping friend and neighbor to all, not just to Mr. Hunter.

As a child, he lived on the farm and walked to Bethpage school, about one and a half miles away. After attending Tullatuskee Normal College in Bethpage for two or three years under that able Professor E. B. Wilson, he became a teacher. He had no degree. At that time an applicant for a teacher's job was required to take an examination given by the County School Superintendent. Making excellent grades on his examination, he was hired and began teaching in the fall of 1901. There is no record of his salary, but a few years later teachers were paid $30 per month, so we can assume his salary was no more. And sometimes he paid board out of that! He taught at Hunter's School near his home, at Sunnyside School on Long Hollow Pike, and at Chipman, Independence, Anderson and New Hope schools. He was also self-educated. Once he was required to teach geometry, which he had never studied. So he taught himself first, then the students, staying two or three weeks ahead of them in the textbook.

His father had died when he was very young and in 1915 his mother became an invalid, so he came home to help farm and care for his mother. This ended his teaching career but it did not end his interest in schools. In his older years he served as a member of the County Board of Education for 29 years, until his death in 1965.

As a young man he united with the Mt. Vernon Methodist Church and through he years he served his church in many capacities, as secretary, on the Board of Trustees, as Sunday School Superintendent and as a teacher for the men's Bible Class for over 25 years. One of his most valued possessions, found in his Bible after his death, was a certificate appointing him as a lay preacher signed by Marvin Napier.

In times of disaster, he served his community. During the 1919 flu epidemic, when many neighbors were sick, he went from house to house, milking the cows, feeding stock, cutting wood, carrying in water and taking food to them. When the terrible tornado of 1925 swept through our county, he went with the doctors and other neighbors and searched by lantern light all night for the dead and the wounded. But not only in times of disaster, but day by day when a need arose, he was ready. If a neighbor was sick he went and did his farm chores; if a youngster needed help with his school work, he was always ready to solve an algebra problem and explain it to him.

Uncle Luther never drove an automobile. Until he became old, he owned and rode beautiful horses, to visit, to the store on Saturdays, and to Church on Sundays. And long before our modern doctors began preaching the merits of walking, he practiced walking.

He was never married. When asked why, his laughing reply was, "I couldn't get a girl I wanted, and I wouldn't have the ones I could get." Perhaps the real reason was that when his father died he assumed the responsibility of supporting his mother and a young brother and sister.

Indeed, his was a life of cheerful service--to his family, his church, his schools, his friends. The words of a well known hymn best describe his life's motto: "Help me to live for others, an be more like Thee."

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