This Week in Texas Methodist History October 20

 

Seventy-ninth Session of West Texas Conference Opens.  Sterling Fisher Fails to Answer the Roll Call, October 20, 1937

 

The seventy-ninth session of the West Texas Conference of the MECS convened in Travis Park Church in San Antonio on October 20, 1937.   This conference was the succession to the Rio Grande Mission Conference and the predecessor of the Southwest Texas and Rio Texas Conferences. 

 

Bishop Hiram Boaz was in the chair, and after the singing of And Are We Yet Alive, the roll was called.  Sterling Fisher was ill and did not answer.   This was his first time to miss the roll call since his joining the conference in 1883.   Presumably he had attended sessions even before joining since his father, Orceneth Asbury Fisher was a conference member as was his grandfather Orceneth Fisher.

 

When he was 27, Fisher was elected Conference Secretary.  He held that post every year since then-a record of 46 years.  Although he was absent, his friend, T. F. Sessions moved that he be elected for a 47^th year.  The motion passed with overwhelming support.  Assistant Secretaries were elected, including Olin Nail, J. Fisher Simpson (another member of the Fisher family), and R. F. Curl. 

 

The next order of business was the vote on unification.   It passed 246 to 5 without debate.  Delegates were then elected who would go to both the 1938 session of the General Conference of the MECS and also to the 1939 Unification Conference.   L. U. Spellman led the clergy delegation and W. W. Jackson, president of San Antonio College led the balloting for the laity.

 

The rest of the conference consisted of the usual worship and business that constitutes a Methodist Annual Conference.   My three uncles in the conference received their appointments ---Charles to Ward Memorial in Austin, Louis to Kyle/Buda, and Dan to Skidmore.

 

Sterling Fisher asked for a superannuate relationship.   He was 74 years old, having been born at Texana in 1864.   Before joining the Conference in 1883, he had received his education at Coronal Institute in San Marcos.  He later returned to assume the presidency of that college.   In addition to his appointments and secretarial duties, he had been a delegate to the 1898, 1902, 1906, 1922, and 1924 General Conferences.  

 

His conference secretary duties included annual conferences presided over by 20 bishops—a record that will never be broken. 

 

Sterling Fisher died in San Antonio on Easter Sunday, April 25, 1943.