As part of my ongoing genealogy work, I sat down with Phil to document some of the memories he has of his grandparents. Getting these firsthand accounts recorded is a priority, and Phil shared a fantastic piece of family history regarding his Grandmother Campbell.
Grandmother Campbell, also known as Rev. Florence Campbell, was a pioneering female pastor in 1950s Dayton, Ohio. Ordained in 1945, she led the Pentecostal Holiness Church on Falmouth Ave.
Phil recounted her highly effective, and entirely unique, method for handling the door-to-door salesmen who would frequently knock at 27 N. Harbine. A true spiritual powerhouse, she would invite them in, sit down, and let them deliver their entire sales pitch. All the while, she was quietly matching them minute-for-minute by watching the clock.
Once the salesman finally finished his pitch, she would declare, "You had your turn, now I'll have mine!" She would then spend that exact same amount of time preaching the Gospel to them, outwitting them with the Truth.
To help bring Phil's story to life, I used some digital tools to create the comic strip you see below. While I had to take a few artistic liberties to build the visual scene, the narrative itself remains strictly faithful to Phil's memory of his grandmother.
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