Discover Beautiful Camano: On the King’s Business

Grandpa on the King’s Business

My Grandfather, Doc Dodgson, was an old-fashioned country doctor who moved to a twenty-eight acre farm on southwest Camano Island in 1946. I tell about the farm he named Sea Crest here: https://sunnyshorestudio.com/2021/06/12/doc-dodgsons-farm/. I share the story of Doc’s conversion to the Christian faith here. https://sunnyshorestudio.com/2021/07/15/mabana-chapel-1-history-of-the-little-church-on-the-hill/.

Doc Dodgson’s Christian faith was seamless with his practice. He charged three dollars for an office call and six dollars for a house call. If you couldn’t pay, you could come back for care. The bill went up. Doc sent out statements. Eventually, if a person stopped coming to the office, Doc moved them to what he called a “dead account.” That was for people with a big bill but no longer coming into the office. Doc just quit billing them after a while, absorbing the cost himself. “To my knowledge, he never sent anything to a collection agency,” Mom says. “’God is doing my accounting,” Uncle Bud remembers his dad saying. Bud concludes: “He just gave it to God and let him deal with it.”

Doc never went by appointments in his office. It was first come, first served. People sat in the waiting room till it was their turn. Mom, who helped out as his secretary for many years, would be anxious to have things move along. “I’d put my ear to the door and I would hear Daddy talking. I could tell he was talking to them about the LORD. That was not uncommon. Daddy would say that he was about the King’s business.”

Doc was part of a Pentecostal movement. He believed in the Spirit guiding your actions. But tells how Doc would say he was “God’s assistant.” He was working for God. As a doctor, he did all he could with the help of modern medicine. But God was the great healer. If Doc felt that the Spirit was encouraging him to say something about Jesus to a person, he did. Witnessing to people about Christ – the care of their souls, not just healing their bodies – was what was most important to him. It didn’t matter to Doc if people got impatient and left the waiting room. That was just how it was.

Doc wore a heavy overcoat three seasons of the year, and he kept two envelopes in it. One was some discretionary cash he had. The other envelope was “For the Lord’s work.” Whatever he felt that was. He helped people individually, whenever the LORD put it on his heart.

Doc was on the King’s Business when Gordy Montgomery walked into the doctor’s office.

Gordon Montgomery

Gordon Montgomery was a wealthy plumber in Seattle whose doctors had “sent him home to die.”  Gordon and his lovely wife Penny moved to a fenced estate on the hill above Indian Beach on Camano Island, across the street from where Bill Wayland lives now.  They figured that Gordon might as well die with a beautiful view.

Gordon went to Doc Dodgson to see if he could help him. Doc, was gifted at diagnosing what was wrong with his patients. He knew that Gordy had been in the plumbing business and suspected it was lead poisoning. When the tests were run, that was what Gordon had. That gave Gordon a new lease on life. It also opened his heart to Doc’s witness of the healing grace of Christ.

After Gordon was converted, he became a strong supporter of Christian ministries in the area, including Youth for Christ that was being led by Ernie Epperson and a young chicken farmer named Otto Sather, and a Christian Businessman’s Group who had a prayer meeting in Stanwood. It was attended by Doc, Al Hansen, who owned the TV repair shop in Stanwood, Nels Pierson and Paul Dunlap. Gordon also got involved in the start of a new church called Camano Chapel, working with Clarence Dirks, Hugh Cooney, and Doc Dodgson on that project. Gordon would later be a strong ally to Camano Chapel’s new pastor, Rev. Bill Wayland. I’ll tell more of Clarence Dirks, Bill Wayland and Camano Chapel later. Now I just want to point out that Gordon’s new lease of life and new heart for Christ kept him busy.

Besides helping these Christian ministries, Gordon employed some local guys to help him build twenty to thirty foot boats. He also ran a small farm raising a couple of cows for beef. In those days, Gordon would enjoy a few beers with the guys. But when his wife Penny died, who Bud says was “one of the most wonderful people you could have imagined,” Gordon spiraled down, drinking quite a bit. Bud, who was an alcoholic himself, remembers seeing Gordon at the liquor store at the top of Land’s Hill.  Gordon would have a guy with him to drive because he was so drunk.  Gordon battled his addiction, spent time in rehabilitation, and found real victory over his disease in time. God used Gordon’s struggles in a powerful way in my Uncle Bud’s life decades later. That story goes like this.

Bud’s Burn, Bottoming Out and Prayer of Desperation

Bud was a traveling salesman and an alcoholic. By the late 1980s his marriage to Aunt Marge was wrecked. Marge left Bud and moved into her own place at Warm Beach.  Somehow Bud was able to keep his vending machine business afloat. But without Marge to hold down the fort at home when Bud was following up on leads, it was doomed. With Marge leaving, Mom agreed to help her brother out by working for him. Marge showed Mom how to run the business. Mom witnessed Bud’s distress at Marge’s leaving. It was a heart wrenching deal. Bud thought that maybe if he wasn’t an alcoholic, they could go to marriage counseling, and restore their marriage. One or two times he tried to get off drinking, but then fell off the wagon. 

Mom was working in the shed next to the farmhouse where the “Merry Vend” business was. Bud was in the farmhouse, trying to get sober. He had a convulsion and fell back into the Franklin Stove in the kitchen. Bud didn’t realize that his whole back was being burnt and that his rotator cuff on his right side had been broken. He came out to Mom in the shed. She took him to Dr. Beckner in Stanwood and he sent them right away to Skagit Valley Hospital, where Bud was taken care for ten days. After he returned home, Bud had to have his dressing changed. Marge, who was a gifted nurse, would stop by and do that some of the time. Mom did it the other times. She remembers that Bud’s back was like hamburger meat, lumpy and red.

Back at home in that state, trying to come off booze, with his knee and shoulder and back hurting, Bud figured the only way to go on was to get some medication. But the Doctor didn’t want to give him more pain pills. Bud was left to his own devices, and to despair. He was really discouraged; he wanted to commit suicide. But as he puts it, “I didn’t want to be thrown into hell and be in God’s disfavor.” So he prayed, “God let me go so I don’t have to be in pain. If you can just take me like in star trek and disassemble me, just let me cease. Let me not be in pain and torture forever.”

Bud battled his alcoholism for the next couple of years. He would quit, then fall off the wagon. It was up and down. By now he couldn’t run his vending business. Mom ran it, even once making a twenty-thousand dollar sale to someone on the east coast over the phone. Bud’s drinking got so bad, Mom would go into the house and not know if she would find her brother alive or dead. He would be lying in a sheet on a sofa by the fireplace that the Dodgson family had once gathered around to read the Bible and sing hymns. It was in the fireplace that Bud saw the vision.

That night Bud was laying on the couch and fell asleep. When he woke, he was facing the fireplace and saw a tunnel going back down into the fireplace and a light in the tunnel with some movement of small figures. One figure came forward. It was Jesus with hands out, looking at Bud with love and understanding. Bud describes what he felt then as “a high beyond highs of joy of understanding and being loved.” Jesus looked at Bud and said “I’ll send a man.” Then Jesus went back into the tunnel and disappeared. “I knew Jesus would send a man,” Bud says.   

In telling the story, Bud recalls how at little Mabana Chapel, when he graduated to a new Sunday School class, his dad Doc Dodgson turned out to be the teacher of it. And almost every time Doc started with Acts and the story of Paul on the road to Damascus and the vision of Jesus Paul saw. “He really liked that story especially well, Bud recalls. God did send a man to help Paul, to open his eyes and get him steady and on his feet; his name was Barnabas. God also sent a man to help Bud a couple of days later. His name was Gordon Montgomery.

Gordon Montgomery’s Call and Care

Bud figures that Jesus’ calling Gordon to help him was the Lord killing two birds with one stone. The morning after Bud’s dream, Gordon had a strong sense that God was sending him to see Bud. He started driving in his car to see Bud but thought about what a mess Bud was and so he turned around and went home. A second time he started off but felt sick to his stomach so he turned around and rejected God’s call. The third time he realized he couldn’t keep refusing. He made it through to Bud’s place. Later Bud asked Gordy what would have happened if he hadn’t of come. Gordy said, “If I hadn’t come, God would have sent someone else. He told you that he was going to send a man. You were going to have a man come with you and stand with you and be a brother in the LORD.”

Gordy and Bud met almost every day at Helen’s Kitchen in Stanwood. Gordy told Bud he could call him day or night. Bud respected Gordy. Because of his own struggle with alcohol, Gordy “knew what was happening,” as Bud puts it. Sometimes Pastor Bill Wayland would join them at Helen’s Kitchen. Camano Chapel was instrumental too. Every time its doors opened, Bud would be there. With the support of Gordy, Bill and the Chapel ministry, and most of all the grace of God, Bud was all in. That’s why this quitting alcohol this time worked. Bud knew that Jesus loved him. He knew this time it was do or die. He knew that he wasn’t going to renege. He felt God had given him the power to say “No” to drink and stay on course. Even with all that support and resolve it was really, really hard.   

Driving by the liquor store on Lands Hill was one of the hardest things to do. When Bud passed it he channeled King David, the author of many of the Psalms, the “man after God’s own heart.” Bud figured if praise helped David in hard times, it could help him. As he started coming by the liquor store, he  would shout praise the Lord, crying hallelujah, giving himself to praising him, and lifting his hands. Cascading praise broke the power of that temptation. “That really helped me a lot,” Bud says.

When Bud was at the end of his rope, God gave him a promise that he was sending a man. Bud hung unto it. Meeting with Gordy changed Bud. It was the biggest miracle that Mom witnessed in her whole life. I guess she had a front row seat.