Shades of Faithfulness

Dave Veldkamp tells about the official RTS colors being named for Bob Bailey (“RTS Bailey Burgundy’), and Polly McReynolds Stone (“RTS McReynolds Stone Grey”). I got to know Amanda Bailey soon after coming to Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson in 1990. Amanda was a regular auditor of courses, and she took several of mine. Bob was a Ruling Elder at the First Presbyterian Church of Yazoo City, a banker with the Bank of Yazoo, very involved with The Presbytery of the Mississippi Valley – PCA, and he eventually became COO of RTS under Ric Cannada. Bob and I became closer in the wake of Mike Sartelle’s death in 1992 (Mike was the beloved pastor of First Pres, Yazoo, and died in an automobile accident), when I became the Interim Pastor at First Pres., Yazoo. Bob and Amanda were part of a group we called “the Special Friends.”

Polly was an RUF intern at Clemson, her future husband Bob was a student at Clemson University with my brother, Melton L. Duncan. Polly McReynolds and Bob Stone (dispatched by my longtime friend David Sinclair) picked me up from the airport in Greenville on the day I came home because of my father’s death, in September of 1992. Polly would become a student, then secretary, then registrar at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, then RTS Director of Institutional Assessment, then the first woman to be a Chief Officer at RTS: CIAO – Chief Institutional Assessment Officer. She served on the Board of Commissioners of The Association of Theological Schools. It was my privilege to preach Polly’s funeral at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, NC in 2020.

It just hit me writing this how 1992 changed my life, and how the Lord used friendship forged and deepened (even in pain and loss) in that year to bless my life, strengthen RTS, exalt Him, and help the church.

It is wholly appropriate that the official RTS colors are now named for these two faithful servants of the Lord.