Obit of Sessions, C.C. - Jackson County, Oklahoma Submitted by: Gene Phillips 17 Aug 2008 Return to Jackson County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/jackson/jackson.html ===================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ===================================================================== ::Greenwood Memorial Park--Ft Worth TX Sessions, C.C. C.C. Sessions, 96, died Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006, at a local hospital. Funeral: 2 p.m. Saturday at First United Methodist Church of Fort Worth. Burial: Greenwood Memorial Park. Memorials: May be made to First United Methodist Church of Fort Worth Children's Programs, 800 W. Fifth St., Fort Worth, Texas 76102. Cleo was born May 23, 1909, in Altus, Okla., to Don and Ada Harvey Sessions, the third son in a family of eight children. He graduated from Altus High School in 1927 and with encouragement from his father, a self-employed house carpenter and staunch Methodist, he followed the model of his two older brothers, Alonzo and Horace, and enrolled at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, working his way through school paying his own expenses. Not long after arriving at SMU, he met a student, Maurine "Rene" Doughty of Martha, Okla., a small community only nine miles from his own hometown of Altus. They married in 1932, forming a bond that lasted 72 years, until Rene's death July 4, 2003. In the fall of 1933, he graduated from SMU with degrees in commerce and law and the young couple moved to Ballinger, in Runnels County, where he established a private law practice and became an active layman in the local Methodist church. A year later, he was elected Runnels county attorney. In 1936, he lost his bid for re-election by a small margin and the political setback became the occasion for him to make a life-changing personal decision. Following his re-election defeat he had received an invitation from the Texas secretary of state, Gerald C. Mann, to come to Austin and accept a position as assistant secretary of state. He turned down the attractive offer. Instead, he left the practice of law altogether and committed himself to the Methodist ministry. The decision was one he never regretted, later explaining that he had viewed the law as serving as a constraint on the behavior of people who were already experiencing troubles of one kind or another, while the Christian ministry offered him the chance to influence people's lives in ways that would lead away from the kinds of behaviors that put them in troubled circumstances. In the 40 years that followed, he occupied Methodist pastorates in more than a dozen Texas communities, large and small, and acquired a wide circle of acquaintances and many warm and loyal friends. His pastoral duties began in November 1936, when the Methodist Church issued him a minister's license and the Central Texas Annual Conference appointed him as pastor of the Alvarado Circuit, a collection of five rural churches in the vicinity of Fort Worth. Concurrently, he enrolled as a full-time student in Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology. In 1937, after a year at Alvarado, he was appointed circuit pastor for Burleson and Crowley, two communities nearer Dallas, enabling him to travel more easily to and from his Perkins classes. In November 1939, with work on his divinity degree completed, he moved "off the circuit," to the pastorate of the small East Texas town of Kerens (1939-1942). At Kerens, in an unusual arrangement, he also served as interim director of the local Chamber of Commerce. In his next assignment, at Groesbeck (1942-1944), he served for a time also as acting dean of Westminster Junior College, a Methodist-sponsored institution in the nearby town of Tehuacana. Over the following years, he earned increasingly large responsibilities within the Central Texas Conference. He was appointed to Waco's Herring Avenue Church (1944-1948) and to Brownwood's Central Methodist Church (1948-1951). In 1951, Bishop William C. Martin elevated him to district superintendent of the Gatesville District, with supervisory responsibilities for the church's activities in three Central Texas counties. In 1957, after completing this first tour as a district superintendent, he returned to a pastoral assignment at Central Church (now Overton Park) in Fort Worth. In 1960, he was elevated again to the Bishop's Cabinet, serving as superintendent of the Cleburne District (1960-1966). There followed four years as pastor of Polytechnic Methodist Church, Fort Worth (1966-1970), and in 1970 a term as superintendent of the Paris-Sulphur Springs District in the North Texas Conference (1970-1974), his one assignment outside the Central Texas Conference. In 1974, he returned to his home conference as superintendent of the Waxahachie District, a position he held until his retirement in 1976. He was entrusted with numerous positions of church leadership. In 1956 and 1964, he served as an elected delegate from the Central Texas Conference to the Methodist Church's General Conference, and in 1956, 1960 and 1964 as a delegate to Jurisdictional Conference. For eight years he was the Jurisdictional Conference's finance chairman. In 1957 his collegeaues elected him chair of the Central Texas Bishop's Cabinet, and in 1960, was appointed the conference's representative to the board of trustee of Southern Methodist University, a position he held for 16 years. For several years in the 1960s he chaired the Conference Administrative Council. In 1964, he became a trustee of Harris Hospital in Fort Worth, serving in that capacity for many years. In 1954, Texas Wesleyan College awarded him an honorary doctor of divinity degree. In "retirement" after 1976, he continued service to church and community, accepting a two-year appointment as associate director of development at Perkins School of Theology, at Southern Methodist University. He chaired the Central Texas Conference's drive to raise funds for construction of the Methodist Church's History and Archives Center at Drew University in Madison, N.J. He served an eight-year term as representative for retired ministers on the Central Texas Conference's Board of Ordained Ministry. And for 14 years, from 1978 until 1992, he was an associate minister at First United Methodist Church, Fort Worth. On Aug. 29, 2004, First United Methodist Church paid special honor to his lifetime of service to Texas Methodism. He enjoyed playing dominos and the game of golf and valued his many close social ties with colleagues in the ministry and their families. He also was an avid supporter of SMU football and basketball teams. He was a longtime collector of wood carved religious figures. Much of his greatest pleasure, however, came from family gatherings in which he was surrounded by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. In 1995, he published the autobiographical, "My Journey of Faith." Most recently, he was the loving central member of the Sessions family's Christmas gathering at Flower Mound in December 2005. He was preceded in death by his wife, Rene; a beloved daughter-in- law, Deborah; his brothers, Alonzo, Horace and Don; sister, Mary Louise Smith; three brothers who died in infancy; brothers-in-law, Nelson Doughty and James Fontana; and sisters-in-law, Betty Doughty and Natalie Doughty. Survivors: Sons, Jim and his wife, Fran Ansley, of Knoxville, Tenn., and Gene of Plainfield, Vt.; grandchildren, Benjamin and his wife, Ellen Moy, of Arlington, Va., Peter and his wife, Stacey Turner, of Los Angeles, Calif., Elisha of New York City, Nathaniel and his wife, Tyler, of Jericho, Vt., and Lee of Knoxville, Tenn.; grea Published in the Star-Telegram on 2/9/2006. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to Jackson County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/jackson/jackson.html