Story about Max: Poplar Halls Training Ministry

One of my most exciting experiences during my visions of heaven was meeting my two old Navigator friends, Russ Korth and Don Arvin. Seeing both of these men in heaven brought back great memories to our training ministry that happened during our time in Norfolk Virginia and the ensuing years after that. During my conversations with my two old friends, we recounted several experiences we had during our ministry years.

Russ and I had met in Bitburg, Germany in April 1960. I have told you more about that time and Bitburg in that chapter about my life and first meeting the Navigators and the Lord in Germany. Russ had married his wife Donna since I had seen him in Germany many years ago. Russ had risen to become a Regional Director in the Navigator ministry. Russ and Donna became lifelong friends as we follow their ministry down through the years until Russ went to meet the Lord in 2010. Donna and I are great email buddies, and we share many things with each other on a daily basis over the last few years. Their son Trevor was a special needs child and most of the couples in the Norfolk ministry assisted in helping him in his growth patterning experience. They also had two daughters, Valerie and Katrina, who we keep up with their lives on Facebook. (Donna went to heaven July 8, 2022.) Russ and I talked about many of these things during my visit with him in heaven. One of the experiences that we talked about was a flag football game that we played with all of our members who were in training in the Poplar Halls ministry. Russ was the referee and we got in some heated arguments during the game. Smile.

The Navigators had developed a team ministry concept and all of the couples and single men in the ministry were each assigned a military base where they conducted their Nav ministry. This concept had been developed by our founder Daws Trotman in the 1930’s as he gathered key young men and women around, he and his wife Lila, in their Navigator home in California.

Russ and Donna Korth, Marv and Janie Lippencott, Cliff and Nancy Norton, Chuck Barbara Lloyd, Max and Dawn Weighmink, Don and Judy Arvin, Bill and Helen Webster, Wayne and Glenda Polzin, Fred and Patsy Funches. Single guy Al, *Randy and Linda Houck, *Bill and Alyce Gibbs, *Larry and Jeri Greenwold, Steve and Cindy Coval, *Will and Beverly Spillman. *Jeff Kemmerer *Several of these folks were in the Mid-Atlantic region and we spent lots of time with them during regional rallies and conferences. There were several other folks and many of them went on to become full time Navigator staff members.

Several folks already graduated to glory. There are many more names that I could add to this chapter but my brain is getting old and I hope those folks will forgive me if they stumble across this book.

The Navigator ministry requires each person to raise their own means of support. Most full time Navigators are supported by their local church and by people who they have ministered to in the past. The Nav organization takes out a small amount for administration costs. Each representative will submit their budget for monthly needs. If your “giving support” does not meet those needs then you have to get a job to supplement your income.

Since I had no retirement income and had left the United States Air Force after 13/2 years, I needed to get a job to take care of my family. One of the things I had done earlier in my life was sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. I was pretty good at it and was able to make a good living. I closed six sales in one day in Virginia Beach and I think that record still stands. We would have sales meetings at the local Kirby office on Virginia Beach Blvd. and we always sang Kirby songs to start the day. Rah rah rah. Then we would pack up our machines in the back of our car and head out to one of the local neighborhoods and start knocking on doors. Sometimes we would have the office set appointments for us by offering a free rug shampoo to the customer. We always told the lady to vacuum the rug really good before we got there so that we could go ahead and start shampooing right away. Then when we arrived at the house, we looked at the rug and said “Well it sure looks clean let’s do a test and see if you got all the dirt out.” Then we would place a “dirt meter “which showed up every bit of dirt still in the rug. This was an easy way to get the husband on our side as he would ask his wife, “Martha, did you are you really vacuum that rug”. Of course, Martha would swear she did. Smiles. We would show them how the Kirby use the suction and vibration to get the dirt out and dirt was deeply buried in the carpet. We learned some interesting sales tricks like laying their carpet cleaner over on its side and telling them we should say a few words over their dead vacuum cleaner. That always got a good smile from the customer. It was always interesting when we came into the house and most the time the man was sitting there in the chair with his arms crossed defiantly saying to the world, “I’m not gonna buy that blankety blank Kirby vacuum cleaner.” As we continued on and the demonstration, we would take the small white patches of dirt out of the dirt meter and place them around his chair. Especially if they had a lot of dirt in them. When it finally dawned on him that his wife was not able to do a good job of cleaning his carpet with his dead vacuum cleaner, then he would relax his hands and became more interested in purchasing the Kirby. It was an amazing machine and I thoroughly enjoyed showing it to people. I’ve sold everyone that I showed to people except two folks. One to a family who had just come through a recent bankruptcy. And the other one didn’t have any rugs in the house.

Well, it was fun to see God provide for our needs as we would get down to very little money in the bank and then a sale would come through to supply our need. Philippians 4:19 came through again. God will supply. I only made $100 commissions on each sale. But a hundred dollars went a lot farther in 1971 than it does now. That verse along with Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I see these two verses working in my life almost every single day. Even to supplying that parking spot so I won’t have to walk very far with my old legs.

Well one day, I went to this man’s house to set up for the Kirby demonstration. I had set the machine up and put all my sales material on a display on the floor so I could share it with this man in his home. Well, he came walking out of the kitchen with a large butcher knife in his hand and slapping it back-and-forth on his palm and mumbling slowly to himself, “I hate salesman “and again “I hate salesman “. I looked at him and said, “See you later buddy and I left the machine sitting in the middle of his living room as I scurried out to the car. I went back to the office and told the owner, John McCall, if he wanted that machine, he can go get it himself. I guess that’s what he did because I never heard anything more from it. Then one day we were in a sales meeting singing our Kirby songs and we heard this big commotion out front of the Kirby store. We looked out this window that is it there was this big, burly guy, screaming out in front of the store. “Who sold us blankety blank machine to my wife.” And he didn’t use those words. Smile. He picked up the machine up and threw it through the plate glass window. We all were dying laughing.

Well, it seems like these two things in the forefront of my mind caused me to think about looking for another job. So, a friend of mine in the Navigator ministry, Max Weighmink and I, decided to form a painting business. Max had been working as a barber for several months. So, another ministry friend Al, loaned us a paint spray rig and we tackled our first old house. I remember clearly my bloody knuckles from scraping fifty-year-old flaking paint from the wood. Max’s ministry was at one of the Navy ships in Norfolk and mine was concentrated at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.

I had two young fellows living in my home. Ron Mahler and Galen Manapat. Ron went on to a long Ministry with the Navigator’s. He spent many years in Hawaii and now he is in his seventies and lives in the Chicago area. He is helping his son and his family develop the Nav ministry at the Great Lakes Naval Air Station. The concept modeled by Dawson Trotman continues in the lives of countless men and women in over a hundred countries around the world. Each one teach one, still works today. Max had some young guys living in their home so after we learned the drywall business we split up and took our men and continued in the drywall business

Well, how did we go from painting to drywall? One day in Norfolk, we were foraging around looking for some painting customers, and we stopped in to Bush Construction Company on Raby Road. The manager said painters were a dime a dozen and that they were looking for drywall men. We walked outside and I asked Max what drywall was. I was 31 years old and had never learned what sheet rock was or even knew that our homes are all constructed with hundreds of pieces of sheet rock molded together. So, we got a newspaper and looked in the classified ads and saw an ad looking for drywall mechanics. We went to Virginia Beach which was a neighboring city to Norfolk, and found Virginia Beach townhouses on Independence Road. We found a young crew of fellows hanging sheet rock and asked them if we minded if we watched them for awhile. We had a great conversation with these fellows so Max and I thought we could learn how to do this. So, we asked these guys if we went and got some tools could we work for them for nothing and they would teach us how to do this job. They agreed. Probably the hardest thing was hanging the ceiling. You had to pick up the 12-foot piece of sheet rock and place it on your head and climb up on a two-foot-tall wooden benches and position the board on the ceiling and pull a nail out of our nail pouch and nail it to the ceiling joist. Then holding the board on our heads, we would spin around and nail the other side of the board. Quite a trick if you have never done it. Then once we got the board in place, we finished nailing it off. Back in 1971, we did not use screw guns like they do today, but laboriously nailed each board. One nail on each side of each joist and two or three sets of nails in the middle. Most joists are 16 inches on center but some houses they were 24 inches on center. Today they are all 16 inches.

Well then, we tackled the walls. Max would be on one end and I was on the other as we would hoist the 110-pound piece of sheet rock up on the top of the wall. We were hanging 5/8 firecode sheet rock when we started. Regular sheet rock was 77 pounds a piece of 4 by 12. Then we would tack the top of the board and once it was in place we would finish off the nailing process. It was so much easier when we started using automatic screw guns to secure the boards. Then a few years later we started using construction adhesive which made it even easier and was much faster. We had a specialized drywall hammer which when used correctly would imbed the board at the the right depth and leave a slight dimple around the nail. They taught us how to hit the nail three times and get it to the right depth. If the nail was sticking out it would not be able to be plastered over correctly and the finisher or plasterer would have to go get a hammer and finish “our” job. They did not like that. In our first few jobs the plasterers would hang their hats on the nails that were sticking out and goaded us into doing our job correctly.

Well next the taught us how to measure and cut out electrical boxes. They would measure the top and sides of the box and then transfer the measurements to the sheet rock and then cut it and carry the board over a hope we got close. Messed up a lot of those early cuts. Then sometime later, we learned to mark the box on the floor and then hold our hammer over the X and stick our saw into the box and cut it out. You had to be careful not to damage the wires. Many years later we used a drywall router which made the job easier and faster. Back in 1971, Max and I received 90 cents a board for each piece we put up. Wow. Today we pay $10 a Board.

So, after a couple of days training with these guys for nothing, we went to the job superintendent and asked him if we could hang sheet rock in an apartment. He asked the fellows that we had been working for if they thought we were ready and they said, “Go ahead and give them a try.” So, we gathered some construction lumber in the job site and built us some drywall benches. The foreman just turned us loose in an apartment with about 100 pieces of sheet rock and so launched our drywall business. So, we probably hung 40-50 boards that first day. Took us a couple of days to finish our first job. Wow. We got paid 90 cents a board for 100 boards. We split it. $45 each for two days work. Looking back at it many years later I wonder why we kept doing this. Of course, money went a lot farther in those days. I remember going to the grocery store and getting several bags of groceries for 20 bucks. The rest of the drywall story will continue in the Drywall Chapter.

-Jim Y