In the afternoon of Lord's Day, Sept. 8, Brother Billy Wilson, dear friend, called that Brother Karl Wilks was not at the assembly for worship at McGregor, Tx, his home, that morning. Brothers and Sisters knew there was something amiss. Waymond and Nell Coleman, dear friends, went to the home to find him at his typewriter, dead. Subsequent calls came from Glyn, Bro. Wilks' oldest son, and Bro. Hans Roodschild. Sister Beth Byford Oxner wrote a nice letter after the funeral relating particulars that she knew would be of interest. She had done the same after the funeral of Sister Wilks' last summer. For such considerations as these, I am humbly grateful. Brother Wilks was to this scribe a brother beloved, dear friend, tried and true. I will regret always, due to distance, and other pressing responsibilities, I could not go to the funeral, as he in life had asked.

Brother Wilks was indeed a man among men. I first met him in the early 1950's at Woodson, Tx, where he worshipped, and where I was conducting a meeting. He was at the time living in Breckenridge, working for the Texas Highway Dept. This was the beginning of a warm and treasured friendship for me. It was at Woodson, not long before our meeting, that the Wilks, the Tom McBrides and Sullivans and others had been locked out of the meeting house they helped build, by brethren and their innovations. This forced these brethren to either accept innovations in worship or go elsewhere. They chose the way of truth and valor, going to another part of town and erecting a meeting place where they could worship scripturally-- the outcome of one of the many stories of infamy written by innovations and their proponents.

For many years now, before my summer meetings, he would write and ask for my "itinerary", as he would call it, so he could write to me at my "stops", am he would put it. This I could depend on, and shall miss up ahead.

Many times I sat at his table; he had a precious wife, married to her well over 60 years. As a young man he married Cora Chandler. Theirs was a marriage, yes, 60 years strong, yet there were those who could not break bread with them in assemblies where they were members, even though the Wilks practiced what those very ones preached, that is, in marriage, one man, one woman 'til death do us part; yet they could not worship with them. Kindly, I cannot understand such a position as that. It neither makes good scripture sense nor good common sense; such a position practiced is faulty, to say the least. I could never sense though in them a feeling of resentment or bitterness; they, as I, just could not understand. KG. and Cora Wilks would not have thought of divorcing and remarrying.

Brother Wilks was a most practical man, honest in all his dealings, meticulous in personal affairs and the Lord's. When the Woodrow St. property was sold in Austin, when the congregation ceased to meet due to circumstances beyond Bro. Wilks' control, the proceeds were either returned to those who chose to have returned what they had given to help purchase the property, or used in the work in Mexico; this amounted to several thousands of dollars. That work was dear to the great heart of this good man as those closest to it will attest. To the very end he was doing his best to convert souls in Mexico and other parts of the world.

Conclusively, all cannot be said, I close with a quote from my part of the foreward of this autobiography, dated August 2, 1979: "I shall always be grateful in a very special way that some have crossed my path down here, and walked and lingered with me awhile --among that number are K.G. and Cora Wilks". Lastly, I am no man's, no woman's judge, but I am reminded of how Bro. Wilks would speak of Sister Wilks' departure -that she was in Paradise. This I believe, and I love to think he has joined her there to wait the resurrection, the redemption of the body, homegoing at last where disappointments and loneliness are no more.