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Mary
Kincaid’s church experience started in a bassinet at the
Clearwater Presbyterian Church in Paramount, CA. Her paternal
grandparents emigrated from Holland, and settled in a large Dutch
community in Clearwater, California. Her parents (Beth & Bill
Verburg) headed up the young married group in the church, a practice
they would replicate in one form or
another
everywhere they moved. Her dad worked as a landscaper in California
during the depression. They later bought, sight unseen, a small
120-acre ranch on Hatter Creek in Idaho. Her dad worked at
the
Potlatch mill in Potlatch, and her mother reopened the closed historic
Community Church in Princeton. It had a Bible school in the summer,
weddings, funerals and often sermons by Dick Ferrell who was revered in
the region as the lumberjack preacher. In his younger days, he had been
a middleweight boxer and this, plus his great personality, attracted
young and old alike. He traveled to the surrounding logging camps
counseling and giving sermons.
The Verburgs then moved to
Potlatch, Idaho in
Mary’s junior high years where her mother taught school, her dad
continued to work at the mill, and they attended the
old Potlatch Presbyterian Church, headed
by Dave and Anne Crawford. The Crawfords spent several years in Alaska
as missionaries. Dave sometimes piloted the famous “Anna
Jackman” riverboat, bringing kids to college via Alaska’s
rivers and coastal waterways. They were lifelong friends of the Verburg
family and are fondly remembered as being able to attract large numbers
of young people to a thriving youth group and then on to summer camp.
Bob Kincaid’s family of six
came to
Lewiston in the 1920’s. His father was born in a sod hut in
Kansas in the 1880’s and came west to southern Idaho via covered
wagon. He drove the last active route stagecoach in Idaho as a young
man as well as driving teams of horses delivering dynamite to
gold/silver mines in Idaho and Montana. Upon arrival in Lewiston, his
father was involved in the building and later, operating of the
Potlatch Forests mill. His mother ran the “call board."
Bob’s family was not churchgoers, but he attended the Lewiston
Federated church as a teenager when Doug Vance was pastor. Bob was a
Congregationalist, and happily reminds everyone of this whenever the
Presbyterians do something unusual.
Mary’s family moved to Lewiston so her
mother could finish her degree in education. The Verburg’s
returned to Potlatch when NICE (LCSC) was closed by Gov. Len
Jordan. During this time in Lewiston, there was a youth group
of
twelve boys at the Federated church. Mary lined up her two new
girlfriends and crashed (Bob’s word) the group. Back in Potlatch,
Beth continued to teach and Bill opened a watch
repair
shop. Education was important to the Verburgs, and at one point Beth
and Mary were at the University of Idaho together, graduating together
in 1957,. Bill was attending North Idaho College to learn
clock
and watch repair. Beth later got her Master’s Degree and worked
on her PHD at the U of I. Bob enlisted in the Army
and
participated in the early years of the National Security Agency (NSA).
Mary did group social work at the YWCA in Oakland, California, moving
to San Jose to live in veterans housing after their marriage in 1958.
Mary taught at a high school and Bob worked as a deputy sheriff,
finishing a BA and starting on his Masters at San Jose State. Their
daughter Lynne was born in San Jose. They moved back to Lewiston where
Bob worked in the personnel department at Potlatch, and Mary taught
science, women’s issues, and physical education at newly reopened
LCSC. They attended the Federated Church and taught Sunday school.
After Bob moved from the personnel department to the newly created
sales department for Potlatch, the family set up households in
Minneapolis and Chicago, changed jobs, then lived in Natchitoches,
Louisiana, and eventually in Beaverton, Oregon, involving themselves in
Presbyterian churches at every move. Son Ron was born in Minneapolis,
completing the family.
During the long stay in Beaverton
(Portland), Mary
started her own successful company, “MM Trading” dealing in
commodities on both the New York and Chicago exchanges, primarily
lumber and plywood futures. Bob was Senior Vice President of a large
wood product wholesaler. At
Sunset Presbyterian
Church, daughter Lynne was a regular commentator on the radio program
“Open Door” developed and run by the minister of Sunset
Church, Bud Frimoth. The radio program had 200 stations throughout the
world and also was carried on Armed Forces radio network during the
Vietnam War. It won 16 Peabody awards for Christian broadcasting.
In 1973, four Portland area Presbyterians churches combined to send 120
people to tour Jordan, Israel, and Italy. Unluckily, they were on the
Golan Heights when the “Yom Kippur” war broke out. They
spent several days in a bomb shelter in a Kibbutz,
along
with an injured AP correspondent. Afterwards, they continued their
planned tour of Israel. Bob comments: "We are Presbyterians. We’d
paid for all the time in Israel and we stayed." They then flew (with
Israeli fighter jet cover) to Rome and an audience with the Pope (who
had heard about the group). The four churches subsequently did another
19 day “Journeys of Paul” trip on a chartered cruise ship.
The Kincaids volunteered as
Elders and other
positions at First Presbyterian when they returned to the valley when
Will Ackles was minister. They started a group of middle-agers, hoping
to emulate the success of the OWLS, which Mary’s mother and
father, then living in Asotin, had joined and enjoyed so much. Bob
published a marketing newsletter and Mary taught at Grantham.
In the 1980’s, Lynne was married and living in New Mexico, and
Ron was attending Whitworth in Spokane when Bob and Mary accepted a
position in London, England, representing the United States' wood
industry, doing promotional work throughout Europe, North Africa, and
the Middle East. The Kincaids were in England for nine
years traveling to over 50 countries. They visited
churches
everywhere and Mary entertained clients, housed visitors, and helped at
trade shows and seminars, taught some classes on U.S. military bases in
the London area, and attended several extensive Bible study programs.
Bob had a triple by-pass early in 1993 performed at Deaconess Hospital
in Spokane. The trade associations at the same time asked them to come
back to the U.S., to Destrehan, Louisiana (a western suburb of New
Orleans). Household goods shipped from England arrived the same day as
hurricane Andrew. They attended the Presbyterian Church in Luling, (the
same one that our church's missionaries visited in 2007). Mary headed
the Women’s group and was happy to have coffee instead of tea
after church.
Their daughter Lynne lives in the Valley
and has a
teaching degree from LCSC, and their son Ronald has degrees in
Mathematics and Computer Science from Whitworth. Both are married, and
Bob and Mary have five grandchildren. After Mary's mother’s
death, Bob and Mary took early retirement to take care of her dad,
returning to the Lewis-Clark valley and their favorite Church, First
Presbyterian of Clarkston. They've been hard at work here ever since.
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