Thomas Felder has an old brass key in his pocket that’s been there since 1975.
Hudson Baggett, editor of The Alabama Baptist at the time, handed it to him just a month or so after the newspaper’s building was completed.
Felder’s been part of the family ever since.
“It’s been a really, really good 40 years here at The Alabama Baptist,” he said. “People come and go, but it’s still like family.”
He means it.
When he left his stationery delivery job to head up maintenance for The Alabama Baptist building, he gained parents, brothers and friends, he said.
Key to the house
“Mrs. (June) Baggett, she asked me to start working some at her house too, and she became like my mom,” Felder said. “Her sons were like my brothers. I used to go over every Christmas and eat dinner, sit down and just have a good time with them.”
That wasn’t normal in those years not too long after integration happened in the South, he said.
He was part of the family. He had a key to the Baggetts’ house too, and that’s where he was working nearly 20 years later when he got the news that Hudson Baggett had died unexpectedly the day after the state convention annual meeting in Mobile.
“That was really a blow to me,” Felder said.
He sat with the family at the funeral.
And he continued to care for June Baggett until she died in 2007, keeping her house in order even after she moved into a smaller residence. Like a son, he took her to weddings, funerals and the occasional dinner.
“The day she went into the hospital the last time, I went to the house and couldn’t get her to come to the door. I thought she was resting, but she had fallen [and] I didn’t know it,” Felder said. “I came back a little later and they were rolling her out to the ambulance.”
He told her he’d tried to come in earlier but couldn’t get her to come to the door.
“As they were rolling her away, she reached out to me and said, ‘Thomas, do you not have a key?’ and I said no, and she was telling one of her sons, ‘Give Thomas a key right now.’”
She passed away about a week after that.
“That was really a blow to me. She was like my mom and she treated me just as good as my mom,” Felder said.
He’s grateful for that. And he’s grateful that June Baggett changed the course of his life.
“I started out saying I wanted a big business,” Felder said. “But I got kind of sidetracked when Mrs. Baggett asked me to clean her house.”
It’s a good thing, he said.
“The people I met over the years at The Alabama Baptist and (have) become friends and family with meant more to me than the money I could’ve made in any other business,” he said. “It was about the friendships. They were genuine.”
And they anchored him through many a tough time.
A few years after Bob Terry was named editor of the paper in 1995, Felder watched Terry walk through a season of grief. Terry’s first wife, Eleanor, died in 1998 from injuries sustained in a traffic accident in South Africa.
The strength Felder saw in Terry encouraged him several years later when Felder’s grandson was killed.
“I remember going to the funeral (for Eleanor Terry) and seeing how strong he was,” Felder said. “I was looking at him and I wondered, ‘How can he be so strong and still have the faith?’”
The faith he’d seen in Terry challenged him to lean on God, he said.
“That’s why I say it’s a big blessing to be here, to gain strength from people like him,” Felder said.
Terry said the blessed feeling is mutual.
“Thomas has a caring heart that endeared him to the Baggett family and to the rest of us who are privileged to work with him,” he said. “I have seen Thomas care for others at great cost and inconvenience to himself. He is an encourager, a tireless worker.”
And he always seems to have a smile on his face even when he’s going through illness and grief, Terry said. “Thomas never loses sight of the Lord Jesus as the source of his strength.”
The son of a Methodist minister, Felder grew up in church with his nine siblings.
“My dad didn’t play — he was strict,” Felder said with a laugh. “We had a good upbringing. We’re all still in church.”
His three daughters and seven grandchildren turned out great too, he said. Two of his granddaughters are scholarship athletes at the University of Alabama. Another is a talented high school basketball and volleyball player.
“They are all good kids and have done well,” Felder said.
They come by it rightly, Terry said.
Multitalented
“Few people are as multitalented as Thomas. He can do many things and when he can’t do something, he knows someone who can,” Terry said. “Thomas and the services he provides are a great asset to the ministry of The Alabama Baptist. More importantly, he is a friend.”
For Felder, that friendship is the best part.
“I remember the times I’d come up here really late at night and Johnie Sentell (former associate editor) would be up here,” he said. “We’d be up here until about 1 in the morning talking. People come and go, but for the past 40 years, we’ve all been like family. It’s just peace when you come to work.”
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