February (Web-only) 2001

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Happy trails, Dale Evans
"Queen of the West" Dale Evans, wife of "King of the Cowboys" Roy Rogers (1912-98), died yesterday at her home in Apple Valley, California. Apart from countless radio programs, movies, music recordings, and television shows she starred in with her husband, the two were also involved in evangelism and ministry. "I would love to be an evangelist," today's New York TimesquotesEvans as having once said, "but I think God has revealed to me that I can serve him best by just remaining at my post." Religion News Service profiled Evans's faith in 1999, noting, "Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, America's favorite cowboy and cowgirl couple, probably will be remembered as much for their professional achievements as they will for their public and unapologetic evangelical Christian faith. Their lives were as unblemished as the characters they played in a lifetime of Westerns, where the good guy always won."

Independent Baptist leader Jack Hyles dead at 74 Jack Hyles, pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, founder of Hyles-Anderson College in Crown Point, Indiana, and one of the leaders of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement, died Tuesday after undergoing open-heart surgery. Between 15,000 and 20,000 people now attend services at First Baptist every Sunday. When he started there in September 1959, the weekly attendance was 44. "When he was a scrawny, nervous teenager who said he wanted to be a preacher, nobody took him seriously," writes the Chicago Sun-Times. "When the Southern Baptists kicked him out of their denomination in the 1950s for being too conservative, they said his ministry was over. When he chose the interests of poor, inner-city kids over millionaire church members, they said he'd ...