A country preacher, educator, marks 90 years

Noreen Hyslop photo - Rev. Doyle Corlew has spent a lifetime in front of a classroom and behind a pulpit. The soon-to-be 90 year-old still spends his Sunday mornings doing what he loves best at a small country church in Essex.

The nearly nonagenarian is a retired teacher and a yet-to-be-retired minister whose face is familiar to many in Stoddard County, especially within the rural community of Essex.

Corlew comes from good stock, he says. His father lived past 95 and a 99-year-old aunt lives nearby. He was born in a house that no longer graces the back roads two miles east of Essex. Although he wandered as far as Chaffee when he was young, pastoring a church there full time and teaching, he was always drawn back to Stoddard County and has called the area home for nine decades.

Doyle and Vera Corlew raised three children on a small farm near Essex, and the couple had three grandchildren as well. Following his wife's death 10 years ago, he remarried; and he and his wife, Altha, now reside just east of Dexter, with Essex just on the horizon. Those three grandchildren have now produced a total of six great-grandchildren.

Corlew will celebrate his 90th birthday on June 18 and while his voice seems stronger than most men 20 years his junior, his legs and hands haven't followed suit. Diabetes and other health problems have taken their toll in the past year; and he finds himself, for the first time in his life, forced to slow his pace.

"I started driving in 1937," he says, "but I had to stop several months ago," and that loss of independence, it seems, plays heavily on his mind.

Corlew is a unique blend of old country ways and modern philosophy. He had no formal education past the eighth grade until he was 34 years old and decided to attend college in Oakland City, Ind.

"I took the equivalent of the GED and went on to earn my bachelor of arts degree there."

His hard work paid off when he received a long distance phone call from W.A. Merick, who was then superintendent at Bernie Schools.

"And that began my teaching career," he explains. "I taught in the elementary building for two years and while there I preached at Vinson General Baptist Church."

In the late 1950s he ventured to Chaffee in Scott County, where he taught high school civics for a year.

"Then for two years I pastored full time at a church in Chaffee, but I learned you don't get rich preaching! I had an offer from Bob Rasche, the superintendent in Essex."

It was around 1962 and the Essex schools were in the process of reorganizing with the Grayridge school system.

"I taught for two years at the old Grayridge building," Corlew recalls, "and when the current Richland school was built, I moved there."

And that's where Doyle Corlew remained until his retirement in 1996, serving first in the classroom and for the last 20 years of his teaching career as elementary counselor, after returning to college to earn a degree in counseling at Southeast Missouri State University, then called Cape Teachers College.

All the while, Corlew focused on the ministry. Having first stood at the pulpit in 1949, he remains active in that capacity today in the small country church where he was raised.

"The problem among many small churches is that they can't find preachers," he says. "Our church doesn't really have a full-time preacher, so I guess I'm it!"

The little gathering, he attests, is small in numbers, but large in spirit and each Sunday, the Rev. Doyle Corlew delivers his message of faith to some 35-40 church members at Olive Branch Baptist Church. It's now a 60-year old tradition of his.

"I tell folks I'm the same age as Billy Graham," the Rev. Corlew states, "but he's just a little more popular than I am!"

On June 21, 90-year-old Doyle Corlew will be a most popular fellow, indeed, as family and friends gather at a familiar place for the Corlews, the Olive Branch Church Annex located two miles east of Essex from 3-5 p.m. to mark his very special day. He requests no gifts to mark the occasion, but only the presence of all who wish to stop in and wish him well.

Often referring back to his days in the classroom, the country preacher with the subtle smile and twinkling eyes says, "I've had the pleasure of knowing some great folks in my lifetime, many of them teachers and administrators who have gone to that big teacher's lounge in the sky... and someday I hope to join them there."