[3/31/04]If anyone sees a cream-colored 1986 Pontiac Parisian, license 107 WAQ, it’s been stolen from a retired Methodist minister, leaving him hard-pressed to conduct his pastoral duties.

It was a strange feeling, said the Rev. T. Ed Hightower, when he returned from an overnight trip to find his car missing.

“It was parked right in front of the house on the street,” said Hightower who lives on Woodland Drive off Halls Ferry Road.

The case is under investigation by Vicksburg police, but DaVon Grey, spokesman, said this morning that Hightower’s car had not been recovered.

“We had left to go to Meridian to a meeting Friday morning. We spent the night over there and we came in, I guess, a little before 2:30 (p.m. Saturday),” he said. “When we drove up I said, Where’s the car?'”

Hightower said it was a moment or two before he became convinced someone had taken it. And, it had to have been stolen because his key was still in the bedroom on the dresser where he had left it Friday and his wife Lillian’s key was still in her purse.

“That’s a blow. You feel so … I don’t know,” he said, searching for a word that would not come.

Hightower said the car was a good one. He bought it used from Baxter Morris. “It was his daddy’s car,” he said, adding he had heard of the car being for sale from Carl Smith, the son of Warfield Smith who owns Warfield’s Servicenter.

“When I got it, there was a book in the glove compartment that listed everything he had done to it,” Hightower said.

Even though the Pontiac is 18 years old and had a little more than 107,000 miles on it, it was still in good shape.

“It ran like a Singer sewing machine,” he said.

But being without it has put a crimp in Hightower’s activities.

Although 82 years old and formally retired as a United Methodist Church minister, Hightower is working as an interim minister at Gibson Memorial United Methodist Church.

After the couple retired in Meridian and moved back to Vicksburg, he received a call from the pastor of Gibson Memorial at the time. He was asked if he would consider returning to the staff as minister of visitation. He agreed to come talk about it.

“Well, shucks, when I got out there, the folks sitting there on the board, on the committee, running the church, they had been my children and young people (when he was pastor from 1969 to 1972). Shoot, I couldn’t tell them no’ if I had wanted to,” he said.

Hightower is also known for frequent pastoral visits to hospitals, nursing homes, homes of shut-ins and elsewhere.

When asked how long he had been a pastor, Hightower answered with a tale.

He was a student at Millsaps College when the United Methodist Church needed a pastor of the seven-church circuit in Waynesboro. His name was mentioned, and he was asked to come preach.

“I did something you didn’t do at Millsaps, I cut classes that Friday,” he said.

He hitchhiked from Jackson to his home in Meridian and then caught the GM&O Rebel to Waynesboro where he found a member of one of the churches who took him to the church where he was to preach Sunday.

After services Sunday, he got a ride back to Meridian with a couple. As they approached Meridian, the couple had to stop for bread at an all-night market.

“He came back out and he looked like he had seen a ghost. He kind of tossed the bread in and said, We’re at war,'” Hightower said. “It was Dec. 7, 1941.”

“I’ve had 60 years, and I’ve enjoyed every day of it,” he said.

In addition to becoming a minister without wheels, Hightower said he will really miss the golf clubs in the trunk. Although he has not played in several years (“I had a little heart attack.”) he had hoped to play at least one more round later this year during a Methodist ministers’ meeting.

He said he told Carl Smith about the theft and the newspaper inquiry, and the mechanic had a suggestion for using the interview to at least get the clubs back. “Just tell them to put in asking the thief to leave the clubs by the side of the road and you’ll pick them up,'” Hightower quoted his friend as saying.