In conjunction with our current exhibit, “The book will be preaching after you and I have gone home”: Marshall Keeble’s Print Legacy we’ll be featuring blog posts contributed by our student workers to provide expanded content on the “Fellow Workers” pictured in Biography and Sermons of Marshall Keeble, Evangelist.Today’s post on O. L. Aker was researched and written by Sandrine Ingabire. Sandrine is a Senior Global Studies major from Kigali, Rwanda. She has been working in Special Collections for over a semester now. She is interested in international development focused on small businesses and empowering low income people through providing them with opportunities to make an income. She loves writing and hopes the skills she gains while working in Special Collections will transfer to her career in the future.
1931 photographs of men Marshall Keeble either baptized or encouraged to preach. B. C. Goodpasture, ed., “Biography and Sermons of Marshall Keeble, Evangelist” (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Company, 1931), 24-25.
Oswell Lamor Aker was born on a farm in Commerce, Georgia. He received his early school training in and around Commerce. In 1917, he married Nancy F. Tisdale from Limestone, Alabama, who was a student at Walden University in Nashville, Tennessee. He attributed his success as a minister to her as she encouraged and supported him in his ministry. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church for thirty years.
Aker was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal church when he first heard the gospel. Marshall Keeble’s teaching was central to his understanding of the gospel and Aker was converted. He had only been ministering in the Church of Christ for four months when the brethren in Florence, Alabama were impressed with him and encouraged him to work with Marshall Keeble. One of his strengths that people admired about him was his encouragement and support for people who were going through a hard time. He was also a very good and close friend to Marshall Keeble. Some people compared their relationship to that of Jonathan and David.
Tuggle, Annie C., “Our Ministers and Song Leaders of the Church of Christ” (1945). Stone-Campbell Books. 238.
He served in the Church of Christ for sixteen years. During his ministry time, he was able to baptize over six hundred people including seven preachers and one bishop by 1945. He served in the following congregations: St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida, Houston and Waco, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, Montgomery and Florence, Alabama.
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My parents named me after a “good friend of theirs”, O. L. Aker, thus my birth name is O. L. Melton. Up until I was about 7 years old, O. L. was the only name I had known. Somehow, around this time, my parents discovered that the O. L. in their friend’s name actually stood for Oswell Lamor. I was excited and with this new information I formally start using Oswell Lamar as my name.
Today I decided to do another Google search for O. L. Aker. To my surprise I not only found pictures of my name sake but also discovered that he was a minister who had significate roots in the “Restoration Movement” and the Church of Christ. My parents and their families were members of the Church of Christ, as am I. No doubt my parents knew Mr. Aker through the church. My father was also a minister.
I also learned that Mr. Aker spelled his middle name, Lamor, with an “o” and not an “a” as I spell mine. I never even thought of spelling “Lamar” with an “o”. I use to spell Lamar with two r’s just for the fun of it, but never with an “o”.
Still, today, some of my family, relatives and high school classmates call me O. L.
Thank you Oswell, for this reply. What a fine legacy!