This project has been more than 50 years in the making, so Paul Justice is understandably excited.
Since he was in his 30s, people have told the Centralia resident that he should record his unusual life story in a book.
“We started it, but then we’d have some family crisis or another and have to put it aside,” said Violet, Paul’s wife of 51 years.
Local friends, Jack and Anita Williams, could see that Paul’s health and strength were failing, so they got behind the book idea and helped see it through.
And then the Justices met Julie McDonald Zander, a personal historian from Toledo, and all of the pieces were together.
For more than a year, she interviewed Paul, helped collect old photos, researched the facts of his tale, and wrote the story in his own words.
Finally, just this year, the Justices had the book, titled “Transformed by Grace: Delivered from hell to heaven,” published.
Paul will have a book signing this Saturday at the Lewis County Historical Museum, 599 N.W. Front Way, in Chehalis. He will be there from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Hard Beginnings
Paul’s story began in 1930, when he was 3 and living with his family in North Carolina. They moved into a “poorhouse,” where Paul suffered hardship and abuse.
His biological parents were disabled by accidents in their young adult life — his father by a blow to the head and his mother by an infected eye injury that left her blind in one eye. They were both mentally disturbed.
He recalls his father heating their house by slowly tearing down the walls to burn the wood.
Paul’s childhood was marked with periods spent in foster homes or back at the county poorhouse. He spent several years in the Mills Home Baptist Orphanage, where he began as a reluctant Christian and grew to be stronger in his mind about the church.
When he was 15, he lied about his age and tried to register for the draft, but he was too small. He came back to the scales with lead strips in his wallet and in his Bible to weigh him down. He made it into the Navy and was off to serve in World War II.
Paul joined the Marine Corps after the war and was stationed in China.
Called to the Ministry
Two events in China would change his life forever.
He was run over by a two-and-a-half ton truck, which crushed his leg and tore both hips out of their sockets. And he felt the call to become a minister.
“That’s when God called me to be a missionary and to serve him,” Paul said.
Today, at 82 years old, those old injuries are returning to haunt him. He has lost much of his strength in the last four or five years, Violet said.
But his strength in his faith continues to grow.
In the 1950s, Paul went to study at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky. It was there that he met his wife, Violet, who was studying to become a nurse.
Violet, 72, continues to work as a nurse today. She covers the graveyard shift at Sharon Care Center, in Centralia, though Paul said their dearest wish is for her to come home and be with him next year.
After graduation, in 1958, Paul became a pastor, and the couple moved from church to church as their family grew.
“We started seven churches and saved three,” Paul recalled with pride.
In 1984, they came to Centralia. Violet got a job at what was then Centralia General Hospital, and Paul was the minister at Alder Street Baptist Church.
Then they felt called to the Dryad Baptist Church, where they’ve been ever since.
Saving a Century-Old Church
The Dryad church was built more than a hundred years ago in the small logging town near Rainbow Falls State Park.
Four women — they’re called the Faithful Four — kept the church open for over 60 years despite low attendance.
“Even when there was no pastor, they’d open the doors each week and have Sunday school,” Paul said.
The sense of family its small congregation has developed is best characterized by a story Paul told at a recent revival meeting at the church.
He said the old building used to have rooms at the back where Sunday school would take place. One year a member of the church lost his home to a fire. The church members tore down the Sunday school rooms and used the material to help build that family a new home.
Paul and Violet joined the church in 2004.
“I could see that the pastor at the time needed help,” Paul recalled. “So I asked if he’d be willing to let me be the associate pastor.”
Paul served in that capacity until a heart attack five years ago on Christmas Eve forced him to step down from the position, but he has remained an active member of the church.
Under his leadership, the old church building has been restored.
Becoming the Person God Leads You to Be
“He’s one of the most warm-hearted, loving people you could meet,” said Patrick Rua, a Kelso man who is serving as pastor at the Dryad church now.
In 2006, under Paul’s direction, the church was completely renovated. The bell tower was restored, a new roof was installed, and it was painted.
In 2008, new stained glass windows were dedicated, under Paul’s leadership, Rua said.
“His desire to help people get to know the Lord is strong,” Rua said. “A lot of people here respond to him because he’s shown that love for them.”
One of Paul’s philosophies of life is that whatever God has led a person to do and become, that person must stick with it.
He hopes that he has been successful with this in his life.
“We came here to help strengthen this church. And I think we have, wouldn’t you say?” he asked, turning to Eldah Driver sitting beside him during fellowship after a revival meeting at the Dryad church.
Eldah is one of the Faithful Four. She lived in the Dryad community for over 67 years.
“Yes, yes I would,” she told him.
And Paul smiled and nodded.
Dian McClurg is a former Chronicle reporter and current freelance writer living near Silver Creek. She can be reached at dlmcclurg@tds.net.
