Life in the Bible Belt means that discussion of scriptural principles and phrases is an everyday occurrence. Talking the talk is far different than walking the walk, however.
Despite this challenge of putting faith and biblical principles into daily practice, Hoover, Ala., resident Loree Skelton is determined to walk the walk, particularly when it comes to the biblical command to “honor thy father and thy mother.”
Loree, the youngest of four children, is the last surviving member of her immediate family. As such, she feels the weight of responsibility to honor the legacy of hard work, sincere faith, and selfless action that she saw her parents live on a daily basis.
It is for that reason she is partnering with 1819 News to start The Fred and Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, not only to honor her parents’ legacy, but also to spread the values and principles they held dear to a society that seems confused and unsure of how to blaze a straight path in life.
“If they were here,” Loree says, speaking of her parents, “they would be working in the community, giving of their time, giving of their finances, whatever they could to help get this country back on track and the focus on God’s light and God’s law.”
“They were always thinking of others, and always trying to help others, and always put themselves last,” she continues.
That mission was on full display in the project for which the Skelton family is best known: the establishment of South Haven Nursing Home in central Alabama – which incidentally was one of the first businesses and the first health care company founded and operated in what was, at the time, unincorporated Jefferson County, Ala. Three years after South Haven opened its doors, and with a lot of help from Fred and Rheta Skelton, Hoover became incorporated as a city.
“God told Daddy that he needed to build a nursing home at the location right where he built it,” Loree explains. “When Daddy started to build the nursing home, everyone told him he was crazy, that he was going to go bankrupt. ‘Ain’t nothing ever going to happen out there in those sticks,’ everyone told him.”
“Turned out to be – and still is – the heart of Hoover,” Loree says.
In fact, that nursing home was the foundational block of this now well-known Alabama suburb, which likely never would have seen the light of day were it not for Fred Skelton’s good reputation and charismatic personality. “[He] wasn’t a tall man, but he was dynamite,” Skelton says, explaining that it was not until her parents and South Haven Nursing Home were being honored by the Hoover Historical Society with a historic marker that Loree was told about how Mr. Hoover had to get her father to be the mediator and convince a certain landowner to sell the property which eventually became the initial borders of Hoover.
The Skeltons, however, were more focused on building their family business than on building a town.
“Daddy and Mother – they worked together building the nursing home,” Loree says. “He was the administrator, mother was the assistant administrator, and all of my siblings … if we weren’t in school or doing extra-curricular activities, we were out at the nursing home doing whatever needed to be done.”
And as each of the siblings grew older, they all spent at least some time serving in the business. Today, Loree, a healthcare attorney, also serves as a licensed nursing home administrator. “I always promised mother, if the nursing home ever needs me, I will be there,” Loree says.
The Skeltons, however, weren’t made of money, and the nursing home project was very much one built on faith and biblical principles.
“They were both always very, very committed to paying their tithe,” Loree says of her parents. “And they would pay their tithe first and just trust God to come up with the money to pay the mortgage and the other bills, and that’s the way that they lived their lives.”
Her mother continued this practice even after her father was gone, crediting the principle of giving the first fruits to God as the reason why she was able to build her dream house as a widowed woman.
“’This is the house that tithe built,’” Loree recalls her mother saying to the many contractors who came in and out while building that house. “And whenever she did that, it would always lead them to ask the question, ‘Well, what do you mean by that?’ And it would give her the opportunity to share her testimony and talk about following God’s law, and tithing like He tells us to do, because none of it’s ours anyway!”
This lack of entitlement and lack of self was a main theme of her parents’ lives. “Mother was a Depression baby and Daddy was about 10 years older than her, so they grew up hard workers and not really having anything really handed to them.”
Her parents were not strangers to pain and hardship either, Loree explains, noting the example of her mother who suffered from arthritis beginning at age 26. “[S]he used to have to beat her hands on the steering wheel to try to get feeling in them in order to drive us to school,” Loree says. “Back then, the doctor told her to take 12 aspirin a day!”
Yet her mother never complained.
“The last thing you would ever know was that she was in pain,” Loree continues. “She just refused to focus on it. She focused on what needed to be done, and looking out for others, and taking care of others, and Daddy was the same way.”
That kind of attitude is one that Loree wants to see revived in the next generations:
It seems like the focus now is all of this attention on self. It’s all about me, let me talk about how I’m feeling, let me talk about why you should feel bad because I feel bad, and only talk about how you need to rearrange your day and your expectations because I’m having a mental health day and I need somebody to feel sorry for me. It makes me crazy when I see what my parents went through and knowing the way that they would soldier through with everything, then seeing the complete 360 of it everywhere I turn these days, it’s like, ‘God, could you please send them [parents] back down here?’
“We can’t run our society catering to everybody’s emotional feelings and their whims and what they feel like doing or what they don’t feel like doing,” Loree says. “If you don’t have any absolutes to be your guiding light and you are the absolute, that just tells you how unbelievably flawed the foundation is.”
In addition to a focus on self, Loree sees godlessness as one of the major problems facing society.
“It’s a complete lack of focus on God,” she says. “[Godlessness] in our community, in our laws, in our court system, in our government. It’s like they want to erase Him like they went around taking down historical statues and nonsense like that.”
“I’m a very logical, rational person,” she continues. “It’s really so simple. God lays it out for us so simply! If we just follow His commandments, can you imagine the problems that you avoid?!”
Loree wants to see the desire and love for these absolutes – such as faith, family, hard work, and common sense – restored to society as a whole.
“We have a saying in the South, ‘Put the hay down where the goats can get it,’ and it’s the same thing with the message for cultural renewal,” she says. “You’ve got to get the message out to where your audience is that you’re trying to reach.”
And that’s exactly why Loree wants to spearhead an effort to restore the good, the true, and the beautiful in society through The Fred and Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Loree recognizes that, thanks to the cultural decline we see in our schools, communities, churches, and families, many in the up-and-coming generation have no concept of how to live in a fulfilling, fruitful, and upright way. She wants to see the next generation raised “in a way that when they get older they will not depart from it.”
Because of this, The Fred and Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal will focus less on the often-depressing facts of the daily news cycle and more on the positive – but often forgotten – foundational truths that help all of us live the good life. Served up in digestible, bite-sized portions for our fast-paced technological age and disseminated through articles, podcasts, social media, and other avenues, these truths will seek to provide practical insights on how to rebuild the family, effectively train children and supplement the poor education they receive in today’s public schools, and re-instill a solid work ethic and character in society at large.
“The bad stuff is out there 24/7 whether they’re looking for it or not,” Loree says. “That’s why [cultural renewal] is so important.”
The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal aims to do just what its name implies: renew the culture.
In the spirit of Nehemiah, for which the Center for Cultural Renewal’s logo is based, we see the need to rebuild the walls of culture and good society while at the same time defending against the incursions of those who seek to corrupt the youth and degrade our civilization.
Through The Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, 1819 News will daily publish culture and life articles that seek to ground our readers in the truths and traditions of the West’s Christian heritage while illuminating better paths forward for individuals, families, leaders, and our state.
In a time of chaos and worry, we seek to provide a beacon of hope that encourages each of us to take part in turning the tide and rebuilding a culture and society in which our children and grandchildren may flourish.
We hope you will be a daily reader of the Center’s articles! To visit The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, please click here.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning or become a member to gain access to exclusive content and 1819 News merch.