Thursday, January 18, 2001

Cox family thrives on faith
By Loretta Fulton
Reporter-News Staff Writer

Facing life as a single parent, plus questions about her husband’s mysterious disappearance, Beth Cox decided to move to Franklin, Tenn., from Southern California.

Friends said it was the kind of place where she could raise her young daughter, Talitha, in a Christian environment. Growing up in the Church of Christ tradition, Cox would feel at home in the Nashville area with 120 churches of that denomination and one of its universities, David Lipscomb.

She had met her future husband, Wesley Barrett “Barre” Cox at Church of Christ-affiliated Abilene Christian University when both were employed there in the early 1980s.

Faith had always been at the center of Cox’s life. It still is. Last Friday, facing the glare of television lights and media scrutiny, Cox spoke publicly for the first time about the disappearance and re-emergence 161/2 years later of her husband.

At her side was Talitha, who turned 17 on Jan. 1 and spoke to her father that day by telephone for the first time in her life. Also with her was her minister Rubel Shelly, who has been at her side since Beth and Talitha joined Woodmont Church of Christ in southern Nashville about six years ago.

“We’ve tried to be a safe place with them and for them,” Shelly said.

And that was his message long before Beth and Talitha Cox entered his life. Shelly is well known in Church of Christ circles, including those in Abilene. He co-edits a church magazine “Wineskins” with Abilene’s Mike Cope, minister at Highland Church of Christ. His assistant, Vicki McCaleb Mitchell, is the sister of ACU vice president and former mayor Gary McCaleb.

Before he ever met Beth and Talitha Cox, Shelly knew Barre Cox when both taught in the late 1970s at Freed-Hardeman University, a Church of Christ institution in Henderson, Tenn.

Since Jan. 8, when Beth Cox, through a press conference held at ACU, told of her husband’s re-appearance, many new questions have surfaced.

He was located at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, working as housing director under the name James Simmons. A rancher in the Panhandle by the same name told the San Antonio Express News in a copyrighted story that Cox had been using his Social Security number.

A report surfaced that Simmons was expected to begin work Sunday as pastor of White Rock Community Church in Dallas, a 700-member congregation that ministers to gays and lesbians.

Cox’s story about being found comatose in a car trunk in Memphis after his disappearance in July 1984 couldn’t be verified by Memphis law enforcement agencies or hospitals.

Through all those revelations, Beth Cox said she still believed her husband’s story. And her faith, she said, remains unshaken.

“The Lord heals, but it takes time,” she said. “God is good.”

Cox’s minister, Shelly, was no stranger to tragedy at his church, located in a wooded, hilly section of Nashville, when Beth and Talitha Cox arrived on the scene. The church, in a prosperous area of town, is home to professional people whose names are well known in Nashville. Some have faced personal problems that Shelly has not shied away from.

“We’ve had people join this church because of the way we handled tragedies,” he said.

The Church of Christ is a conservative denomination with its main strength in the South. Shelly acknowledged that the church is seen as rigid and isolationist by some outsiders, but he doesn’t view his own congregation that way.

Shelly ministers to a congregation of 2,500 people. He said he knows that among them, some must be struggling with issues of human sexuality or skimming funds from their company or cheating on their spouse. The message of the church must be clear, he said.

“Can we be a safe community for people to deal with their struggles?” he asked.

The answer for Beth Cox is clearly, “yes.”

Before unwillingly becoming the center of worldwide media attention, she was known as a stalwart at her church. She taught Bible classes and was a model of kindness and integrity.

“I know that’s why I was drawn to her,” said a friend, Cathi, who asked that her last name not be used.

Cathi, Shelly and other acquaintances have marveled at Beth Cox’s faith, calm and perseverance even before last week’s startling revelations. Like many single parents, her main concern was raising her daughter and sheltering her as much as possible from life’s harshness. She did that admirably, friends said.

“There’s always a lot of hurt and pain that goes with losing a husband and being a single parent,” Cathi said.

Throughout Friday’s press conference in her Nashville church, Cox frequently made references to how “the Lord” had guided her life. No one who knows her well expects that to change even in the face of the most puzzling and disturbing revelations anyone could imagine.

“She has probably the strongest faith I’ve ever seen,” Cathi said.

Cox admitted that even though she doesn’t doubt God’s hand in the continuing drama, the “human part” of her wishes it hadn’t happened. Cox met with Shelly last week and he offered ministerial counsel. A question Cox posed gives a glimpse of the person she is, Shelly said, and the probable outcome of this trial for her.

“Do I become the source of encouragement for someone else?” was her question.

The poise, grace and confidence she displayed at last Friday’s press conference, under the most trying circumstances, left little doubt as to the answer.