R.E. Tottress
98 YEARS OLD, AND STILL GOING STRONG
Elder Richard Edward Tottress has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, evangelist, educator, broadcaster, and author. In the Fall of 2016 Elder Tottress is still working. He regularly attends services at Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Elder
Tottress is the son of a Baptist minister. His father, M.A. Tottress was born
in Texas in 1898. His mother Edna was an Oklahoma native. Richard is the eldest
of a family of eighteen children. Three of his eleven brothers also became
preachers. The 1940 U.S. Census notes that he was born in 1918 on a farm near
the Creek County township of Newby, Oklahoma. A few years after his birth oil
was discovered in nearby Slick, Oklahoma. Favored landowners of all races
prospered for a season, but a decade later the boom had peaked and the boomtown
of Slick was depopulated.
Dr. R.E.
Tottress attended school in Bristow, Oklahoma, about ten miles away from Newby.
At Lincoln High School he distinguished himself by winning a statewide oratory
competition. Founded in 1922, Lincoln served as a premier learning environment
for Bristow’s African-American Community, at least until Bristow High School
integrated in 1958. Elder Tottress also diligently studied the Bible as a
youth, and noted the disparity between Scriptural precepts and the actions of
most of the people who professed to be Christian.
Upon
graduation from Lincoln High, Elder Tottress (like many other Oklahoma
residents during the depths of the Great Depression) migrated to California.
His first stop was in Fresno, where a company of Adventists had been formed in
1931. In Fresno Elder Tottress had not yet accepted the Advent message, but God
intended that he would soon do so.
It was on
the West Coast that Elder Tottress providentially encountered a book by African-American
Adventist pioneer Elder F.L. Peterson. Its title is “The Hope of the Race.”
This 1934 work advocates Jesus as the only solution to problems that plague
disadvantaged black Americans. It strongly recommends the Seventh-day Adventist
denomination as an effective doctrine and discipline not only for the present
day, but for all eternity. Elder Tottress read this book and discovered answers
to questions that had been nagging him as a seeker of truth, and simultaneously
discovered a satisfying model upon which he could pattern his own life.
Apparently Adventists made every effort to observe and obey the commandments of
God. And while Adventists are by no means perfect people (for all have sinned,
and fallen short of the glory of God), strict obedience is a certain proof
against charges of hypocrisy.
The author
of the book that so influenced young Richard Tottress, Frank Loris Peterson,
happened to be the first black student at Pacific Union College. This Adventist
institution was founded in 1882. In 2012 the U.S. News & World Report
ranked Pacific Union College second out of 219 national liberal arts colleges
for campus ethnic diversity. F.L. Peterson inaugurated this trend toward
diversity, graduating in 1916. In 1917 he became the first black teacher at
another Adventist institution, one that was created in 1896 specifically for
African-Americans. Ironically, for the first two decades of its existence the
staff of what was then known as “Oakwood Junior College” was all Caucasian.
Dr. Tottress
not only fully embraced the faith that Elder Peterson had publisized, but also
followed the trailsthat his mentor had blazed to Pacific Union College and
(ultimately) to Oakwood College.
In
California Elder Tottress gained further knowledge of the Advent message in the
San Francisco area through the evangelical activity of Elder Byron Spears. He
was baptized in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco by Elder Norman
S. McLeod. This immersion occurred at Philadelphian Seventh-day Adventist
Church. The fresh convert would now enroll in Pacific Union College, F.L.
Peterson’s alma mater, located 75 miles due north of the site of his baptism.
At Pacific
Union Elder Tottress personally encountered the man of God who had influenced
him to become an Adventist, F.L. Peterson. The new student was practically
adopted into the Peterson family. He was even roommates at Pacific Union with
F.L. Peterson’s son, Frank Jr. While attending the school Elder Tottress served
as religion editor for the school newspaper, the “Campus Chronicle” during 1941
and 1942. Future General Conference President Neal Wilson was concurrently the
chapel editor of this publication, and in 1943 Frank Jr. was made an associate
editor.
Having
earned his B.A. in theology in 1943, Elder Tottress now spent his internship
assisting in a series of tent revivals that took place in the Lubbock, Texas
area. This evangelical campaign was under the direction of Russell Nelson, a
native of New York. The elder also served as a civilian chaplain for Camp Barkeley,
a World War II era United States Army training facility located near Abilene,
Texas. At the peak of its operation this base had a population of 50,000 souls.
In June of
1946 Elder Tottress married the former Margarreau Flourine Norton. She would
accompany him wherever his ministry called him to be up until her death in
February of 1999, a partnership that would endure for over a half-century. The
couple’s life journey would eventually include the Southwest Region, South
Central. and finally the South Atlantic conferences of the Seventh-day
Adventist Church.
Elder
Tottress earned two additional degrees, a second B.A. from Oakwood College
(currently named Oakwood University), and a doctorate from the University of
Beverly Hills. He also studied as a post-graduate student at Andrews University
and Texas A&M. He was ordained as a pastor in 1951, and went on to lead
churches in Texas, Georgia, and North and South Carolina.
The
long-running syndicated radio program created and hosted by Elder Tottress,
“Your Bible Speaks,” was first aired in
Charleston, South Carolina in 1963 while he was the pastor of Shiloh
Seventh-day Adventist Church. It would continue to be broadcast for the next
four decades. A men’s chorale ensemble which currently performs as “The Singing
Men of Oakwood University Church” was founded in order to provide music for
this program.
The June 1,
1963 edition of the Southern Union publication “Southern Tidings” declares that
“Elder R.E. Tottress has accepted a call to serve as dean of boys for the
Academy of Oakwood College.” The Tottress family relocated from South Carolina
to Huntsville, Alabama, location of Oakwood, and served at this institution in
various positions. He initially headed the Bible and History Departments at the
Academy, then went on to join the Bible Department of the College. He also
served as assistant dean of men at Oakwood.
When the
Oakwood College Church became independent of the Huntsville district in 1965,
Elder Tottress became its first pastor after this reorganization. He helped to
forge a strategic vision for the prominent and influential house of worship,
one which is now led by Dr. Carlton P. Byrd. In 1969 Elder Tottress
relinquished the helm, but assumed it once again when he served as as interim
pastor from 1972-1973. At the time of a special Oakwood tribute to the elder,
biographer E.C. Ward recorded the pastor’s current responsibilities as
including a staff position in the Bible Department of Oakwood, duties as a
media librarian, the chaplaincy of the radio station WOCG-FM, and a
co-pastorate at the Oakwood College Church.
The literary
and poetic work of Elder Tottress were written during the course of his
academic, administrative, and pastoral activities. His juvenilia and
manuscripts now reside in the Andrews University Library, but a good number of
his books have been published and are available online. An enormous quantity of brochures, pamphlets,
tracts, and essays have also been penned by the elder. Whatever length or
form his output may assume, all are at
least partially intended to familiarize potential converts to the Adventist
faith with some of the denomination’s distinctive beliefs. These are the very
truths that so attracted Elder Tottress
when he first encountered them as a young man. The worldwide online
library catalog list five of his seven publications as being “widely held.”
The first of
these catalogued works was written in the fifties, and was published between
1955 and 1957 in three editions. It is titled “Heaven’s Entrance Requirements
for the Races.” In this book, one released in the early days of that portion of
the ongoing struggle for Civil Rights that benefited from national media
coverage, Elder Tottress reminds his readers that God is no respecter of
persons. The Biblical precepts and promises that lead the believer to eternal
life are universally applicable, and entirely color-blind. Elder Tottress
exhibits a forgiving nature in the pages of the book, as Jesus commanded us to
forgive others.
A two-volume
set of poem by Richard E. Tottress entitled “Selections from Pastor Tot’s poems
and points” was published in 1956. Nineteen years later, in 1975, another book of verse, “Truth speaks:
poems” was published. Two works were
printed in 1979; “Twenty-five silver “A” broadcasts,” a compendium of some of
his radio addresses, and “Aspects of N., C., & B. history: All within a
lifetime.” The N., C., & B. stand for the evolution of the terms that
society has chosen in order to designate African-Americans; Negro, Colored, and
Black. It describes many of the noteworthy people and places in the development
of the African-American Adventist church that Elder Tottress was eyewitness to during the course of his long
career. Finally, a less well-documented work titled “Special sermon series: no.
1-” was published in 1979.
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