From These Roots

Marion Moorhead and Thelma Chandler spent a lifetime together, but their early lives could not have been more different. Marion Frances Moorhead was born on April 23, 1917, in Easley, South Carolina, to parents Walter Lewis Moorhead and Mary Sue Floyd Moorhead. He was the youngest of ten children, but three of his siblings died as infants. Walter Moorhead was a baggage master for the railways, and Mary was a homemaker.

Marion, it seems, had a good childhood in a stable home. He became a Christian as a teenager and a few days later entered North Greenville Baptist Academy to finish high school. In 1934, the same year he graduated from high school at North Greenville, the school expanded into a junior college. Marion enrolled as one of the first North Greenville Junior College students that fall.

Rosa Thelma Chandler was born on January 11, 1917, in Hopewell, Virginia, to parents Thomas Jefferson “Jeff” Chandler and Theodus Bramlett Chandler. Thelma had one older brother, and her father was a carpenter. Jeff and Theodus were from the upstate of South Carolina, but had moved to Virginia for two years so Jeff could find work. They moved back to the Greenville area when Thelma was a baby. Their marriage was very turbulent, and Theodus eventually left her husband out of fear for her life. She took her kids and moved in with her mother, Rosie Bramlett, who lived in an apartment over Cox’s Grocery Store on the corner of Buncombe Street and Echols Street in Greenville.

According to family members, Jeff had threatened Theodus’s life on several occasions. He had also complained to a police officer that the problem in his marriage was “too much mother-in-law”. Eventually, Theodus reported Jeff’s threats to the police and asked for a peace warrant to be issued for her protection. A warrant was issued by the magistrate, but Jeff was not arrested. The deputy sheriff later claimed that the warrant was not legal and that Theodus had told officers she did not want her husband arrested.

On the afternoon of February 25, 1922, Theodus and Rosie went to the movie theater and returned home. Jeff came to their apartment to confront Theodus after seeing a young man flirting with her at the theater. Also in the home at the time were four-year-old Thelma, her six-year-old brother, Douglas, her aunt, her 13-year-old cousin, Louie, and Louie’s 2-year-old sister. Louie later testified at the trial that he was in the room with his mother, Jeff, Theodus, and his little sister when Jeff and Theodus were arguing. He stated that Rosie was in the kitchen, Douglas was downstairs playing, and that Thelma was in the hallway outside of the room at the time. He said his Uncle Jeff sat down a few feet from his Aunt Theodus, and the two argued about the events at the theater. Jeff accused Theodus of letting a man flirt with her, and she denied noticing a man flirting with her. After about fifteen minutes of arguing, Jeff stood up like he was going to get a handkerchief out of his back pocket, but pulled out a gun and shot Theodus. By that time, Thelma and Rosie had come into the room. Jeff then turned and shot Rosie. Rosie and Theodus died almost instantly. Thelma ran to her mother and tried to wake her, crying, “Mother! Mother!”, but received no response. Jeff went into the hallway and tried to get Thelma to follow him, but she refused.

Jeff did not try to run and confessed to shooting his wife and mother-in-law right away. When he was told both women were dead, he wept uncontrollably and begged to see his children. He claimed insanity as his defense, and some of his family members testified that they had a family history of mental illness. They also claimed that Jeff had been acting differently in the months leading up to the murders. The insanity defense did not work at trial, and the jury took only seventeen minutes to reach a verdict. When Jeff was found guilty and sentenced to death by the electric chair, his only visible reaction was to smile for the first time since the trial began. While in jail, Jeff became a Christian and was baptized by Rev. J. Dean Crain just days before his death. After a failed appeal, he was executed on February 1, 1924.

Thelma and Douglas were sent to the Connie Maxwell Children’s Home in Greenwood, South Carolina, in 1924. Thelma remained at Connie Maxwell for about seven years before going to live with a family member in Baltimore, MD. While at Connie Maxwell, she loved to roller skate on the highway outside of the Children’s Home and later said, “It was against the law, but mighty fine skating.” Thelma kept close ties to Connie Maxwell Children’s Home for the rest of her life. In 1955, the children’s home named a building the White-Moorhead Cottage after Thelma and another alumna of the home. Thelma also received an award from them in 1959.

Thelma enrolled at North Greenville Junior College as a freshman in 1935. It was at North Greenville that Marion and Thelma met and fell in love. Marion later wrote to North Greenville English professor, Jean Martin Flynn, that he and Thelma knew almost from their first meeting that it seemed to be revealed that they would serve together in God’s work. God had put Japan on Marion’s heart during a missions class, and on their first date, he and Thelma discussed their mutual interest in mission work in Japan.

Marion and Thelma were very involved in campus life at North Greenville. They both participated in plays, debates, and literary societies. Marion was the editor-in-chief of the first Aurora yearbook and one of the first six graduates of North Greenville Junior College in 1936. Thelma was the valedictorian of her class when she graduated in 1937.

After leaving North Greenville, Thelma and Marion went to different schools to earn bachelor’s degrees. Marion attended Furman University, and Thelma attended Winthrop. Marion graduated from Furman in 1938 and moved to Texas to attend the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He returned home to South Carolina after a year at seminary. Thelma had graduated from Winthrop in 1939, and the couple became engaged in early 1940. They were wed in the chapel at Connie Maxwell Children’s Home on June 15, 1940. The following year, the Moorheads enrolled together at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Thelma earned a Master’s in Religious Education, and Marion earned a Master’s in Theology. Marion graduated a year before Thelma and worked as the Baptist Student Union Secretary at the University of Oklahoma while Thelma finished her degree.

World War II was still raging during this time, so Marion enlisted in the Navy as a chaplain in 1944. He served in this role until 1946, and while he was deployed, Thelma worked as the educational director at the First Baptist Church in Spartanburg. By this time, they were both finished with their graduate degrees and ready to pursue a life of mission work in Japan through the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board (today’s International Mission Board). To prepare for this, they spent a year at the University of Southern California at Berkley studying the Japanese language and culture.

The Moorheads and their two young sons, Michael and Douglas, set sail for Japan on December 14, 1948, and spent Christmas at sea that year. Their first role in Japan was teaching at the Seinan Gaukin high school for boys in Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu. While teaching at the school, the Moorheads also did evangelical work and welcomed their only daughter into the world in 1950. In 1952, they began the first Baptist church in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in their home with another missionary and a Japanese couple. After six years, the Moorheads moved to a different city where Marion was the director of religious activities at a Baptist school and the associate pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Thelma taught school and assisted with religious education at their church.

Marion became the pastor of Tokyo Baptist Church in 1963. Tokyo Baptist Church was an English-speaking church with the primary purpose of serving the military, businessmen, and diplomatic corps who came to Tokyo. Marion preached two sermons each Sunday at the church, and one sermon was conducted in English while the other was done in Japanese. While they were serving in Tokyo, Thelma worked as the Education Director at Tokyo Baptist Church and then taught at the Kohura International School.

The Moorheads served as missionaries in Japan for 36 years. When they took furloughs back home to South Carolina, they spent much of their time speaking at churches and events. During one of their furloughs, they had over 600 speaking engagements over the course of a year. When the Moorheads retired in 1982, their children were scattered across the United States. When their kids suggested that they settle near one of them, Marion responded, “Can you see the Blue Ridge Mountains from your area? ‘Cuse me, I want to live out my years where I can see the Blue Ridge Mountains.” The Moorheads settled in Easley, South Carolina, where Marion had always considered home to be.

The Moorheads did not slow down much in retirement. They were both heavily involved in North Greenville alumni activities, and Marion served as a trustee of North Greenville College and received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from North Greenville in 1996. Marion also served on the Pickens County Board of Habitat for Humanity and on the Foster Care Review Board of Judicial District 13-A. Thelma stayed involved with Connie Maxwell Children’s Home. She also served as a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church of Easley and a one-term Church Moderator. She was the first woman invited to speak to the Hayama Japan Pastor’s Conference and to the South Carolina Southern Baptist Convention in Columbia, SC.

Marion passed away on March 3, 1998, and Thelma passed away on January 13, 2014. They are buried together at Graceland West Cemetery in Greenville, South Carolina. Their lives were a testament to resilience, devotion, and the long reach of a shared calling that carried them from small Southern towns to the schools and sanctuaries of Japan.