Franklin
If this is his time, then he is ready.

The Rev. Henry Blunt, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Franklin, said when he accepted the call to preach, everything that could go wrong, went wrong.

He and his wife, Clarissa, had bought a home and were well on their way to developing lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At first, he wasn’t too keen on leaving, but after spending 25 years of his life running from the ministry, Blunt knew that this was the time.

Really, he’d known all of his life that the ministry was his calling. Born in Point Coupee Parish, west of the Mississippi River near St. Francisville, Louisiana, Blunt didn’t start having doubts on his calling until he was 12.

“I’d seen people who were planning to be pastors — they did not dance, they did not chew tobacco, they did not smoke, they did not see girls, and they did not follow sports. That was the devil’s work, but I liked the devil’s work,” he said with a laugh.

And so, at 18, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and became a steward, which Blunt said was just a fancy military word for servant and cook.

“When I signed up in New Orleans, that wasn’t really what I signed up for,” he said.

At the time, Blunt said the military assigned people roles by the color of their skin, but he admitted being a steward had a good side to it.

“If you worked for high-ranking officers, you got special privileges,” he said, adding that he was the No. 1 fellow of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, who was the brother of Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd.

Blunt was part of Byrd’s later exploratory voyages to Antarctica.

“That was virgin territory,” he said. “It was quite an experience for a little boy from Point Coupee Parish.”

Once he left the military, Blunt went to college at Southern University, where he would meet the love of his life. Blunt knew Clarissa’s brother, “Cozzy” Peters, and that’s how the pair became acquainted.

“Here I am as old as the teachers,” he said with a laugh. “It terrified her brothers and some in the community. They said we wouldn’t last, but here we are 50 years later.”

“We were only separated while he was in seminary,” Clarissa added with a smile.

Blunt said there was no moment like Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus, with a bright light and a voice from heaven. The calling was just back in his heart.

He’d been accepted to Virginia Union University in Richmond, which was one of two colleges at the time that had an accredited black seminary program conducive to becoming a contemporary pastor.

When Blunt left in August of 1974, they had recently purchased a new $55,000 home with a two-car garage in Baton Rouge. And after six years of prayer, Clarissa was pregnant with their son.

Two weeks prior to when he’d leave, his new Volkswagen had been hit in the back while stopped at a red light. In a normal car, Blunt said he’d have just kept driving, but this car had the engine in the back.

However, as a waiter, he’d developed a relationship with some customers who he called special. One of them had heard that Blunt was going to seminary, but wondered how he’d get there and what he’d wear?

The man gave him a card to buy a suit, and offered his 1962 Plymouth.

“I went to the finest men’s store in Baton Rouge and bought two suits,” Blunt said. “Those two suits lasted all of seminary.”

Disaster struck in Biloxi, Mississippi, as he found that the breaks on the Plymouth were no longer working. So, he stopped for the night at a motel.

“I went to sleep, and the next morning, I had brakes,” Blunt said. “So I drove to Richmond.”

On his way in, he stopped at a barber shop. The owner — who would also go on to be a preacher — took an interest in him.

“He asked me if I was going to be a preacher, and if I had a place to stay,” Blunt said, and the answers were yes and he wasn’t sure. The barber responded, “‘If you end up needing a place to stay, I’ve got a room up stairs.’”

So for his first two weeks in Richmond, that’s where he stayed free of charge, and Blunt always had a part-time job there. After he graduated in 1977, he got a job in Caroline County preaching.

“We never really talked about leaving Baton Rouge,” Blunt said. “I know it was a challenge for her. You see, my wife had tenure in the Baton Rouge school system, and I know she didn’t really want to go through that again.”

Clarissa, originally from Bogalusa, Louisiana, said it was tough.

“Initially, I did not want to leave Baton Rouge,” she said. “I had come up for the summer to visit, always with the intent to go back. Richmond wasn’t really so bad — there was a lot to do.

“But once we got to Franklin, it was just like Bogalusa all over again, which made me even more homesick. I was determined to not like it, but now it is home and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

Blunt said he deeply appreciated her for leaving a job with tenure behind and all of her friends and family, so that he could pursue his dream. That dream ultimately put him in Franklin at First Baptist, where he was the pastor for 22 years. After he retired in 2002, he was succeeded by the Rev. Dwight Riddick.

“You hear horror stories about the transition between a longtime pastor and the new guy,” Riddick said. “But there was none of that. Pastor Blunt has been an incredible mentor — even beyond the help he provided in acclimating me to the church and city. He and his wife have been a great example to my wife and I.”

Riddick said when he first arrived, Blunt took him to Fred’s Restaurant to talk about the ministry.

“I have come to love Pastor Blunt. He let me embrace the new, but I am just picking up where he left off. A lot of the great family values, faith values of the church are from him.”

Franklin has been a good place to be, a place filled with good folks.

“The people, they are nice, warm and friendly — and fussy,” he said with a laugh. “It’s just a good place. It’s where my kids grew up. It’s home. It’s where I’m going to go to heaven from.”

“And I will too,” Clarissa added.

On Sunday, Audrey Lee is conducting one of the easiest banquets she has ever organized. When she told people that she was planning an appreciation banquet for the former pastor, they were all instantly on board.

“He’s just such a great man of integrity, of loyalty,” Lee said. “We’ve already sold all 350 tickets.”

Blunt survived his first bought with cancer more than 20 years previous. Around 2013, he was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder.

“Maybe two months ago, the medical team told me that there was nothing they could do. They discharged me to a hospice,” he said. “I still haven’t accepted that. My wife has been taking care of me since then.”

When the physicians told him that it was only a matter of time, some of the people around him wondered why he was not afraid.

“I suppose it is shocking when the doctors tell you that there’s nothing they can do, but to me, that’s where the faith kicks in,” Blunt said. “I believe that it’s in God’s hands now. Either way it goes, I win.

“If this is the disease that takes me home, then so be it. I’m in my 88th year on this planet — I’ve had a good life, I’ve had a good wife, and I am a man of faith.”