Recently, I was watching Bill Anderson, from Nashville, Tennessee, host a program with a number of Nashville singers.  Many of them were Christians and they sang several Gospel songs.  To me, it was more like a Revival Meeting.  A number of them gave their testimony of what the Lord meant to them.

 

            On the program, they played a segment of all Ira Stanphill’s songs.  Bill Anderson said he never knew him, and didn’t know anything about him but he asked those present what they knew about him.  One of the Oakridge Boys, a Christian, told him a few things that he knew about him.  He explained that he had been a minister, songwriter and singer.  They also sang many of his songs on the program.  One of the singers sang one of his most popular and moving songs, “Suppertime”.

 

            I never had the privilege of hearing Rev. Ira Stanphill sing but he visited London, Ontario with his son, Butch, in approximately 1949.  My wife, Donna, heard him and purchased some of his sheet music.  She still has them today and likes to play them.

 

            One time, while attending Eastern Pentecostal Bible College, I rode to London with Rev. Laurie Price, who was speaking in London at the time.  In conversation, he asked me if I had ever heard Ira Stanphill sing or preach.  I said no but my wife had.  He told me the story of Ira Stanphill’s life.  Apparently, he and his wife were in the ministry when his wife left him after the birth of their son.  When he held meetings with Rev. Price in Belleville, Ontario, he would cry so much he would have to put powder under his eyes before the service to cover the redness.  Later, his wife was killed in a car accident and he remarried.  Recently on YouTube, he sang something that he had sung on 100 Huntley Street called, “Senior Citizen Shuffle“.