1951
Many books ate written after the death of a loved one. Sometimes it's the death of a child, sometimes the death of a parent, { 92 j sometimes the death of a spouse. Most such books are never published and most of the ones that are published have minimal sales outside of the immediate family circle.
A Man Called Peter was different for many reasons. The subject was Peter Marshall, the celebrated chaplain of the United States Senate, whose life was suddenly cut short at the age of forty-seven. The author was his widow, Catherine Marshall, and this book launched her writing career, with numerous bestsellers to follow. A year before this biography was published, a book of Marshall's sermons, edited by Catherine, was issued under the title Mr. Jones, Meet the Master. Its amazing sales surpassed the one million mark. So when Catherine wrote the biography, she tucked in six of Peter's sermons at the end.
Not only did A Man Called Peter break into the best-seller ranks, but a few years later was turned into a Hollywood movie by Twentieth Century-Fox, and it has enjoyed numerous airings in the following decades as a TV rerun.
Peter Marshall had come to America from his native Scotland when he was twenty-five. He never losL his Scottish brogue and that added to his charm as a speaker. Four years later he had completed seminary and was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry.
Catherine met Peter when he was a thirty-one-year-old bachelor-pastor of Atlanta's Westminster Presbyterian Church and she was a twenty-year-old coed at Agnes Scott College in the city. Two years later they married, and weeks later they were moving to Washington, D.C., where Peter became pastor of the prestigious Ne w York Avenue Church.
Adjustment to marriage was not easy for either of them "No two lives are fused into perfect oneness without a certain amount of painful adjustment/׳ Catherine wrote. ״Every cou-pie has difficulties.״
In 1947 Peter was chosen to be chaplain of the U.S. Senate, and his prayers before that body soon became renowned. One day he prayed, ״We confess, our Father, that we know we need Thee, yet our swelled heads and our stubborn wills keep us trying to do without Thee. Forgive us for making so many mountains out of molehills and for exaggerating both our own importance and the problems that confront us.״
Early in January 1949 Peter was stricken with a fatal heart attack, leaving his thirty-four-year-old widow, Catherine, and their young son, Peter John, barely nine years old.
Catherine had always wanted to be a writer but she had put her ambitions on hold when she and Peter were married. Then after reading Hannah Whitall Smith's The Christian's Secret: of a Happy Life, she received some spiritual insight and a new impetus to write.
Not only was it therapeutic to write Peter's biography, but it also set the stage for the remainder of Catherine's life. To support herself and their son, she continued to write, becoming a successful author of Christian books such as To Live Again, Something More, Meeting God at Every Turn, and The Helper. She also tried her hand at fiction, writing the beloved novel Christy. In time, she became one of the most popular Christian writers of the twentieth century.
In 1959 she married Feonard LeSourd, and together with John and Elizabeth Sherrill they established Chosen Books, a publishing venture that produced several best-sellers of the 1970s. Catherine Marshall died in 1983 at the age of sixty-eight.