The Hall of Fame: Heather Beggs

A very young Heather modeling the latest in balloon wear at the 1987  youth Christmas Party!

As mentioned in previous posts, when I arrived at Springfield Friends Meeting in October of 1986 the youth ministry was in turmoil.  My predecessor, Wallace Sills, had left to become Pastor at Jamestown Friends Meeting, and some of the families had gone with him.  One of those families was the Beggs family.  The three children- Heather, Emily and Mandy- were still around Springfield from time to time, but I didn't have much chance to get to know them.  All of that changed in the summer of 1987.  I was Camp Pastor for a middle school camp at Quaker Lake, and Heather was one of the campers.  Thus began a relationship that is still important to me to this day.

Heather and I wound up on the same "team" for that week of camp.  Thanks in large part to her, that team chose the name "The Boogers (although I remember spelling it 'Buggars')."  We had our very own Booger song to the tune of a popular Dr. Pepper commercial of the day; "I'm a booger, you're a booger, lots of folks you know are boogers, wouldn't you like to be a booger too?"  We had a great week together, along with Laurie Rees from Springfield, and Heather and I connected.  That connection was confirmed when she called me (the famous Heather BBBB call) in the early morning to ask if she could come to Triennials for the day.  She came over and hung out with me most of the day.  After that, things just began to take off!

Over the next 5 years, no one was more at the center of what we did at Springfield than Heather Beggs.  Her personality and energy helped put the charge in our community outreach program we called TNT.  She was part of three great summer trips, two to Myrtle Beach and one to Florida.  She cried her way through Les Miz and a couple of New York trips.  For over a year she counted down to her 16th birthday, and when it came we had the party in our youth room.  She and her friends Keri Vinson and Shelley Godwin (who both became a huge part of my life and will get their own stories later on!) became regular visitors to my office after school, and we talked about everything.  I heard about her love life through the good and the bad;  she came to me for advice on many occasions in her high school days.  Late night phone calls, crazy stories and a shared passion for music kept us talking and laughing.  She always asked me to check her nose to make sure it was clean!  So many of my favorite memories of those years include Heather, and this blog will still have many more stories to tell!

Today Heather Beggs Varner is a wife, a mother of three, and the Director of Quaker Lake Camp.  In 2006 she invited me to be Camp Pastor for high school camp, and that opportunity to work with her was very special to me.  We don't get to see each other much anymore, but I could not be more proud of who she is or what she has accomplished. She is a blessing to so many through her ministry at QLC.  But she is still the same crazy girl I remember, too.  Just yesterday she heard that I had mentioned her in this blog, and she called me and sang the Booger Song to me- the long version!  She will always hold a special place in my heart, and a front row listing in my Youth Group Hall of Fame. 

Because of Jesus,