Birdie and Versie Flake, shown at the 49th anniversary last July, are both from Tennessee, but met in Benton Harbor.

By JOHN EBY
Dowagiac Daily News

It’s been 13 years since Versie Flake’s family gathered to say goodbye.

After battling colon cancer, it would be a miracle if he lived through the night.

Yet he did in 1997 and again in 2001, when he survived a bout with prostate cancer.

“The night I was supposed to die,” he recalled on July 13, 2009, “I was lying there in bed and my body started going up. It wasn’t no rocket thing, but around and around, like a winding step. As I went up, I could see that presence in the bed. The further I got up, the more peaceful it got. I got up to a place where I didn’t have any thoughts about my wife, my house, the church. It was just unimaginable peacefulness. From that point, I started getting better.”

Flake learned he had colon cancer on his birthday, July 30.

A section was removed during surgery at Community Hospital in Watervliet Aug. 14, 2008, along with nine lymph nodes, of which seven were cancerous.

“Somebody told me the Lord isn’t done with me yet,” Flake said. Longevity runs in his family. His father lived to 95, his mother, 104, eating “little bits.”

Flake, 85, overseer of Peace Temple Church of God in Christ, 102 Andrews St., will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of his ministry this weekend.  When Flake first saw the property where his church stands it was an overgrown vacant lot strewn with trash.

He actually started his ministry a street over on Thickstun, in a former storefront near Walter Ward Park.

Peace Temple plans a three-day celebration starting Friday, July 16, at 7:30 p.m. with Bishop Nathaniel W. Wells Jr., prelate of the Western Michigan Jurisdiction and general board member of the Church of God in Christ Inc. (COGIC) as speaker
Saturday, July 17, at 7:30 p.m. the speaker will be Superintendent James Atterberry, pastor of the All National Brotherhood COGIC, Benton Harbor.

Sunday, July 18, at 4 p.m. features Administrator William Nichols, Community Temple, Benton Harbor.

The community is invited.

“I had no connection to Dowagiac,” he said. “I had a friend in Benton Harbor with a body shop. We were going over to Cassopolis to pick up some parts, but he drove down over here on Thickstun Street.”