Monday, January 2, 2012

1 comment:

  1. A few? The following are cigar smoking rogues of whom I have photographs with their stogies: Al Capone, Bonnie Parker, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein. Pipe smokers have a few rogues too, eg., Josef Stalin.

    While I was attending Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the Rev. Dr. Roger Pittelko, bishop emeritus of Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s English District, occasionally saw me smoking my pipe on the upper plaza next to the Kramer Chapel. On more than one occasion he hailed me as “a true Walther of the Church,” referring to the Rev. Dr. Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther, Missouri Synod’s first president, a respected nineteenth century theologian and a pipe smoker. On one occasion I responded that the cigar smokers regard themselves to be Walther’s true successors. Dr. Pittelko, neither a pipe nor cigar smoker, responded that cigar smokers merely imagine that they are theologians, but pipe smokers are Walther’s true successors.

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