The publisher received a great pentecostal heritage from his maternal grandparents. Thomas Josiah Kinard I (1889-1971) was an East Texas farm boy and World War I veteran who founded Assemblies of God churches in Simmons Bottom, Baytown, and Crosby, Texas, and pastored elsewhere, including Waldron and Mansfield in Arkansas. His wife, the former Ceycle Leslie Hutchins (1906-88), was also an ordained minister.
For several years, Tom Kinard's parents moved to Hico, a boomtown west of Waco, where Tom was born. They rejoined the rest of the family in Polk County in 1896. Unfortunately, during the interim the family farm had been lost to taxes. The Kinards became tenant farmers on property on the banks of Big Sandy Creek, south of Camp Ruby.
Tom Kinard became accustomed to hard labor. Soon he had to support his aging parents, two sisters, and an invalid brother, who died young. They raised corn and cotton, plus vegetables for their own table. When able, Tom worked in logging camps or lumber mills in the region. He built a four-room board-and-batten house for the family, and the old log house was turned into a barn. Due to such obligations, Tom was never able to spend much time in school.
The brush arbor services had no real preacher. They would sit and pray, until the Spirit would move on one of the men to preach. At one of these meetings, young Tom began to feel moved by the Spirit. But he was shy, and held back. The longer he waited, the more upset he became. Finally, an older man next to him nudged him and said, "That's you, Tom." So he got up and preached his first sermon. From then on, Tom Kinard felt called to preach the gospel.
After the Armistice, Tom served in the Army of Occupation, in the vicinity of Coblenz, Germany. He return home after the fanfare of victory had died down. Tom remained proud of his military service the rest of his life, though he spoke with relief that, as far as he knew, he had never killed a man.
The elder Tom originally worked in the warehouse department at the refinery. In the height of the Great Depression, Humble began to lay off its unmarried men, then those who had only one child. Fortunately, the Kinards' second child, Naomi Ruth (the publisher's mother), was born just weeks before Tom would have been laid off. As it was, he was demoted to the labor gang where, in his mid-forties, his strength and stamina were challenged daily.
By this time, the Kinards had acquired property in nearby Highlands, where an Assembly of God was just getting started. In those days, few landowners would knowingly sell land to a "holy roller" church. So Tom and Ceycle donated a lot for the new church building. When the opportunity arose, Tom founded his first pastorate in the rural community of Simmons Bottom, over 30 miles north. During World War II, when preachers were scarce, Tom and Ceycle held services in three different locations, each 20 or more miles apart. Meanwhile, Tom continued to work full-time.
The saints sat around Tom's bedroom in prayer for a long time. In time, the Spirit of God settled sweetly and heavily upon the room, and He began to move. Tom's body began to quiver with the power of God. Though still ravaged by the disease, he knew he had been healed, and gradually recovered to full health.
In 1954, Tom Kinard was sought out by church friends from the Baytown area to come found a church in nearby Crosby. They returned to Texas and built the original church building (which the publisher knew as a boy). Tom did much of the construction himself.
About 1960, the Kinards bought a small farm back in Tom's native Polk County, where they again "retired." They worked hard to maintain the large garden where they grew the vegetables they both loved. They attended the Assembly of God at the Indian Reservation, where Ceycle stayed very busy teaching Sunday school and other activities.
Ceycle Kinard, not one to sit around, spent most of the next decade nursing several other bedfast gentlemen, relieving part of the burden from their wives. She made numerous quilts, afgans, and other items, which she gave to friends and family, or sold. Though unable to attend church regularly, she remained an avid student of Scripture. She spent her last few years remarried to an old family friend, who had also been widowed. But before she died, she was able to attend the seminary graduation of her grandson, Paul.
Note: you can find several poems written by Tom and Ceycle Kinard on the Christian Poetry Page at this site.