Clyde and Gwen Antwine: A living snapshot of love and evangelism
It all began with a snapshot. Clyde Antwine was 15…
A marriage as pretty as a picture
Missions mentors Clyde and Gwen Antwine celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary.
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OKLAHOMA CITY — They say the first 70 years of marriage are the toughest.
So I’m really glad to see my friends Clyde and Gwen Antwine get past that milestone.
I met this wonderful, godly couple 25 years ago, just days after I moved to Oklahoma to work for The Christian Chronicle. They picked me up at the InTown Suites, where I had boxes of clothes and a microwave stacked on a table as I apartment-shopped, and took me to their favorite restaurant — Applebee’s.
Related: Clyde and Gwen Antwine: A living snapshot of love and evangelism
I learned that they had served as missionaries in Europe and occasionally led groups of students from Oklahoma Christian University on mission trips. I also learned that Gwen, who goes by “Queenie,” was the talker of the two, though Clyde is an excellent storyteller — when he can get a word in.
Clyde got to tell his best-known story at the 70th anniversary party his children threw at the Memorial Road Church of Christ recently. It begins at a two-week encampment at Abilene Christian University in Texas. Clyde, age 15, got the money to attend after selling his FFA prize-winning steer for $40. At camp, Clyde encountered “the prettiest little girl I’ve ever seen.” That would be Queenie, then age 14.
“I was extremely shy, and she was extremely outgoing and popular with all the boys,” Clyde recalled. “The last day of camp, I worked up the courage to ask her if I could take her picture, and she posed. And I put that picture in my wallet. I didn’t even know her name. I just knew she was pretty.”
“The last day of camp, I worked up the courage to ask her if I could take her picture, and she posed. And I put that picture in my wallet. I didn’t even know her name. I just knew she was pretty.”
He carried that picture in his wallet for five years. Then, during his sophomore year at Abilene Christian, he was eating lunch in the cafeteria.
“I looked up, and here comes that pretty girl from Clyde, Texas,” he said. “She sits down across from me and says, ‘Remember me?’ And I pulled out my wallet and said, ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
“And I still have that picture in my wallet 75 years later.”
A pair of teddy bears smooches next to a framed photo from Clyde and Gwen Antwine’s wedding in 1956 adorned with inspirational messages from family and friends.
Six months after that reunion, they married.
In 1959, not long after Clyde graduated, the newlyweds boarded a boat for Europe. Their first stop: Zurich, Switzerland. The Church of Christ (“Gemeinde Christi” in German) was just a few months old, planted by a World War II vet, Jack McKinney, and Swiss evangelist Heinrich Blum.
“We seemed to live from one crisis to the next,” Clyde recalled when I interviewed him about his time in Switzerland. “That’s going to happen until you have that healthy nucleus. The wolves are going to come in.”
In their seven years in Zurich, the Antwines helped establish that nucleus, along with dedicated Christians including Wolfram and Berty Schrader. When I visited the Zurich church in 2022, the loving congregation counted 60 members — probably one of the healthiest bodies of believers
I’ve encountered in Europe. They were evangelistic and hospitable to people from around the world, including some Ukrainian refugees.
“I don’t know how else to describe it,” I said in a phone call to my wife. “It’s like an entire church full of Clydes and Gwens.”
Clyde and Gwen Antwine, center, share smiles with church members in Venezuela.
Later, the Antwines worked with churches in the German cities of Augsburg and Munich. After nearly two decades in Europe, they returned to the U.S. Their longtime friend Howard Norton, then Bible chair at Oklahoma Christian and editor of the Chronicle, recruited Clyde to serve as missionary in residence at OC. Gwen worked as office manager for the Chronicle, a job she had when I arrived in 2001. I remember hearing her talk to Clyde on her office phone, ending with “Tschüss, mein Schatz” (“Goodbye, my love”).
Before I worked for the Chronicle, I had never left the U.S. Gwen took me to the post office and helped me get my first-ever passport. She’d done it many times before. She and Clyde led countless teams of students on mission trips to Germany and other parts of Europe. Clyde also oversaw Helpers in Missions, known as HIM, a missionary apprentice program of the Memorial Road church.
“Gwen would get you laughing and see the positive side when things got tough, and Clyde, in his quiet voice, would somehow say the exact words you needed to hear to keep you spiritually grounded.”
One OC student Clyde mentored was Randy Carroll, who spent a year in Bremen, Germany, through the HIM program. Randy and his wife, Brianna, did summer campaigns with the Antwines before moving to Dresden, Germany, where they served as missionaries from 2001 to 2011.
“Clyde and Gwen created a uniquely balanced mentorship,” said Brianna Carroll, now a music teacher at Southwest Christian School in Fort Worth, Texas. “Gwen would get you laughing and see the positive side when things got tough, and Clyde, in his quiet voice, would somehow say the exact words you needed to hear to keep you spiritually grounded.
Gwen and Clyde Antwine pose for a photo in 2022, the year they received the Mission Service Award from Oklahoma Christian University.
“They poured so much of themselves into young people and never asked for recognition or any kind of return. Their goal truly was and is to create missionaries for the Kingdom, as simple as that.”
Whenever I see Clyde and Gwen, we swap travel stories, though I think Gwen prefers getting updates on my two daughters. Of all the stories we’ve shared, I think Clyde’s picture of 14-year-old Queenie is my favorite.
I’m pretty sure Clyde first told me that story at Applebee’s 25 years ago. A few months later, I met a pretty first-year medical school student named Jeanie Jacks. We dated for a few months. Then I left on my first-ever trip to Europe. Facebook and iPhones were still a few years away, so I asked if I could take her picture so I’d have it with me overseas.
Twenty-three years later, I still have that picture in my wallet.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll still have it at our 70th anniversary.
That’ll be June 14, 2073, Lord willing. I’ll be 100. You’re all invited.
ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected].
