My Three Worlds

About the Book

     Alden Matthews, retired in Florida,. joined a personal life history writing group and began writing essays as Uncle Matt, joining current events with memories in Uncle Matt’s Now and Then. In response to the urging of family and friends he began to recast his memories in chronological order to form this book.  The result is a tale of three worlds as he experienced them over a period of some 85 years.  It is published with considerable hesitancy now, but in the hope that it will encourage others to go and do likewise.  The reader is urged to find and join his or her own writing group and share the memories that mean the most.

About the Author

     Born in Chicago in 1921, the author grew up in north China as the son of missionary parents. The family returned to Iowa in 1937 where he attended high school as a junior and then graduated from Grinnell High in 1939. He graduated from Grinnell College in 1943 and from Chicago Theological Seminary in 1946.  Most of his time in seminary was spent in the USN V-12 program to train chaplains for WWII, but the war ended before graduation when he became a chaplain in the naval reserve.  In 1944 he married college classmate Derrith Jane Lovell.

     In 1947, after a year studying Chinese at Yale, they were commissioned by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions of the Congregational Christian Churches and served in south China, in the mid-Fukien Synod of the Church of Christ in China, until December of 1950. Transferring to Japan in 1952, they served in the United Church of Christ in Japan until retirement in 1986. Their three daughters were born in the U. S., China, and Japan and his wife died of cancer in Japan just before her 65^th birthday.  Sallie Parks came into his life from Florida while he was still grieving to give him a new lease on life and they were married in Florida in 1996 and live there today.