June Cantrell
June Cantrell is a senior with a mission. She is driven by the desire to continue in her ministerial role as well as being connected in the Seadrift community.
Undaunted by a loss in the recent Seadrift City Council election, she says she will continue to stay connected by coming to the city council meetings.
Her love for community as well as ministry is an outgrowth of being planted in a God-fearing family and an experience she calls “born-again.”
Her parents, Reginald and Jewell Hardy, were involved in ministry over a span of fifty-two years. After Jewell passed, Reginald continued in ministry another thirteen years.
Reginald, the youngest of eight children, was able to attend McMurray’s Methodist College to pursue the career of a pastor. Even though his family was poor, the family was able to scrape the money together to help Reginald attend college. When he was just a child, he would round up the local children from the neighboring farms to preach to them.
Jewell Hardy gave up a career of being a concert pianist to become a pastor’s wife. Together they had three children, June being the youngest.
June remembers a memorable trip she made with her parents to Washington, D.C. It was there that they saw Lyndon B. Johnson, then Senator, and Sam Rayburn, then House Speaker. Each one of these men were from Texas. This was sometime around 1955. The family also watched then Senator John F. Kennedy introduce a bill in the Senate. Reginald pointed out to his family each one of the senators. He recognized them because of reading the paper and watching them on T.V. Needless to say, June’s interest in politics was birthed by her parents, particularly by her father.
June felt the call to ministry when she was sixteen. It was much later in life when she knew that the call to ministry was knocking at her heart’s door. June responded.
In 2004 June took her first pastorate. In 2008 she had to take leave of ministry to care for her ailing husband, Lon. In 2010 her husband went into a nursing home and June resumed her ministry. She served Seadrift Methodist for seven years and the Austwell Methodist for nine years. In 2018 June began filling in at the Bloomington Methodist and continues until today.
June stated that “the reason I want to be in the pastorate is because I was “born-again.” I realized God was not “somewhere out there,” but was “right here” all the time. I want to help people find what I had found.. to know God in their midst.”
Well put, June!
