He committed himself to Christ Jesus as a young adult and began a lifelong relationship with his Lord and Savior, the God who is Love.
He adored his daughter, dancing with her whenever she was fussy or couldn’t sleep.
He was a good father to his sons, faithful to his wife of 8 years and to his life partner of 22 years.
He loved being out of doors and was quite fond of his four cats, Tiggrr, Scooter, Farmer Grayson, and Precious.
He did not know a stranger and enjoyed making others laugh, from babies to adults.
He was Albert Lynn Hawthorne, beloved by family and friends alike.
Born April 10, 1957, to a sharecropping family that raised cotton and soybeans, Lynn had eleven siblings, one of whom died at the age of nine. Lynn was mischievous and fun-loving and spoilt. If he didn’t like what the family was having for supper, his mama would fix him fried potatoes to eat. A compassionate person, he cried when he had to put down a family pet as a youth and, as an adult, Lynn took a leave of absence from work for a year to care for a church acquaintance who was dying of AIDS, whose family would have nothing to do with him.
As a boy reared in the southwest corner of Arkansas, Lynn lived too far from school and town to participate in any school-related activities. The bus ride alone was over an hour and a half each way. His playmates were his cousins and relatives. Family chores were an everyday occurrence. One such chore involved culling the flock of chickens. When he was told to go wring a hen’s neck, he grabbed one and swung it around and around and let it go without the necessary pop at the end. That poor chicken went running around and squawking loudly with its head leaned over and its wrenched neck crooked. His mama laughed so hard, saying she didn’t have the heart to kill the poor bird. The chicken was spared a grisly fate and lived a long and healthy life with its crooked neck.
Lynn excelled at school and graduated in 1975 from Texarkana Arkansas High School. He began working as a stock boy at TG&Y, where he met Carolyn Ferguson, who would become his wife. She encouraged Lynn to go to college and helped him earn a Bachelor of Arts in Business with a focus in Accounting from Red River Vocational-Technical School, now reconstituted as the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope. Math was his favorite subject and Mr. Willie Buck was his accounting instructor. Lynn was the first in his immediate family to attend and graduate from college. He worked in store operations and setup, for TG&Y and later Walmart, Inc. His people skills helped him become very successful at managing others and his high work ethic helped him complete projects ahead of schedule.
Lynn and Carolyn married on April 10, 1976 at the First Church of the Nazarene in Prescott, Arkansas. They started a family with Jennifer Carol, born May 20, 1978, and continued with Aaron Lamar, born December 4, 1979, followed by James Bryan, born June 1, 1983. Having married young, they were unprepared for the challenges of becoming a cohesive family unit. Their marriage ended in divorce on February 12, 1984.
After the end of his marriage, Lynn questioned his sexual orientation and, at his father’s encouragement, came to terms with being gay. For ten years Lynn worked at various jobs in multiple places, facing discrimination time and again. Sometimes he worked three to four jobs simultaneously, mostly in hotel and convenience store management.
In November of 1993, while taking care of livestock at a friend’s ranch, Lynn was watching the Dallas Cowboys play on a projection screen television. Looking out the window, he saw two men coming to the house. One was there to have his hair cut by Lynn’s roommate. The other, he revealed later, was the spitting image of the man he had dreamt would become his life mate. Albert Lynn Hawthorne and Thomas Lloyd Nichols had their first official date the following Valentine’s Day, a date they marked as their anniversary for 22 years. They cemented their relationship with a same gender union ceremony from the Orthodox Church of the 9th century on June 24, 1995. By this time, Lynn had been declared eligible for disability and had re-established relationships with his children and ex-wife.
As a person living with AIDS, Lynn served on the consortium for Bluebonnet Health and Human Services, the first Central Texas non-profit in the Temple-Belton-Killeen area to serve the HIV Positive community. He and Thomas attended Pioneer Baptist Church briefly then joined University Baptist Church of Austin, Texas, while living in Nolanville, where they cultivated many friendships. After moving to Temple, Texas, Lynn joined what is now Real Life Bible Church, where he blossomed under the teachings about God’s grace and unending love: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
Lynn’s faith in Jesus Christ, God the Abba-Father, and the Holy Spirit of Truth and Grace was strong. In Lynn’s own words from a devotion, he wrote: “…My God has brought me through some very rough times and times of complete confusion—All I did was put it all in his hands….God has never failed me…. Just remember that no matter what we are going through and how dark the days are and how unstable the days ahead may seem—Just remember [Psalm 48, verse 14:] “For this God is our God forever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.”
While on this earthly plane, Lynn collected Stephen King books, decorative crosses, angel and big cat figurines, and memories of watching live theatre and traveling to see family and friends in other places: Arkansas, Wisconsin, Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, Iowa, and his favorite trip of all to Chicago, Illinois, his first and only time to travel by train.
Despite facing many setbacks this past year with his health, Lynn spread joy to all his visitors and health care workers, joking that perhaps he should make Scott & White Hospital his home address. Through it all, Lynn was a witness of his Savior’s love. He continued to give God the glory for helping him through all of his struggles and for being with him through all of the pain. Thanking the Palliative Care Team on the day of his passing, February 20, 2016, Lynn affirmed, “I am ready to be with my Lord Jesus.”
Lynn wills that his ashes be scattered upon the graves of his parents at East Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Miller County, Arkansas. His closest siblings wish to place a headstone in his memory in the Fulton cemetery where those siblings who have gone before him lie in rest.
He is survived by his siblings:
• Mary Elizabeth Kizer
• Lois Wilson
• Dave Hawthorne
• Robert Lee Hawthorne
• Nancy Sue Adams
• Emma Jean Hawthorne
• Patricia Ann Clayton
His children:
• Jennifer Carol Bittle
• Aaron Lamar Hawthorne
• James Bryan Hawthorne
His grandchildren:
• Skylar, Connor, Keaton, and Koen from Bryan and Jamie
• Ava and the triplets, Ezra, Warren, and Madeline from Aaron and Shannon
• Kylen and Chloe from Jennifer and Sean
And the one he referred to as Sweetheart, Thomas Lloyd Nichols.
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