LUBBOCK, Texas — Many years before he was called as bishop of the Lubbock 1st Ward, and even before he became a member of the Church, Keith Vardeman, a cotton farmer from northwest Texas, strolled into a restaurant in a resort town nestled high in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. He was on vacation with his family in August 1979.
A young woman waiting tables, Leslie Vance, caught Keith's eye. "She impressed me right off," he said, during a Church News interview.
"I'd never met a cotton farmer," she responded.
Their meeting seemed to be serendipitous. Leslie actually lived in Center, Colo., with her family, descendents of early Mormon colonists to Manassa, in south-central Colorado's San Luis Valley. She believes it was more than coincidence that led her to take some vacation time from her job to go to work at her cousin's restaurant in Silverton. Looking back more than two decades, she and her husband clearly see the hand of the Lord in the "chance" meeting.
As soon as Keith got back home to Lubbock, he called Leslie and asked if he could return and see her. She said that would be fine, never dreaming that he meant the very next day.
"We had a really good time when he came back," she said. "The Church naturally came up. My cousin told his family I didn't smoke or drink. They knew right up front I was LDS."
Looking back, Bishop Vardeman said the Church taught a lifestyle that was similar to the one taught to him and his brother, Dean, by their parents, Buzz and Joyce Vardeman.
"It was easy to follow along that path," he said.
Leslie helped him along, sending him Church literature to read during their long-distance courtship. She was very anxious about whether or not he would believe and accept Joseph Smith's testimony, but, somewhat to her surprise, "he didn't have any problem with that at all."
She added with a laugh, "We talked every night on the phone, so he decided to marry me to get rid of the phone bill."
She moved to Lubbock — "a big place compared to Center" — and married Keith on Valentine's Day, 1981. There were more anxious times for Sister Vardeman as she waited for her husband to join the Church. "I'd come home and cry; it seemed like a long time."
But it was only a few months until he was baptized, on another holiday — Father's Day. They were sealed in the Mesa Arizona Temple in July 1982.
Since then, they have raised a lot of cotton on the Vardeman farm run by Keith and his father and brother.
The family business began in 1948 when Keith's parents moved to Lubbock and started a small cotton farm. They then moved south of Lubbock where the farm is now spread over more than 6,000 acres. It is no small operation. They have rows of tractors on the edge of their fields, and larger tractors and other equipment parked inside massive metal buildings. A maintenance building is large enough and stocked such that it rivals the stores of some major farm implement chains.
Farming can be precarious, Sister Vardeman said, especially recently with drought conditions and low cotton prices. It is a lifestyle that must be lived by correct principles to be successful, just like the Church, she added.
The farming lifestyle, the Church, and the peaceful atmosphere on the expansive spread, have created ideal conditions for the Vardemans to raise their four children — Kimberly, a student at Texas Tech; Katie and Wendy, students at Cooper High School; and Scott who is pursuing another Texas lifestyle as a football player at Lubbock-Cooper Junior High.
Farming and serving as a bishop is demanding, but Bishop Vardeman has the support of his brother, Dean, not only on the farm but also as his executive secretary. Dean married one of Leslie's nieces and joined the Church himself.
E-mail: ghill@desnews.com