John LaNoue

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John Long LaNoue Sr. (born September 25, 1934) is an American Baptist minister, disaster relief pioneer, and author based in Frost, Texas. He built the first mobile medical clinic used by Texas Baptists along the Rio Grande and designed the first Baptist disaster relief mobile unit. The Texas Baptist Men named a 15,000-square-foot disaster relief complex in his honor in 2010.

Early life and education

LaNoue grew up poor in Beaumont, Texas. His father left the family when he was four years old. At age 16, two laymen led him to faith in Christ. He attended Stephen F. Austin State University, where he met Kaywin Joan Baldwin. Kaywin graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1956. They married and both attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He received a Doctor of Ministry degree in San Francisco, California.

In August 1960, the Beaumont Journal reported that LaNoue had accepted a pastorate. The article included his photograph and identified him as Rev. John LaNoue.

Mobile clinic and Amigos Internacionales

LaNoue served as Baptist Student Union director at Kilgore College in Kilgore, Texas. While preparing to teach a Bible class there, he began planning for a student medical and dental mission trip to the Rio Grande. He consulted his personal physician, Dr. Kerfoot Walker of Tyler, Texas, and concluded that bringing an examining room on wheels to remote villages was the most effective approach.

On June 11, 1967, the Kilgore News Herald published a feature by Kellyn Rozier headlined "Clinic-in-a-Bus Leaves Kilgore For Valley Tour." It named LaNoue as coordinator for planning and remodeling the bus. It described a 14-passenger school bus converted at First Baptist Union in Kilgore, departing for 14 stops along the Rio Grande River from Harlingen to El Paso. The article reported the project began in October 1966 at the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

That same year, LaNoue co-founded Amigos Internacionales, a nonprofit medical mission organization, with Jim Wren in Athens, Texas. A December 1985 United Press International wire story confirmed the 1967 founding in Athens, Texas, by LaNoue and Wren, and described active clinic operations in Punta Gorda, Belize.

Texas Baptist Men disaster relief

LaNoue joined the staff of Texas Baptist Men and became a leader in its disaster relief program. Texas Baptists first became involved in disaster relief after Hurricane Beulah struck South Texas in 1967. When Hurricane Celia struck three years later, Texas Baptist Men took the lead in coordinating the disaster response.

Working around the clock for 36 hours, LaNoue drew up plans for a trailer that could house a field kitchen, a communications center, bunks for a crew, and essential disaster response equipment. With funds from the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions, he and volunteers built the unit in the rear driveway of his home in Mesquite, Texas. He drove the completed unit to Seguin, Texas, where a Guadalupe River flood had caused more than $17 million in damage and drowned 17 people, and set up relief operations on the courthouse square.

The Baptist Standard later described him as the designer of the first Baptist disaster relief mobile unit. It noted that Southern Baptist Disaster Relief has since grown to become the third-largest disaster response organization in the United States.

In August 1987, the Midland Reporter-Telegram published a feature on the Texas Baptist volunteer rebuilding effort in Saragosa, Texas, a West Texas community where a tornado on May 22, 1987 had destroyed more than 80 houses and buildings and killed 30 people. It identified LaNoue as coordinator of the volunteer offices of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and reported that approximately 500 church volunteers from across West Texas were converging on the town to build cinderblock homes for displaced families.

In January 1994, the Abilene Reporter-News published a feature on the Texas Baptist Men disaster relief response to the 1994 Northridge earthquake. It identified LaNoue as volunteer coordinator for the TBM operation. It reported that an 18-wheel tractor-trailer rig stopped in Tye, Texas, en route to California, where volunteers were using a TBM field kitchen to prepare 30,000 meals per day for earthquake victims.

International missions

In September 1994, the Abilene Reporter-News published a feature headlined "Haiti situation halts rescue flights." It named John LaNoue as director of Texas Baptist Men and president of the TBM Aviation Fellowship. It described him organizing Cuban refugee search-and-rescue flights off the coast of Florida, with volunteers flying low-altitude flights at 120 knots searching for survivors in the water. The flights were halted due to the developing situation in Haiti.

In 1997, LaNoue spent three months in North Korea as a part of a five-person NGO Consortium team monitoring food distribution across 10 of the country's 12 provinces. The Consortium consisted of Amigos Internacionales, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, and World Vision. The Consortium monitored 55,000 metric tons of food contributed by the United States Agency for International Development to the World Food Programme, providing approximately five million North Koreans with about a month's worth of food. On November 20, 1997, Consortium members briefed reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. A report by USIA staff writer John Lundin identified LaNoue by name and title — "Dr. John LaNoue of Amigos Internacionales" — as a team member. It quoted him stating that the Consortium delivered 1,100,000 sacks of food marked with red, white and blue USA insignia, and that empty sacks were later found in fields being refilled with local harvests, confirming delivery. The Deseret News of Salt Lake City published a report the same day headlined "Aid is saving N. Korean lives, team says." It named LaNoue directly and quoted him on the difficulty of conducting surveys in North Korea, noting that North Koreans were trained from childhood to be suspicious of Americans. The article confirmed the Consortium monitored distribution of 60,500 tons of cereals from the U.S. Agency for International Development across 10 of North Korea's 12 provinces. The Oregonian of Portland, Oregon, named Amigos Internacionales in its coverage of the North Korea relief consortium on November 28, 1997.

In February 1998, The Commission, the national magazine of the International Mission Board, reported that LaNoue — identified as director of adult ministries for Texas Baptist Men — had arranged a joint project between the IMB and Texas Baptist Men during his North Korea visit. The article reported that he arranged for the IMB and Texas Baptist Men to supply approximately $60,000 worth of salt to minimize losses from a typhoon that had dumped water on sea salt evaporating beds. It quoted a North Korean official responding to the relief effort: "Your God moves fast. He must be a mighty God." The article stated that since January 1996, Southern Baptists had given approximately $1.5 million for hunger relief to North Korea through the IMB and cooperating agencies. It reported that a request for children's coats came through LaNoue, resulting in a "Coats for Christmas" drive that sent more than 40,000 coats to North Korea in a first phase, with 180,000 total requested for children in the northern provinces.

On December 31, 1997, The Monitor of McAllen, Texas, published a Fort Worth Star-Telegram report headlined "Good works bond Baptists with North Korea." It named LaNoue as working with Texas Baptist Men in North Korea. It reported that Baptist volunteers had distributed 100,000 coats for boys and girls, working with World Vision and Catholic Relief Services. It stated that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations had praised the county's food distribution efforts. It reported that LaNoue had worked in North Korea for two consecutive years.

The Baptist Standard reported in December 2007 that LaNoue had recently returned from another trip to North Korea. It named him as the person whose initial work there gave birth to Texas Baptist Men's partnership with Global Resource Services. It reported that he and TBM volunteer Jim Pinkston of Edgewood completed installation of a soybean processing plant providing oil, tofu, and soymilk for children in the Haepo Ri area. The article stated that in 1998, at LaNoue's request, the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board collected 100,000 winter coats that Texas Baptist Men distributed in North Korea.

In a January 2017 feature on Texas Baptist Men's 50th anniversary, the Baptist Standard described LaNoue as the builder of the first mobile clinic for Texas Baptists' River Ministry and the designer of the first Baptist disaster relief mobile unit, crediting him with establishing the foundations of TBM's disaster relief and international missions programs.

LaNoue led one of the first American Christian teams to go into Iran since the Iranian Revolution, serving food to the Kurdish refugees in the Dolanov Valley under close supervision from Muslim officials. The Baptist Standard reported in a 2012 history of Texas Baptist Men that Kurdish refugees had fled Iraq for the mountains of western Turkey and eastern Iran following the Gulf War, and that Texas Baptist Men sent a field kitchen into Iran — described as an area previously off-limits to Americans — to feed them. He retired from the Texas Baptist Men staff in 1999.

After retirement, LaNoue continued leading international disaster relief missions. In January 2004, he led a 15-member Texas Baptist Men team to Bam, Iran, where a massive earthquake had left three-fourths of the ancient city in ruins. The Baptist Standard identified him as team leader and reported that the crew cooked more than 3,000 meals and 5,000 cups of hot tea each day for a 341-tent refugee camp that housed more than 1,700 people, plus an additional 1,000 meals daily for a second camp. The article quoted LaNoue: "Our men ate what the people in the camp ate, but they never sat down to eat until all the people had been served." Volunteers worked 14-hour days under close scrutiny by Iranian government officials.

In April 2011, LaNoue traveled to Sendai, Japan, as part of the first Texas Baptist disaster response advance team to arrive after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The Baptist Standard reported that he and Gary Smith trained leaders of the Japan Baptist Convention in the use of water filters and helped them assess how Texas Baptists could assist in the relief effort. The team also delivered kerosene and food to three churches in the Sendai area.

Recognition and publications

In March 1993, former President George H. W. Bush wrote to LaNoue acknowledging his participation in airlifts to Iraq and Peru. Bush addressed the letter to LaNoue as Director of Baptist Young Men at Texas Baptist Men in Dallas. He noted LaNoue's plans to assist Bosnia and expressed gratitude for his support during the past decades.

In 2010, In a ceremony, the Texas Baptist Men dedicated the John LaNoue Disaster Relief Complex — a 15,000-square-foot expansion of the Robert E. Dixon Mission Equipping Center in east Dallas — in his honor. The complex houses the fleet of TBM disaster relief vehicles and a secure communications center with an auxiliary generator.

LaNoue co-authored Walking with God in Broken Places and Lessons I Learned Along the Way with his wife Kaywin LaNoue, published in November 2010 (ISBN 978-1-61215-143-4). He also authored Divorcing? Remember Me, based on his life experience as a child of divorced parents. (ISBN 978-1-62230-543-8).

His wife, Kaywin Joan Baldwin LaNoue, died on April 1, 2021, at age 86. Her obituary in the Dallas Morning News noted she had volunteered with Texas Baptist Men's Disaster Relief and accompanied her husband on missions worldwide. In lieu of flowers, the family directed donations to Amigos Internacionales.

External links

• Dr. John LaNoue — Amigos Internacionales
• TBM dedicates John LaNoue Disaster Relief Complex — Baptist Standard
• Baptist disaster relief pioneer reflects on lessons learned — Baptist Standard

References

Category:American Baptist ministers Category:Disaster relief workers Category:People from Beaumont, Texas Category:People from Frost, Texas Category:Stephen F. Austin State University alumni Category:Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary alumni Category:Texas Baptist Men Category:American humanitarians Category:Living people Category:1934 births

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