Profiles of Life: Herbert 'Jake' Self

Can a minister ever really retire? Jake Self couldn't. The former associate minister at First Southern Baptist Church in Del City still attended the church he loved, still ministered to its members in his own way.

Self visited the sick, even though he wasn't in the best of health himself. And he and wife Galelia attended church as often as their health allowed.

The 86-year-old Del City man was killed Monday when one of the violent twisters that assailed that city sliced through his home.

On Tuesday, those to whom he had ministered professionally and befriended after his retirement remembered him as a caring, sweet man.

"Brother Jake was just a fine man, plain and simple," Billie Pollock said.

She and her husband knew Self in the church's earlier days, Pollock said, when he preached about heaven and love and ministering to others for 17 years.

"His love for people showed in everything he did," Pollock said. "He was there for everyone, and everyone knew that about him."

Self didn't always aspire to be a minister. He didn't decide to leave the oil and trucking industries to pursue a ministry degree at Oklahoma Baptist University until he was in his 40s.

That later-in-life decision set him apart from his peers, Pollock said.

"He had a deep love for the Lord; you could just sense that about him," she said. "Maybe it was his maturity."

Besides his wife, Galelia, Self leaves three children: David, Phil, and Cheryl.

- Tamie Ross