DONNELLSON - The Rev. James Howie is tougher than he looks.

The 72-year-old pastor-director of the Presbyterian "Larger Parish of the Open Door" hobbles to his own front door on two walking sticks to welcome visitors.

The Millikin University-trained history major lowers his thin frame into a comfy chair in his Donnellson manse, surrounded by typical reading material - a thick biography of Oliver Cromwell rubbing shoulders with a giant copy of a Bible that was printed in 1560 - and concedes that life serving the Lord hasn't been easy. In fact, just staying alive has been a challenge.

"Well, I started out having tuberculosis when I was a baby," he says matter-of-factly, as if describing a bout of colic. "And I had malaria before the Second World War. And I had a second bout of malaria the next summer when the war was on. All of the quinine - the only thing they had to treat it - was tied up with the War Department. I had to be given a special dispensation before the Army had two bottles of quinine shipped to the drugstore in Sparta near where I lived."

Then in 1947, he came down with polio and ended up with encephalitis, running fevers of 107 degrees. All this before he was 15.

But he felt God had laid a hand on his shoulder, and Howie was determined to grow up and serve his Savior. "I've had a clear sense of calling since I was 5 years old," said the pastor, who still gets regular visits from malaria. "A calling that young is probably unusual amongst pastors."

After Millikin came theological seminary, but he had begun serving the Parish of the Open Door in 1954, five years before his ordination in 1959. He's stayed ever since, overseeing the church in Donnellson and five country churches scattered over a 20-mile radius in Witt, Butler, Waveland, Reno and Sorento.

Howie can't do everything himself, however, and has recruited an ad hoc group ranging from retired ministers to college professors to help. He still does the heavy spiritual lifting that requires an ordained minister, but his crew - many of them church elders - step in to make sure every church has someone to lead the congregation on Sunday.

Things were working pretty well until Howie met a new nemesis - cancer of the vocal chords - and faced surgery in January that would rob him of his voice box. Being a pastor without speech wasn't appealing, and he finally began to think a bit like that Lord Protector of England, Cromwell, who on his death bed in 1658 said: "It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."

Howie offers a thin smile. "I didn't think I was coming back from the surgery and, well, I was kind of hoping I would not wake up from it," he says. "I would have been happy to go, but God's will was for me to struggle some more."

His return was buoyed by the loving hearts of his parishioners, who had earlier refused to accept his resignation. They prayed for him constantly and rallied around to help him cope with everyday challenges upon his arrival from the hospital.

"He's kept the faith with us all these years, and we have with him, too," said Marian Kidwell, 88, who lives in Donnellson. "And he's such a remarkable man, it's like he's had nine lives."

Her friend, Susan Krummel, said she couldn't imagine how the pastor would cope at first after the surgery removed his voice. "For a person whose job is communicating, it was just devastating," she said. "But he's recovered from it and gone on; you don't meet many ministers like him."

Howie now breathes through a tube in the base of his neck and has worked out a way to cover the tube with his thumb and produce sound in the back of his throat which his mouth and tongue can then form into words. The resulting voice is heavy and raspy, but quite distinct. Laughs come out as a whistling wheeze.

"I had my surgery Jan. 8, and by early March, I was back moderating church meetings; by early April, I was teaching Bible studies and by May, I was preaching," he says. "I hope people find what I've done encouraging, and my feeling now is it's my responsibility to do the best I can, and it's up to God to see whatever good comes of that."

And if his spirits flag, he doesn't have to look too hard to find something to smile about. His congregations knew how he felt about the prospect of coming through the cancer surgery alive, but they also told him they were convinced he would survive and would be happy to see him eat crow when he did.

"Look over there," says Howie, and points to several decorative crow ornaments left in his living room by well-wishers. He then breaks into a broad grin and starts a long, long wheeze.

Tony Reid can be reached at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.