Small world!
Turns out that Pastor Joe Fremer of The Grateful Christian and I were not only neighbors for a brief time as kids in the Lawndale/ Little Village community on the Near Southwest Side of Chicago, but that he attended Third Grade at the parochial school from which I'd graduated the year before, and that we belonged to the same congregation- Grace!
Dr. Charles Ford, a mathematician at St. Louis University and a well-known Bonhoeffer scholar, left Grace just before my family joined the congregation. Ironically, we met many years later as members of the St. Louis ***A, when I was the pastor at Bethany, Webster Groves (pictured below), and he was a member of Bethel in University City!
Both of us, of course, have returned to Holy Mother Synod since then.
Dr. Charles Ford, a mathematician at St. Louis University and a well-known Bonhoeffer scholar, left Grace just before my family joined the congregation. Ironically, we met many years later as members of the St. Louis ***A, when I was the pastor at Bethany, Webster Groves (pictured below), and he was a member of Bethel in University City!
Both of us, of course, have returned to Holy Mother Synod since then.
Comments
How unsearchable are God's ways!
My brother-in-law (a California boy who was Grace's pastor after Roy Bleick left)once amazed the folks at his first wedding reception by picking up a Bohemian dumpling... and buttering it!
I miss Bohemian cooking generally. Also, do you remember Troha's fish store on 26th Street? Their fried shrimp and smoked fish were beyond comparison.
I was a boy scout at the Grace pack before there was a Cub den. Two of the more painful memories of my childhood were the 22 mile hike (much of it with an empty canteen) up and down the hills of the Kettle Moraine Glacial Trail in Wisconsin, and standing at attention or parade rest for two shifts of three hours beside Pastor Meier's coffin during the wake.
Of course, I also recall Pastor Meier's
comment- from the pulpit, no less- about the pink flocked Christmas tree with hot
pink bulbs they put in the front of the church one Advent: "Christmas trees are supposed to be green! That thing doesn't belong in the front of a church. That thing belongs in the kind of house where the lady leans out the window and goes, 'Yoo-hoo!'"
Ah, the memories...
I don't know if you've been back in recent years, but the neighborhood has staged a big-time comeback. The Hispanic
folks who live there now have cleaned it up very nicely. I think the apartment building I grew up in looks nicer now than when I lived there! After the shape the old neighborhood was in for a while, it does my heart good.
Grace Lutheran School is still doing well, about 90 students and a ministry not only to the neighborhood but to the children living at Hawthorne Racetrack as well. If you have any stories about the school or the church, I would welcome hearing about them for our quarterly newsletter. I can be reached through the school email at gracelutheran.school@comcast.net