Growing up in Turn-of-the-Century Mondovi, WI: Life in the City

Grace Reese Adkins

“Leaves from Childhood’s Diary,” Part 4

As I mentioned in the first post on growing up in turn-of-the-century Mondovi, the town was a small one with 503 residents in 1890 and 1,207 in 1900. It is in Buffalo County, which shares a border (the Mississippi River) with Minnesota. It is named after the Buffalo River, which cuts through the southern part of the county. The city of Eau Claire lies about twenty miles to the northeast, and Minneapolis is about 100 miles to the northwest. Of course, given its northern latitude, Mondovi has long, cold winters.

Map of Wisconsin,
Buffalo Co. in Red

In the following poem, Mrs. Adkins recalled those winters:

Winter (Published May 6, 1937)
When winter came
To our town,
All the men declared
That their families
Would starve to death
Before spring.
But if, by any chance,
They should survive,
They vowed that they would never
Spend another winter
In Wisconsin.

Uncle Walt [Lemke], the author and editor of the Ozark Moon column, who also grew up in Wisconsin, commented, “That’s winter in Wisconsin all right. Thirty-five and forty degrees below zero. Snow so deep in the cuts that trains didn’t run for days. And shoveling snow, a daily job for youngsters, snow shovels were made in various widths and designs and of various materials, wood, tin, and steel. Last winter a Fayetteville man tried to buy a snow shovel, but such an article was not to be had in this town.”  

1911 Map Showing Cities in
Buffalo Co., Wisconsin

In a letter to the editor published in the Northwest Arkansas Times on May 6, 1969, Mrs. Adkins told of her family’s move to Washington County, Arkansas, in 1902, a few months after her mother’s death, to escape “the rigors of Wisconsin winters.”

 [I recall] when our family first came to this charming place, in 1902. There was my father, an older sister, myself, and seven young motherless stairsteps. We had long wanted to escape t h e rigors of Wisconsin winters, and our father came to Fayetteville on a homeseekers' excursion.

On his return he said, "Girls, I've found the garden spot of the world." In a month we were moved. We came in on a midnight train, and the air was redolent with apples, which were shipped in large quantities in those days. The picturesque courthouse stood in the middle of the Square, with a dog-trot running through it. Old men wore long white beards, and spoke courteously to all strangers, as was not customary in the north. My sister and I saw our first dogwood, lining a ravine of East Mountain (Mt. Sequoyah) and it took my breath away, as it does still. 

Before making the move south, Grace Reese had spent eighteen years of her youth in Mondovi, and she remembered some of the locals who made an impression her when she was growing up:

A Town Character (Published May 1, 1937)
He lived just up the block
From us,
And everybody said
He was the biggest liar
In the county.
It was his children,
Mostly,
Who broke our windows,
And quarreled with us,
And stole our hazelnuts.
They could not play at home
Because their mother
Had headaches.
They quoted their father
Often,
Even in the schoolroom,
But they always added,
“If you don’t believe papa,
Just ask Uncle Richie.”

The Amen Corner (Published, May 13, 1937)
The men who sat
In the Amen Comer
Had long beards,
And most of them
Were a little deaf.
One of them
Always stood on his toes
When he shouted.

Mondovi Congregational Church,
Built 1870, Now Demolished
(https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Property/HI2587)

Mrs. Adkins did not mention in her poems which church she attended as a child in Mondovi. Where did she encounter “the Amen Corner?” Most likely, her family belonged to the city’s Congregational Church.  After she moved to Washington County Arkansas, she joined the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and during the rest of her life, she was a zealous advocate of the American Restoration Movement.  In 1938, she started her own church, the Central Christian Church in Fayetteville, and was the pastor of that church for a decade. 

Thirty-five years after she left Mondovi, Grace Reese Adkins still remembered details of the places that were part of the city, including the school library and the city fairgrounds.  She wrote these poems about them:

The School Library (Published, May 4, 1937)
There weren’t many library books,
Because a mean boy
Had burned the schoolhouse down
At night.
The school, each year,
Gave a big entertainment
In Borst’s Hall.
To buy more books.
They had Lyceum Courses,
Too.
I liked to go,
But our family was large,
And we had to take turns about
Using the tickets

It is interesting to note that even though Mondovi was a small town, it was on the lyceum circuit. Thus, its residents had an opportunity to attend lectures, debates, class instruction, and dramatic performances.  Of course, Mrs. Adkins liked to attend them but had to take turns with other members of her family.

The Old Fairground (Published, April 21, 1937)

It wasn’t much of a fairground,

And the buildings were strewn around

Location of the
Mondovi Flats

Almost at random.
The chewing gum man
Was the main attraction,
For he had plush albums
Displayed as prizes –
Although most of those who bought
Got needle cases.
One year the merry-go-round
Was operated by manpower,
But after that they had an old horse
To turn it.
There was a phonograph
That you could hear
By paying a dime
And putting tubes in your ears.
In the exhibits
Were flowers made of feathers,
Seeds and hair,
Pieced quilts, handwoven rugs,
And fancy work galore.
The morning after the fair,
We children hunted
Underneath the grandstand
And where the chewing gum man had been
And sometimes found a nickel or a dime.

Uncle Walt [Lemke] commented on this poem, “We recall the … fairground thrills that Pricilla mentions, especially poking around among the litter under the grandstands and finding nickel or a dime. But the best place to find coins was in the cracks of the board sidewalks. It required two sticks expertly manipulated to draw out the coin. And when workmen replaced the rotten boards in the sidewalk, we kids were there to pounce on any coin or other valuables that might be revealed.”

“The Old Fairground” was in an area known as the Mondovi flats, in the southwest part of the town (bounded by Alma Ave, Water St., and State St.), not far from the Buffalo River. In the 1890s, it was replaced by a new fairground located north of the old one. The Buffalo County Fair is still held there on land with a Harrison Street address. The city’s middle school is not far to the east of the fairgrounds with a good view of it. Likely that spot is where Grace Reese’s high school was located. 

The New Fairground (Published on June 2, 1937)
They abandoned the old fairground
Down on the river road,
And acquired a new one
Adjoining the school grounds.
There weren’t many trees,
And it was dusty
At fair time,
But the legless Hokey Pokey
Chewing Gum Man
Was still on hand,
Barking his wares.
Our high school windows
Opened toward the fairground
And meadowlarks sang
In the clove field
Inside the racetrack
On May mornings,
While I was studying

The Present-Day "New Fairground" in Mondovi

My geometry.

It’s a relief to know that the “legless Hokey Pokey Chewing Gum Man” survived the move to the new fairground. For more on the history of Buffalo County fairs, go to this website:  http://www.buffalocountyfairwi.com/history

This poem, “The New Fairground,” was the final one in Mrs. Adkins's series titled “Leaves from Childhood’s Diary.” Uncle Walt wrote about those poems:

We hope our readers have enjoyed today’s column. Priscilla has the trick of making half-forgotten events live again. The younger generation, of course, won’t know what it’s all about. They’re too sophisticated. They can’t imagine paying a dime to hear one of the crude first gramophones play. Or playing tag in a yard surrounded by a picket fence. Or swimming in a quarry hole Those were thrills that only the initiated can understand. And they can’t be matched by such modern thrillers as hitting 40 in a streamlined car or listening to Kenny Baker on the radio. They were the good old days.

 Anyone who would like to read more of the “Leaves from Childhood’s Diary” poems can find them in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat, whose name changed to the Northwest Arkansas Times on July 8, 1937. These papers can be accessed in the Newspaperarchives.com database, which requires a paid annual subscription. Most are also available in the Newspapers.com database, available through Ancestry.com or through a separate subscription.  The following list includes the titles of the poems and their dates of publication:

Theme: Leaves from Childhood’s Diary. Thirty-one poems: The Aspen (Apr 3), The Alder Slough (Apr 6), The River (Apr 8), Flowering (Apr 13), Our Front Yard (Apr 21), The Old Fairground (Apr 21), The Quarry (Apr 21), Home Theatricals (Apr 21), Hazelnutting (Apr 26), Memorial Day (Apr 28), A Town Character, (May 1), The Party (May 3), The School Library (May 4), Shaving (May 5), Winter (May 6), Going After the Cows (May 6), Company (May 6), Playing School (May 6),  My Room (May 6), Sunday School (May 11), Amen Corner (May 13), Books (May 17), Evenings (May 18), Patchwork (May 20), Echoes of ’98 (May 21), Cowslips (May 22), The Burr Oak (May 24), An Embarrassing Incident (May 25), Violets (May 27), Childhood Grief (May 29) The New Fairground (Jun 2).

Growing up in Turn-of-the-Century Mondovi, WI: Grace’s Pa

Grace Reese Adkins 

“Leaves from Childhood’s Diary,” Part 3

Mrs. Adkins's father, Edwin Frank Reese (1852–1924), was a stonemason but had interests far beyond his work. In her poems, Mrs. Adkins tells us about his love of books, providing some insight into her own bookish nature. She also lets us know that her pa played the fiddle, and she sometimes accompanied him on the organ. From the poems, we learn that Grace's pa at times got exasperated with the kids underfoot and could be a bit absent-minded.

"Ozark Moon," Fayetteville Daily Democrat,"
May 17, 1937, p.2

Books   (Published May 17, 1937)

Grandma said
That pa bought books
When there was danger of his children
Going hungry.
The books had titles
That were hard to read.
I like to dust
And arrange them.
And feel the texture
Of their bindings
Under my fingers.

Mrs. Adkins inherited her father’s love of books. I learned that when I was about eleven years old in 1958 and went for the first time to a Bible study class that Mrs. Adkins conducted in her home next to the Christ’s Church building on Rock Street in Fayetteville. I was astounded by the library/study where we assembled. The walls were lined with stuffed bookshelves and every flat surface in the room had piles of magazines, clippings, and newspapers. I had never seen such a room; my parents and relatives we often visited had no such bookshelves because they kept few books other than the Bible and those with recipes.  

Mrs. Adkins's parents grew up in Pennsylvania, but got married in Buffalo County, Wisconsin on September 20, 1879. They must have made many good friends in Mondovi. In one poem, we learn from Mrs. Adkins that friends who played the fiddle sometimes congregated in his home for an evening and her father joined them playing the instrument.

Evenings   (Published May 18, 1937)
Folks used to come
And spend the evening
With us –
Particularly folks
Who played the fiddle,
I often seconded
On the organ.
Pa’s fingers were stiff
From laying rock,
But mother liked
To have him play
As he used to do
Before they were married.
When the younger children
Got in the way of his arm,
He scowled
And tapped them on the head
With this fiddle bow
The pieces had queer names
Like Irish Washerwoman,
The Devils’ Dream,
And Sailor’s Joy.

Mrs. Adkins not only inherited a love of books and reading from her pa, but also must have acquired her love of music from him. She learned during her childhood how to play the organ and piano, and after she moved to Arkansas, she often composed music and wrote songs. During her life, she produced six songs that appeared in one or more of ten hymnals, the first published in 1914 and the last in 2011. One of her songs, “I’ll Wish I Had Given Him More,” is still sung. The most popular version of it is sung in an expansive Dutch cathedral, and it features soprano Maria Kemler backed by the huge Waddinxveen (Netherlands) men’s choir and accompanied by an ornate organ. As of February 2022, nearly 400,000 viewers had watched that performance, which can be viewed at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=420nDNYoAx0 

Once a week, Mrs. Adkins’ pa would shave, likely using a straight razor that would punish his face if he didn’t pay close attention to what he was doing. 

Walter Lemke, 
Fayetteville Daily Democrat,
April 9, 1935, p. 6.

Shaving   (Published May 5, 1937)
Pa shaved
On Sunday morning,
While we children
Dodged around
Under his elbow.
It made him cross
And nervous,
And when he cut himself,
Anything could happen.
Sometimes he only set us in a corner
Till we quieted down.

Lemke, the column editor, commented on this poem: “This leaf from Priscilla’s childhood diary calls attention to one of the most significant contrasts between then and now. Pa was the big boss. The razor strop was put to other uses than honing the razor. [Yikes]  Imagine pa trying to get into the bathroom to shave on a Sunday morning nowadays. Why there wouldn’t even be room for his old shaving mug among the creams, lotions, and other preparations that decorate the bathroom of today.”   

Lemke’s reference to “Priscilla’s childhood diary” reminds me that I have failed to mention that Mrs. Adkins’s poems in Ozark Moon were published under a pseudonym.  In fact, almost all poems in Lemke's column were signed with either pseudonyms or initials. Hers was Priscilla, a name drawn from the Bible. Even Lemke used a pseudonym, calling himself "Uncle Walt."  

One of Mrs. Adkins’ memories of her father was the time he absentmindedly stole a dinner napkin from a preacher’s house. It was probably a family joke for the years that followed.

An Embarrassing Incident  (Published May 25, 1937)
Pa liked to visit
With preachers;
And after he
Had dined
With the Congregationalist minister
Ma found
A dinner napkin
In his pocket.

Uncle Walt offered his irreverent comment on this poem: “And of course pa said, ‘Now how do you suppose that got there?’” You didn’t have any Pullman towels or Delmonico silver around your house, did you Priscilla? And another thing – what was ma looking for in pa’s pocket.”

Priscilla may have been amused by Lemke’s comments, but she was not known for her sense of humor.  

Growing up in Turn-of-the-Century Mondovi, WI: Play Time

Grace Reese Adkins, 

Leaves from Childhood’s Diary, Part 2

In the poem “Our Front Yard” (see part 1), Mrs. Adkins recalled four games that she, her siblings, and neighborhood kids had played in turn-of-the-century Mondovi. Of course, such physical games were not enough to fill up a weekend or whole summer.  So, in addition to those games, the kids found other ways to engage their imaginations and fill up their days. In two of her poems, she recalled such activities, playing school and putting on shows.   

Grace Reese Adkin
Northwest Ark. Times, Nov. 6, 1948

Playing School (Published May 6, 1937)
We played school
In the back yard,
And I was the teacher,
But my brothers
And Cousin Ray,
And the neighbor children
Often made trouble
So that mother
Had to call the boys in,
And sometimes send
The neighbor children
Home.

Home Theatricals (Published April 21, 1937)
Every summer vacation
We had home theatricals.
I was master of ceremonies
Mother was patient
And let us string sheets
Across the living room,
And decorate
We invited our grandparents,
And all the neighbors,
And when our uncle was home from college
He liked to come.
We spoke pieces
With much gesturing
And staged impressive tableaux.
It was hard work
Cleaning up the living room
Afterward.

Note that when playing school, Grace Reese was the teacher and when putting on shows, she was the master of ceremony. That she took on those roles provides a good clue about what she was like in her childhood: She was clearly a “take charge” girl. Playing school was probably fun for Grace Reese, but quickly became boring for her “students.”

 Nevertheless, the game was good preparation for Grace’s first job. After she arrived in Arkansas in the middle of 1902, she began teaching schools in rural Washington County schools. She taught a couple of years in Prairie Grove and later two more years in Oak Grove, near Winslow.   

 The “home theatricals” were no doubt more fun than playing school. Much effort was spent in preparing for the production, and the audience was appreciative. Later in her life, Mrs. Adkins wrote and directed various programs, plays, and celebrations for her churches, including the one she founded in 1938.  She orchestrated Mother’s Day, Easter, and Christmas shows featuring young folks singing, reading verses, and reciting poetry. 

Fun was not only to be had in games and play but also could be found in celebrating special occasions. Grace Reese recalled one “nice” birthday party where the birthday boy found a way to impress all the girls in attendance.              

The Party (Published on May 3, 1937)
One of the boys
Had a nice birthday party in his front yard.
We wore our best clothes.
He got lots of presents,
But he drank one of the bottles
Of perfumery –
An act which profoundly impressed
Us girls.

Proposed Logos for the Ozark Moon Column

Lemke was not impressed with the boy who drank perfume. He commented on the poem, recalling:  “We didn’t do anything sissyish like that. Up in Wausau when we wanted to impress the girls we bit off a big chew of Mail Pouch. Or maybe it was Battle Ax. Perfume – pooh!"

More serious and educational fun was to be had in exploring nature around Mondovi.  Mrs. Adkins recalled an annual event that took her into the nearby wilds to find spring plants.

Flowering (Published April 13, 1937)

In early spring
We went flowering –
An oft-repeated pilgrimage,
Fondly anticipated
During the winter.
Disagreeable winds
Blew sand in our eyes,
But we trudged down the road
That paralleled the river.
Our first objective was a low fill
Where something we called nervine grew.
The green leaves carpeted the ground,
And dainty, bell-like flowers
Peeped out.
Then there was a wind-swept pasture
Where, springing at our feet,
We would find the pasque-flower.
There were patches of buttercups
By the roadside,
And deep in the woods
Beside a creek
A spot where bloodroot grew.
And Dutchman’s breeches,
Snowy white.
We picked the flowers,
Because we did not know
They should be left
To bloom for others.

Mrs. Adkins loved flowers, both wild and the ones she grew, and she became quite knowledgeable about them. In 1936, she submitted seventeen short poems to Ozark Moon on the theme of “Botanical Notes.” The poems had the following titles: Houstonia Minima (March 12), Anemone Patens (March 12), Ranunculus Fascicularis (March 12), Amelanchier Botryaplum (March 12), Quercus Alba (March 12), Pyrus Malus (March 12), Trillium Grandiflorum (March 18), Aquilegia Canadensis (March 20), Draha Verna (March 23), Sanguinaria Canadensis (March 24), Viola Blanda (March 26), Thalictrum Anemonoldes (March 27), Anemone Nemorosa (March 30), Caltha Palustris (April 13), Taraxacum Bens-leonis (April 15), Anemone Nemorosa (April 16), Hepatica Triloba (April 17).

Growing up in Turn-of-the-Century Mondovi, WI: "It was a Great Life"

Grace Reese Adkins,
Leaves from Childhood’s Diary, Part 1

Grace Reese, born in 1884, spent the first eighteen years of her life in Mondovi, Wisconsin, a town with 503 residents in 1890 and 1,207 in 1900. It is in Buffalo County, which shares a border with Minnesota, about 100 miles southeast of Minneapolis and 20 or so miles southwest of Eau Claire.

Photo Published in the
Christian Standard, June 4, 1921

Grace was a precocious child (“Before I started to school I had learned to read, though no one knew how or when”). As a teenager, she enjoyed writing poems and songs, and she kept a diary, which she took with her when she moved in 1902 to Washington County, Arkansas with her father and eight siblings. (The move came soon after her mother passed away.) Thirty-five years later, Grace Reese Adkins (she married Ary Adkins in 1909) consulted her diary to recall important aspects of her Mondovi childhood. The memories were written as poems published in 1937 in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat. In one poem she remembered her bedroom in Mondovi.

My Room (Published May 6, 1937)

My bedroom was upstairs,
Overlooking the river
And the alder slough.
I liked to sit at the window
In April dark
And listen to the frogs sing.
I had a dry goods box desk
In the corner
Draped with bleached and embroidered
Flour sacks.
Hidden in the desk
Was a cigar box
Containing my first poems –
Effusions about spring
Such as are still being
Written.
Above the desk was a shelf
With a few battered books
And an early edition of Riley
Which my uncle sent me from college.
The window curtains
Were made from a dress
Of my great-aunt’s.
But mother said
I must not explain that
To anyone.

The river mentioned in this poem was the meandering Buffalo River, which forms the southern border of Buffalo County. This river is fed by a couple of creeks that flow south through the county, and its shifting channel has over the years left behind several sloughs. The river, the two creeks that flow into it, and the sloughs created a habitat for diverse flora and birds that inspired many of Mrs. Adkins's poems.

Grace Reese shared her house with two older sisters and seven younger siblings, four boys and three girls. The house had a big front yard that, she reports, was a popular place for the youngsters and neighborhood kids to play games. She recalled the yard in this poem:

Our Front Yard  (Published April 21, 1937)
It was the gathering place
For all the neighbors’ children.
Box elders managed to grow
Around it
And morning glories
At the windows,
But the grass
Had a hard time.
For there were games to play
Pom pom pull away,
Pussy wants a corner,
One ole cat,
And town ball.
Sometimes the windows got broken
And dad sent the neighbor children
Home.
But it was a great life.

The Adkins kids and the neighborhood kids played games with names that we no longer recognize: pom pom pull away, pussy wants a corner, and one ole cat. I can guess what “town ball” was. Probably that game was the one that most often resulted in a broken window. 

The man who edited the column in which Mrs. Adkins's poems appeared also grew up in Wisconsin. His name was Walter J. Lemke and he was just a few years younger than Grace Reese, born in 1891 in Wausau. He had moved to Fayetteville in 1928 to start a journalism program at the University of Arkansas, and his column “Ozark Moon” was one of his many extracurricular journalistic activities. His column appeared in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat starting in January 1935, and he had issued an open call to his readers to send him their poems. 

Fayetteville Daily Democrat, Jan. 1, 1935

Often Lemke commented on the poems in his column, and he did so on this one, noting that he and his friends in Wisconsin had played “pump pump pull away,” not “pom pom pull away.” He also wrote that when windows got broken at his house, his father – a German immigrant – not only sent the neighborhood kids home but also “gave us a touch of that torture instrument of his own invention – seven leather thongs attached to a handle grip.” Yikes! Nevertheless, Lemke agreed, “It was a great life.”

 

“The most fascinating individual I ever met”: My Uncle Don Timbrook

One day when I was about four years old my uncle Don Timbrook was driving by my home on Fayetteville’s South College Avenue when he spotted me kissing one of the neighboring Phillips girls. The next day, he started kidding me about it. Reddening and flustered, I blurted out that next time I kissed a girl I would hide “to-hind a tree” where he could not see me.

Don was tickled by my response, and he never let me forget about this episode. He even incorporated it for a while in the repertoire of stories he told to entertain friends and relatives. He had a big stock of such stories, some funny and others hilarious, and you had to laugh at his often-exaggerated accounts of life’s events.  After you knew Don for a while, you would start smiling when you saw him coming, anticipating the whoppers he would tell.

Don Timbrook, smiling and being funny, as always

Don was lucky to marry Vera Durning, my dad’s sister. She was seventeen and he was twenty-two when they got hitched on February 24, 1934, and pictures of them at the time show they were a handsome pair. She was a good-humored and kind person, who enjoyed Don’s outsized personality. Even though she often seemed exasperated and sometimes outraged by some of his stories, the exasperation was faux, and the outrage was calibrated to reward Don for his provocative humor. She basked in his company.

Both Don and Vera grew up in poor but hardworking families. Don was born in Hulbert, Oklahoma, a rural community a few miles east of Tahlequah on Highway 51, on December 6, 1911, and spent his first years on a rented farm in nearby Crittenden township. He was the sixth child of James A. (Feb. 1881–Aug. 1941) and Roxie Ann Timbrook, née Harris (Sep. 1883–Feb. 1981). The two had met while growing up near each other on farms in Elixir township in Boone County, Arkansas, and married in 1902.  Don was their fifth born offspring, and eventually, he had four brothers and four sisters, all but one of whom lived long lives. Don and his siblings did not have much opportunity to attend school. In fact, Don may have never attended school except, as he told a friend, for three days when he went in place of his brother Berry, who had chickenpox.

Don and Vera, about 1940, with their daughter

Some of Don’s ancestors were Cherokees, whose capital was in nearby Tahlequah, probably on his father’s side of the family. You could see traces of his ancestry in his features, although his dark complexion could likely be attributed in large part to his daily outdoor activities. He had legendary prowess as a fisherman, and I always assumed that was an attribute of his Native American heritage.

Vera also came from a large family that farmed in the Ozarks. She was the granddaughter of George William Durning, who had moved from Tennessee to the tiny community of Cass in Franklin County Arkansas in the 1840s. She was born there on August 13, 1916, the sixth of the eleven children of Nathaniel Elias (1882–1960) and Lillie Samantha Durning (1889–1964). Like Roxie, Lillie Samantha was born a Harris, but her childhood home was in Fort Douglas in Johnson County, Arkansas.

Elias and Lillie Samantha were still living in Cass with their children when my dad was born on April 1, 1925, but soon after that, they moved to Denning, a small settlement near Altus. I think they left Cass after the death of Vera’s older brother, John Lewis Durning, at the age of eighteen in 1928. That death hit my grandmother hard, so much so that she left the Baptist Church and became a Jehovah’s Witness. Vera also joined that church.

Vera, middle, with her sisters Ruth,
Rheta, Stella, and Norma (L to R)

After a few years in Denning, the family, including Vera, moved in the first part of the 1930s to the outskirts of Fayetteville, renting a farm there. By the time the Durning family had settled into their new Fayetteville-area home, Roxie Ann and her children had already lived in the city for several years. In the middle 1920s, she had left her husband to relocate in the university town. When 1930 census takers asked her marital status, she told them she was a widow. The response would have surprised James A. Timbrook because he was still living in Oklahoma at the time; he remained there until his death in 1941.

No doubt, both the Timbrook and Durning families had to scramble to make a living after they moved to Fayetteville and vicinity. Fortunately, they were no strangers to hard work, and survival during the Great Depression required it. Roxie Timbrook rented a home at 421 South Church Street where in 1930 she lived with her five youngest children and was a self-employed seamstress. By that time, Don, who had been working for many years to help the family’s financial situation, was employed at a “produce house” as a “chicken picker.”

Thanks to Don’s friend Arthur Friedman (1916-1997), who ran around with him during the years between Don’s arrival in Fayetteville in about 1925 and his marriage to Vera in 1934, we have a glimpse of Roxie Timbrook’s life in her early years in Fayetteville. Friedman mentioned her in one of his autobiographical columns he wrote in the 1980s for the Northwest Arkansas Times:

Mrs. Roxie Timbrook, one of the most wonderful persons I have ever known, told me some years ago that she walked from the fairgrounds to a house of Mount Nord, worked 14 hours as a domestic, and tramped back home to take care of a large family. For her work outside the home, she was paid 10 cents an hour.  

 

Don with his mother Roxie Ann Timbrook

Friedman told us even more in his newspaper column about Don, whom he had met “one summer day sixty years ago at the Town Branch that runs eastward along the north base of South Mountain” He wrote that sentence in January 1986, so that meeting would have been in 1925 or 1926. Friedman continued, “This encounter developed into a close friendship that was to endure for well over half a century. We played together, hunted together, fished together, and honky-tonked together, and often drank out of the same bottle.” During this friendship, Friedman heard Don’s stories and collected his own stories about him. He told one story that he said was Don’s favorite: 

[Don] was at Lake Fayetteville fishing off the bank. A small boy came wandering by, throwing rocks and skipping them on the water. As has been the custom since time immorable [sic], the lad asked Don if he was having any luck. Don replied that he had caught two big catfish, but had to throw them back because they had ticks on them. The child, eyes wide in amazement, went on his way, but a little later returned. “My dad knows you,” he said “When I told him what you said,” he replied, “That’s Don Timbrook – he’s the only man in the State of Arkansas that can catch fish with ticks on them.”

Don with his prize catfish

 

Friedman liked to recall his hunting and fishing trips with Don and L.D Timbrook, Don’s brother, along with his other “constant companions,” Ray Hinkle, Tom Plant, and Robert Cook. These boys sometimes went to South Mountain to kill rabbits and fish in the Town Branch at the base of the mountain. According to Friedman, their expeditions started at Lewis Brothers Hardware store on the Square where they could buy 12-gauge shotgun shells for three cents each. They and their dogs would walk down the hill to Hunts Pasture, where Walker Park is now, and keep going south on flat land until they reached South Mountain. According to Friedman, 

One day as we were walking along, Don Timbrook made his brother L.D. carry his gun, a heavy double-barreled 12 gauge. When Don wasn’t looking, L.D. plunged the end of the gun about an inch into the muddy ground that we were traveling over. 

Later on, Don retrieved the weapon and fired at a fast-running rabbit that jumped up and took off in front of us. There was a terrific explosion. Black powder smoke enveloped the whole area. The recoil of the gun threw Don backwards across three rows of strawberries and left a large purple bruise on his shoulder….The concussion of the first shell set off the one in the left barrel and the end of the gun split open like the hull of a ripe cotton boll. For years we tried to explain to Don that a mud-dauber had built a nest in the muzzle of his gun, but to this day, he refuses to buy the idea.

 

The carefree days of hunting and fishing together on South Mountain came to an end as the young friends took on new responsibilities. For Don, no doubt the first ten years of marriage were an economic struggle. He and Vera had their only child, Carol Sue, in 1935, and work during the Depression was hard to find. In 1939, according to the census taken the following year, Don had worked as a “poultry paster” at a processing plant for sixteen weeks, earning $300. Probably, Don’s hunting and fishing talents helped ensure that the family had plenty of food for its table.

When “Donald Lee Timbrook” registered for the draft on October 16, 1940, he was unemployed. His draft papers listed the twenty-eight-year-old man as standing 5’11’’, weighing 162 pounds, with brown eyes and hair and, inexplicably, a “light complexion.” As the father of a young child, Don’s entry into the military was delayed until 1944 when he was drafted into the Navy. His service lasted from April 10, 1944 to December 29, 1945, during which time he served on two ships in the Pacific Theater, first on the USS Clay, an attack transport, and then, after the end of the war, on the USS Rocky Mount., a command and communication ship.

Don in the Navy, 1945

Returning from the War in early 1946, Don found opportunities open to him that had not been there during the war. He made a good living for several years after the war as hide buyer, working for a time for the Midwest Hide and Skin Corp., then he worked as a butcher, some of the time for Mhoon’s Grocery store. He continued in that occupation for the rest of his working years, and he was apparently a skilled expert in the art.  Friedman recalled that one day Don had told him that he was now “Dr. Timbrook” and that “he expected me to treat him with dignity and respect due the holder of such a title.” It turned out that a professor at the University of Arkansas’s College of Agriculture had “recognized his outstanding ability as a butcher [and] had hired him to skin and dress carcasses while the instructor lectured to his classes on the proper procedure for preparing and grading meat.” I am sure he gave a performance that evoked lots of laughter.

After the war, Don and Vera moved to a house a 716 South College, south of Jefferson School and a short walk from the South Mountain area where Don had long fished and hunted. They later moved further south for a while, to 901 South College, but by 1960 were back at 716 S. College, where they lived for the rest of their lives.  At these locations, Vera was only a few blocks from her parent’s home and those of several of her brothers and sisters.   

They were living at 901 S. College, four long blocks from my parent’s, house when they came into my life and vice versa. They sometimes took me swimming by the one-lane Tilly Willy Bridge on the West Fork of the White River, and I recall that on the day that I got my smallpox vaccination and had a plastic bubble strapped on to protect the injection site, we headed to that swimming hole. They also took me with them to 71 Drive In, and I relished the few minutes at the playground by the base of the screen, waiting for the first images to appear. I was usually asleep by the middle of the first feature. Vera fed me and my parents some heaping meals as we spent evenings laughing at Don’s stories. She woke us up with frantic late-night calls imploring us to join them in their basement because a tornado was heading our way. Don patiently taught me the basics of fishing, starting with how to get minnows and worms for bait, then how to properly bait a hook and cast a rod, and ending with how to gut a fish. He also provided insights into where to find the best places to fish and how to choose the best bait for different settings.  He sometimes took me and my cousin, Morris Daniel, with him to fish at different ponds around Fayetteville. 

Don, Vera, and Bernice Durning, play rummy

Don and Vera were an important part of my childhood, but as usually happens, I saw them less and less as I got older and especially after I moved away from Fayetteville.  Time passed, and Vera got sick, passing away after a long illness on February 13, 1981, keeping her optimistic attitude and warm smile to the end. The next day, Don lost his mother, who died on February 14, 1981 at the age of 98.  Friedman observed that Don had been blessed with “two wonderful women in his life” and when they were not available “he was like a ship without a rudder.”  Don died on January 6, 1986.  

His old friend Friedman, who graduated from the University of Arkansas and taught eighth-grade history for 27 years in Kansas City, wrote a touching tribute to Don a few days after his death.  He said, “If I am ever interrogated as to the most fascinating individual I ever met, he would have to be Don Timbrook… Don worked hard, played vigorously, met adversity and trouble head-on, loved and enjoyed associating with his fellow man.” Friedman then summarized his life, concluding “He loved everyone he knew and always had time to console and help a friend. I don’t think he ever did anything inherently evil in his long life. When he stands before Judgment, I can see him telling the Lord, “I did the best I could with what you gave me – You cannot expect more of any man.”

Don, making me laugh

I did not know Don nearly as well as Friedman, but when I was growing up, I also found Don the most fascinating man I knew, and the most entertaining.  I was lucky to have him as an uncle and Vera as my aunt, and I still smile when I recall the time I spent with them and miss the laughs that erupted when Don told his yarns, even the one about the time he caught a little boy kissing a girl on South College Avenue.

 

Sources:

 “Don Timbrook” (obit.). 1986. Northwest Arkansas Times, Jan. 7, p. 2.

 “Family Reunion.” 1959. Northwest Arkansas Times, July 18, p. 7.

 Friedman, Arthur. 1984. “Fayetteville’s Own – A Mountain to Measure.” Northwest Arkansas Times, May 21, p. 12.

 -----. 1984. “Schulertown.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Sept. 3, p. 14.

 -----. 1984. “Old Fairground Leaves Fine Memories.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Nov. 5, p. 18.

 “Note” (Marriage Notice). 1934. Fayetteville Daily Democrat, Feb. 26, p. 3.

 -----. 1986. “Remembering a Close Friend.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Jan. 26, p. 20.

 “J. A. Timbrook Rites.” 1941. Cherokee County Democrat-Star, Sept. 4, p. x

 “Personal Mention.” 1934. Fayetteville Daily Democrat, Feb. 26, p. 3.

 “Mrs. Vera Timbrook” (obit.). 1981.  Northwest Arkansas Times, February 15, p. 2.

Grace Reese Adkins, Fred D. Huckelbury, and the Rise and Decline of Fayetteville's Christ's Church, 1938-1981

(Note this blog entry is a long paper. To read it off line, you can download it as a word file (without pictures) at this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vegb45l0ba8yg0g/christ%20church.docx?dl=0 )

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When the Fayetteville Library bought the old City Hospital complex, it acquired a former church building located on West Rock Street, just south of the present library. The building and the parsonage next to it had been purchased in 1981 by the hospital, which had then filled in the tree-lined ravine separating the former church grounds from the hospital grounds, destroying City Hospital Park and its sea of buttercups.[1] The hospital then paved everything.

Former Christ's Church building viewed through the
southern windows of Fayetteville Public Library, 2015 

Made of light-colored bricks with a glass cross embedded in its front exterior, the old church building merited little notice as part of the hospital. During the three-plus decades the hospital owned it, the building served many mundane purposes. When it was torn down this summer, its fate was mostly unlamented. However, its destruction was a sad occasion for those of us who remember it as it was in the 1950s when it housed Christ’s Church and vibrated with the fervor of its pastor Fred Huckelberry. And we recall with equal sadness the missing wood-frame house just west of the church where Grace Reese Atkins, the church’s former minister, eminence grise, and soul, had lived.

            With the demolition of the former church building, the repository of many memories disappeared. The church’s ghosts are now homeless. However, even with the old church building gone, the church’s story should be preserved to fit into the mosaic of Fayetteville’s history. Toward that end, the following is a short history of the church known from 1952 to 1964 as Christ’s Church and the people who breathed life into it.

Grace Reese Atkins and Central Christian Church: 1933 – 1950

The church that later became Christ’s Church started on June 11, 1938, in the home of Emma Lehman where a small congregation held “cottage services” until January 1939, when it rented a meeting room on Center Street, just off the town square, and adopted a church charter that created Central Christian Church.[2] Like the First Christian Church on College Avenue, established in 1848, the new church adhered to the principles of the Disciples of Christ, but Central Christian did not officially affiliate with it.[3]

As part of the American Restoration Movement, Central Christian Church declared itself to be non-denominational and non-sectarian. It was part of no organizational hierarchy. Its charter stated that the Bible is the inspired word of God and that Jesus is the son of God, and it pledged to “follow the pattern of the New Testament Church” in all matters. Members of the church were expected to make decisions about the plain meaning of words in the New Testament to govern the church and guide its doctrine. 

The driving force in creating the new church was Grace Reese Adkins (1884-1973), who had moved from Mondovi, Wisconsin to Fayetteville in 1902 with her recently widowed father, Edwin Reese; four brothers; and four sisters. She had been a precocious child, learning to read before she started school (“though no one knew how or when”) and writing poetry when she was eight. She later recalled, “My childhood seemed to revolve around books, scissors, and pastepots.”[4]

In her first years in Fayetteville, she worked as a teacher, and she also sometimes attended the University of Arkansas.[5] She joined First Christian Church, where Nathaniel Madison Ragland was the pastor. During those years, she furthered her deep belief in and zeal for the Christian Church at least in part through her interactions with H. S. Mobley, the district evangelist of the Christian Church of Northwest Arkansas.[6]

In 1909, she married Ary Archer Atkins (1886–1964) of Winslow, and the couple lived there until returning to Fayetteville in 1920. While in Winslow, she and Ary had a daughter, Mildred Grace (1910–1991) and a son, Harold Reese (1914–1986).[7] The 1920 census showed that she, Ary, and their two children lived at 234 Block Street in Fayetteville. She listed her occupation as a magazine writer. Ary worked as a manager of Budd’s Department Store.[8]  

Mrs. Atkins used her extraordinary energy, drive and intelligence in work related to her three main interests: religious education of young people, writing, and the Restoration Movement. Her efforts in youth religious education were evident in 1917 when she was president in the district Sunday School Association. In 1919, she became secretary of the Washington County Sunday School Association and, as head of the section addressing Sunday schools for children, helped planned its annual conventions at the University of Arkansas.[9]  After moving back in Fayetteville, she rejoined First Christian Church and was for many years the superintendent of the children’s division of its Sunday schools.[10]

Mrs. Adkins not only sought to improve religious instruction for youth locally, she also used her skills as a writer, poet, and composer to produce instructional and inspirational materials for students and teachers nationwide. While living in Winslow, she had written a book with the racy title, The Sex Life of Girls and Young Women, that the Standard Publishing Company, a religious publisher, issued in 1919. The book focused on biblical teachings of what girls and young women should know and what they should not do. An academic reviewer writing for the journal Social Hygiene, described the book as “A very unscientific, stupid, and well-intentioned book.”[11]

Mrs. Adkins also wrote didactic fiction and non-fiction for magazines, mainly those affiliated with the Restoration Movement, such as Christian Standard, The Lookout, and The Restoration Herald.  For example, she had a serialized novel, titled “The Challenge,” published in the Christian Standard magazine in 1921 and an article on education. “What We Must Do About Johnny,” published in 1923 in the same magazine.  During that time, she was also composing music. Two of her early songs, The Bumblebee and Lullaby, were published in the September 1919 issue of the Progressive Teacher and Southwestern School Journal.

Some of her activities in the late 1910s and 1920s were outside the church. With her interest in writing and music, Mrs. Adkins joined the Author’s and Composer’s Society of Arkansas. A bulletin issued by the organization in 1918 noted that she was expanding a serial novel she had written, titled The Girl of the Ozarks, and it would be published as a book.[12] At a 1921 meeting of the Society, she recited her new poem, “The Ozarks.”[13]  Also during the 1920s, she also was active locally in organizations such as the Jefferson School Parent-Teacher Association and the Fayetteville chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, of which she was elected chapter president.[14]

In the late 1920s, Mrs. Adkins became unhappy with the First Christian Church. She later recalled, “Old historic First Church had long since lost its candlestick…. It had become a place of departed glory, which wrung the hearts of those who loved the Gospel. I worked actively there for 13 years, seeking in every way short of fruitless strife to lure it back to Scriptural ways, but to no avail.”  She decided, she said, “[T]o quietly slip away,” adding, “There was no strife, no cleavage, I just slipped out quietly, to do what I could where I could.”[15]

            In 1927, while still attending First Christian, she initiated an annual summer bible camp. Its purpose was to assemble young people in a rural setting for a week or two of religious instruction and fun activities. She named the gathering the Bethany Bible Camp.[16] During the same summer, a church in Willowby, Ohio also held its first bible camp for the same purpose, and that camp, the Erie Side Bible Conference, is credited in a history of Disciples of Christ bible camps as being the church’s first. The Bethany Bible Camp is not mentioned. In the years that followed these pioneering efforts, bible camps became regular and important features of Christian Churches.[17]   

As Mrs. Adkins was quietly slipping away from her church home in Fayetteville, she began working in the early 1930s as a “community missionary in rural centers,” assisting small groups and churches in small towns and rural parts of northwest Arkansas.[18] She wrote about those days,

“…I began working out through the rural districts, as opportunity offered, ministering to small, discouraged groups, and drawing the youth into camp fellowship. I was ordained as a Christian worker and found many open doors – which men were making no effort to enter. But always I was hampered by the lack of home base here in Fayetteville to work out from, which would stand for the Book and the Gospel.“[19]

            To remedy the problem of lacking a proper home church, Mr. Adkins helped found the tiny Central Christian Church.  She described the early days of the church:

The evangelist-leader I had so persistently prayed for failed to come. So, at long last, we started services in a home [in 1938], with just two widows and their small families to help. The depression still had the country in its grip. My husband was the only man we had for many years…. But somehow we carried on…. After a few months of services in a home, we moved to a hall, and were hard pressed to pay the rent. Few attended…. We lost one of our best charter members, and almost our only paying member, because we would not take a sectarian position on holiness. But we held on.[20]

From 1939 until 1950, Mrs. Adkins served church minister, although others briefly stepped into the role at different times. During those eleven years, she was Fayetteville’s only full-time female minister. An article published on January 27, 1940 in the local paper observed, “Central Christian Church is the only local church with a regularly employed woman pastor. By preference she omits the title ‘reverend.’”  Her guiding principal as minister was stated in the church announcement published weekly in the local paper: “In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things, charity.”

   

Northwest Arkansas TImes, Feb. 4, 1938

         As minister of the Central Christian Church, Mrs. Adkins continued directing the annual Bethany Bible Camps, and she started holding each June an annual vacation bible school at the church. The bible camps continued under her direction until 1950, and she managed the church’s vacation bible schools until 1960.[21]

Even as she was preaching, organizing Bible camps and vacation bible schools, and conducting her own bible training courses in the 1930s and 1940s, Mr. Atkins continued studying, writing, and composing. A scholar of the Restoration Movement, she intensely studied the writings of one of its founders, Alexander Campbell, and kept close watch on its development. She sometimes wrote serious articles based on her research. One example is her article in the December 1948 issue of The Restoration Herald titled “Who Are the Church?” She also continued to write fiction: Her favorite was titled, “Bread Alone,” that was serialized in The Lookout, a Christian magazine for young people, in 1933.[22]  Another serialized story, “The Choice,” was published weekly in the The Outlook, from April 30 to June 25, 1950.  In addition, Mrs. Adkins wrote materials for special church services. Her program for celebrating Mother’s Day was published in a small book in 1949 by Standard Publishing Company.[23]  

Her poetry gained some attention outside of church channels through a column titled “Ozark Moon” that appeared regularly in the local paper from 1935 into January 1940. The column was written by Walter Lemke (“Uncle Walt”), the chair of the University of Arkansas journalism department, and it featured poems submitted by local poets. Mrs. Adkins, using the pseudonym Priscilla, regularly corresponded with him, and he had high regard for her poetry. He wrote:

Priscilla has been sending in verses from time to time which are distinguished by vivid vocabulary, expert construction and other earmarks of good verse. One quality of Priscilla’s poems, however, defies analysis. She sees things that we don’t see. Of if we do, we’re not aware of them.…We don’t know Priscilla except through the column…. She must be a grand person, so we’ll her a grade of “A” on her poetry and an “A-plus on her faith…”[24]  

            Mrs. Adkins' poetry was -- like her -- pithy, austere, and efficient, usually with short sentences in short paragraphs. She often wrote poems in bunches. For example, she wrote series of short poems on, among other topics, birds (“Notes on Ornithology”), jobs (“Vocational Lyrics”), her childhood (“Leaves from Childhood’s Diary”), and musical instruments (“About Musical Instruments”). Mrs. Adkins viewed writing poetry for “Ozark Moon” as “pleasant relaxation in a strenuous life.”[25]  

In 1938, a small press in Gilbert Arkansas published a short volume on her poetry titled Fragments of a Song.  Also, some of her poems were published in a 1941 book featuring the short bios of writers in the Ozarks and examples of their work. One of her poems in that book was titled “Housewives”:

Your problem, which no mere man understands,

Demands consummate art —

The endless Martha tasks upon your hands,

When you’ve a Mary heart.[26]

Beyond her articles, stories, and poems. Mrs. Adkins also wrote numerous hymns. Six of those were published in different hymnals.[27] A version of one, “I’ll Wish I Had Done More,” published in 1948, has been adapted for choirs and featured in recent years in several European churches.[28] One performance with over 300,000 views on YouTube is located at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=420nDNYoAx0

Even as Mrs. Adkins ventured into the arts, her focus remained on her ministry. After meeting from 1939 through 1941 at the old Woodman Hall building, located at 112½ Center Street, Central Christian Church moved in January 1942 to a tiny building at 203 S. School Street, near the City Hospital, that had previously been used at different times as a barbershop and as a restaurant. As the move was made, church members also were progressing toward having their own church building. They purchased land nearby on West Rock Street in 1943. Even with meager resources, the church was able to build a basement on its West Rock Street land, starting it in late 1945 and completing it in 1946. When it was finished, they began holding services there while planning to build an auditorium over it.[29]

The Arrival of Fred Huckelbury and the Rise of Christ’s Church

While meeting in the West Rock Street basement in 1949, the congregation began searching for a full-time minister to replace Mrs. Adkins, but it had difficulty finding one because the small church could pay only a pittance from its collected tithes. In all practicality, the church needed a minister who could attract enough members to pay his salary and its other costs.  

Fred Huckelbury at Christ's Church, mid 1950s

On July 31, 1950, a 37-year-old business man from Fort Smith came to conduct evening services at Central Christian Church, and wowing its members, he was invited back to preach at the next Sunday morning service.[29] The man, Fred Donald Huckelbury (1912–1987), had been born near Van Buren into a large family. He had followed the path of his father, a salaried laborer, and, after finishing three years of high school, had worked at Lauck Lumber Company in nearby Mena. He had been elected to represent the company’s Sawmill and Timber Workers Union, and in that capacity had negotiated with the mill’s owner during a 1937 strike.[30]  

Huckelbury, who married Indianola Faye Branham of Fort Smith in 1932, had moved with his family to California in the late 1930s. The 1940 census showed him and Faye, plus three children, living near Los Angeles. According to his draft board information, he worked as a finisher for the Air Light Venetian Blind Co. and was never drafted.  

Sometime in the post-war 1940s, Huckelbury and his family had moved back to Van Buren, where he worked for the Sun-Tilt Venetian Blind Co. in Ft. Smith. (He may have owned the firm.) While earning a living by making and selling venetian blinds, he had apparently prepared himself for the ministry. However, he was not the minister of any church in the Fort Smith – Van Buren area in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[31]

Fred Huckelbury with Faye Huckelbury in Christ's Church. mid 1950s

Whatever training for and experience as a minister Huckelbury had before he visited Fayetteville in 1950, they were more than enough: it turned out that he was very good at it.  This thin, tall (6” 2”), intense man with wavy hair impressed listeners with his talents as an orator and dazzled them with his musical abilities as he played different instruments.[32]

Huckelbury was not a hell-fire bible thumper and jumper like those found in many fundamentalist churches at the time; he spoke clearly, firmly, and eloquently, delivering a reasoned message in a smooth, deep voice. His scripture-based sermons appealed as much to the listeners’ intellect as to their gut, even as they delivered a firm message of right and wrong.

Many Central Christian Church members, especially its spiritual leader, Mrs. Adkins, thought Huckelbury was a good fit for the church, and church members hired him to be their minister. Mrs. Adkins later observed, “[I]n the time of our greatest need, [God] sent Fred Huckelbury, a young businessman from Fort Smith to help us.”[33] 

Huckelbury took over the ministry in early 1951, though he continued to commute from Fort Smith for some months after that. The first year of his ministry was difficult, but the Church had started growing. Mrs. Adkins described the first year as follows: “Satan sent every device to hinder – sickness, broken bones, business difficulties – everything. But under his ministry, after months of grueling, heartbreaking effort, the tide began to turn.”[34]

Central Christian Church took a big step forward on November 11, 1951, when it held its first church service in the newly completed auditorium that had been built over the West Rock Street basement. It continued to expand and improve the building during the next few years, adding an organ, a baptistry, and a back wing. In 1952, the church’s name was changed to Christ’s Church, likely to emphasize its strictly non-hierarchical, non-denominational character.

Newly Built Christ's Church, December 1952

 Fueled by the tireless evangelizing of the charismatic preacher, who was supported by the prodigious work of Mrs. Adkins, Christ’s Church rapidly increased its membership, adding 77 new members from September 1951 to August 1952, 33 by baptism and 44 by transfer. Part of the church resurgence was stimulated by a lively multi-night revival that Huckelberry held in November, 1951.[35]  

As the menu of activities offered to church members of all ages grew, new members continued to join the church week by week. For example, the Church Bulletin for March 21, 1954, reported that in the previous week the church had added nine new members, four through transfers from a Baptist church and five through baptism.[36]

A picture of the church building published in the local paper on Dec. 24, 1952, included the claim that Christ’s Church had more baptisms in the preceding year than any other Christian Church in Arkansas. That claim was evidence of the growing success of the small church.

Through the efforts of Mrs. Atkins, who resided in the house just west of the church at 429 West Rock Street, Christ’s Church had multiple programs for children. In 1952, the church’s daily vacation bible school, directed by Mrs. Adkins, enrolled 61 children and it continued to grow each year that followed during Huckelberry’s ministry[37]  Aside from programs for children, the church had special programs for teenagers (including a harmonica club) and college age adults, plus it had a men’s group, a women’s group and bible study for all adults. The church even offered “university-level bible courses” through the Arkansas Bible Institute it created in 1954.[38] The Institute was headed by Mrs. Adkins and the courses were taught by Paul C. Davis (1904–1986), a former public school teacher and former state representative who was at the time the elected Washington County Clerk. In 1953, the church also began publishing its own journal, The Gospel Challenge, edited by Mrs. Adkins.[39]

Drawing of Christ's Church, Northwest Arkansas Times,
December 23, 1961

From the beginning of Huckelbury’s ministry, the church had continued the outreach programs that had been initiated earlier by Mrs. Adkins when she had been the church’s pastor. and had expanded them. Huckelbury and church members held rallies and conducted church services in rural parts of the county. Three church members became ordained ministers to assist churches outside Fayetteville. To extend the church’s reach, it began in 1952 a weekly Sunday morning radio program on KRGH.

As the church began to take off in 1952, Mrs. Adkins was mightily pleased with what she saw. She was, at last, realizing her dream. She wrote in Fall 1952:

…there is something peculiarly fresh and different in …Christ’s Church.  Somehow, in some measure, we have been able to capture the vital essence of the Early Church. We have done it partly by avoidance of stilted forms and customs – by “practicing in non-essentials, liberty.” And by lots of knee work. Just lots and lots of it. Little by little, our dreams of a Scriptural congregation are coming true. And the church is spilling over into the country around, through radio programs, and rural services and rallies, and the tireless efforts of Fred Huckelberry…. Cars from the church go out with him, and almost every night is full.[40]

My experience with the church started in the first part of 1954, when I was in the first grade. My mother had drug me to the church after she, my dad, and I moved to a City Housing apartment located just a few blocks from West Rock Street. In the summer of 1954, I attended Christ’s Church’s daily vacation bible school. I would also attend the summer bible schools in the three years that followed. My main recollections from those early experiences are marching into and out of the church building with a column of kids as a piano pounded out “Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War” and making the trip down the perilous path to the City Hospital Park in the ravine behind the church. There we could (at last!) play. I also recall watching a peculiarly fussy and peripatetic older lady orchestrate everything, apparently worrying about every detail.  

Certificate acknowledging completion of the
1954 Vacation Bible School at Christ's Church 

That fussy lady, her hands always moving with nervous energy, was Mrs. Adkins, and during the dozen years I was active in the church, I spent considerable time with her, mainly in her classes and in practices for various church programs (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.) she was directing. I remember her as a no-nonsense purpose-driven woman, never particularly warm or harsh. Certainly, I was impressed with her large living room, crammed full of books, papers, and a piano, where we would often meet. It struck me as a place from the distant past where serious reading, thinking, and reflection took place, and I liked being there.

In the years after I joined the church, its growth and vigor of the church continued apace. The pastor and church members, I recall, talked of a “spirit-filled” church, a church “on fire” for Jesus. However, in 1956 it suffered a setback. I am not sure what happened or why, but two men – brothers Odean (1918 – 1977) and Odell (1916 - 1991) Carnes -- who were church elders left the church with their families.[41]  In early 1956, Odean – a barber by trade – was pastor of Parkdale Baptist Church in Fayetteville and a year later was the minister of a church with the name “Central Christs Church” that met a few blocks from Christ’s Church. Some church members left Christ’s Church to follow the Carnes bothers.

Despite this division in the church, Huckelbury continued to fill the church until his departure at the end of January 1958.[42] When Huckelbury left Fayetteville, he moved to Julesburg, Colorado, where he became minister of the Julesburg Church of Christ. In early 1960, he moved from Colorado to Corinth, Mississippi, where he became pastor of the Harper Road Christian church and an evangelist with the Christian Evangelizers Association, an organization created by Cecil Todd (who had been a minister at the Christian Church in Fort Smith in the late 1950s). The Association had its headquarters in Joplin, Mo.  A newspaper story in 1960 described the organization as follows:

The Christian Evangelizers Association features national evangelists, Cecil Todd and Fred Huckleberry, singing evangelist, Midget Lowell Mason, and the well-known Blackwood Brothers Quartet as well as the Statesman and Prophets Quartets.

Christian Evangelizers hold large tent revivals in various cities and help to establish new congregations of Churches of Christ in those cities. They have been televised and have also been on nation-wide radio programs.[43]

Todd later changed the name of the organization to Rival Fires Ministry and became a well-known tele-evangelist. The organization still exists and is headquartered in Branson, Mo. It is uncertain how long Huckelberry remained affiliated with Todd and his ministries.[44]

For most of the rest of his life, Huckelbury was the pastor of Harper Road Christian Church in Corinth, and he also periodically conducted revivals for churches in other states. He retired in 1984 and passed away in Corinth in 1987. He and Faye are buried at Fairview Cemetery in Van Buren, Arkansas.

One of Huckelbury’s legacies is Rock Solid Ministries, an organization that conducts Christian Church revivals throughout the United States. It has two evangelists, both of whom live in Corinth.[45]  One of them is Tom Weaver, Huckelbury’s grandson, the son of David and Donna Faye Huckelbury Weaver, who were married in 1949.

The Rock Solid Ministries website cites Huckelbury, “a mid-Twentieth Century Restoration Movement Evangelist who held hundreds of revivals and baptized thousands into Christ,” as an inspiration for its work.[46] It has posted on its website recordings of six sermons that Huckelbury delivered on radio in Corinth in the early 1960s. The sermons can be heard at this link: https://www.rocksolidministries.org/fdhaudio/

Christ’s Church After Huckelbury

When Fred Huckelbury left Christ’s Church in early 1958, it was a thriving church with healthy membership and diverse activities.  It held Sunday School before the main Church Service. It had Sunday evening, Wednesday night, and Friday night services, plus many “fellowship opportunities” for its members. It had a weekly radio program. However, time would show that much of the success of the church had been due to Huckelberry and his formidable talents.

The man who followed Fred Huckelbury had big shoes to fill. The Church picked Sterling McBee (1922 – 1993) He was an earnest man who graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1952. He had the style and eloquence, but not the charisma, of Huckelbury. Also, he was handicapped in his efforts to continue the vitality of the church by the fact that he lived thirty miles away in Huntsville and had a full-time job there as supervisor of the local Farmers Home Administration office. He simply could not devote the same amount of time to develop the church as Huckelberry had.

Sermons by Sterling McBee at
Christ's Church

Perhaps it was unhappiness with his performance that caused in 1960 a major split in the church that resulted in Mrs. Adkins leaving it. Or maybe, Mrs. Adkins had doctrinal disagreement with McBee. Whatever her grievance, by the middle of 1960, she had left Christ’s Church – the church to which had devoted much of her life -- to join the recently created Central Christian Church. Several other church members joined the seventy-six-year-old woman in the exit, and her departure was a grave blow to Christ’s Church, which nonetheless carried on with a diminished flock.[47]  

McBee remained as the church’s minister until November 1963, when he was transferred from FmHA’s office in Huntsville to its office in Warren. The church selected Carroll Cole (1901–1973) as its next minister. He came to Christ’s Church from Anniston, Missouri, where he had been pastor of a Christian Church. Soon after he took over as minister in early February 1964, Christ’s Church merged with Central Christian Church, and Mrs. Adkins rejoined the church on West Rock Street. Its name was changed to Central Christian Church.

Although eighty years old and in poor health, Mrs. Adkins played the piano at church services every Sunday, taught bible classes, and directed special church programs.[48] She continued her church-related activities until 1967, when she moved to Illinois to live with her daughter, Lois Johnson. She passed away in 1973 and is buried in Fairfield Memorial Gardens in Fayetteville.[49]

Carroll Cole remained as pastor of Central Christian Church for less than two years, leaving in September 1965. The men who followed him as minister of the church at West Rock Street were as follows:

Edward R. Baker (June 1966 – February 1968)

Charles Pickett (November 1968 – October 1970)

Carroll Cole (October 1971 – July 1973) (passed away Dec. 1973)

Sterling McBee (February 1974 – March 1976)

Herman Paden (April 1976 – 198?)

These pastors presided over a diminished church whose slow downward attendance trend was sometimes interrupted by enthusiasm created by a new pastor, church rallies, and other special events.[50] Despite their best efforts, none of the ministers was able to recapture the magic of the Huckelberry years.

            In 1981, the church’s pastor was Herman Paden, who had occupied the pulpit for nearly five years after he had replaced McBee (who had in 1973 returned to be the church’s pastor, leaving again in 1976).  Paden and the church were approached by City Hospital directors about their desire to buy the church’s West Rock Street buildings and land. The hospital intended to expand and to do so it needed the church’s property.

The Northwest Arkansas Times reports the sale of the church building to the City Hospital,
August 15, 1981

When the church resisted selling the building that had been its home for thirty years, the hospital threatened to initiate condemnation proceedings. In early August, 1981, a week before the governing board was to vote to file condemnation papers, the hospital and church reached an agreement:  The hospital would buy for $130,000 a church building at 904 West 15^th Street that belonged to the Pentecostal Church whose members were about to move into a new church building. The hospital would then trade the 15^th Street church building for Central Christian Church’s West Rock Street properties.[51] The deal was made, and Central Christian Church left its building on South Rock Street. It held its first services at its new location on November22, 1981.[52]  

            Central Christian Church still meets weekly and will celebrate its 80^th birthday in 2019. Its church building now is located at 3264 North 48^th Street in Springdale and its long-time pastor is Ed Cowan.[53] The congregation is a small one.

Conclusion

While the destruction of a soulless building can be painful for people who recall the efforts that were required to create it, the hopes and dreams of the people who populated it, and the dramas played out in it, the loss become deeper when memories accompany it into oblivion. In the case of Christ’s Church, and of the city hospital that bought it, the memories associated with these institutions should not be lost; their stories belong in the narrative history of the city.   

            Sometime in the next few years, the Fayetteville library will construct new buildings over the land long occupied by the church and hospital. It will offer space and programs that, no doubt, will be the envy of most cities. As this wonderful addition to the city contributes to the learning of its citizens and enhances the enjoyment of life of all who visit it, the library should find ways to tell the story of the institutions that preceded it in its new location and to honor those who made those institutions important elements of the city’s past. 

Footnotes

1. Mrs. Grace Reese Adkins, whose short biography is presented in this paper, would have been deeply disturbed by the destruction of City Hospital Park, had she lived to see it. She wrote about the beauty of the flowers in the park in letters to the editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times in 1960 and 1962:

There is a beauty spot in Fayetteville which few people know anything about, namely a lovely colony of buttercups in City Hospital Park, which increase in size from year to year…I first discovered this colony in the early spring 1920, when I was a patient in the City Hospital. I looked out of my window and saw the small patch of yellow on the green slope of the hillside. Many years later we bought a home on the edge of the park, and there they were still, but in greater numbers. Each year they carpet a larger area….You ought to see them. They are close to West Street, in a swale where the ravine flattens out and the sun creeps in. 

Letter to the editor. Northwest Arkansas Times, April 22, 1960, p 3; also see, Letter to the editor. Northwest Arkansas Times, March 20, 1962, p. 16.

2. For a brief history of the church, see “Central Christian Church.” Northwest Arkansas Times, December 12, 1981.

3.  For a history of the Disciples of Christ, see https://disciples.org/our-identity/history-of-the-disciples/ . A history of Fayetteville’s First Christian Church can be found at this link:  https://fccfayetteville.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Ragland-History-of-FCC-Fayetteville-high-res.pdf

4. Florence Woodcock McCullough. 1945. Living Authors of the Ozarks and their Literature. Self-published, pp. 3.

Accessible at this link: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.75436/2015.75436.Living-Authors-Of-The-Ozarks-And-Their-Literature_djvu.txt

Also, Mrs. Adkins’ description of her move to Fayetteville in 1902 with her family is found in a letter to the editor she wrote, published in the Northwest Arkansas Times on May 6, 1969, p. 4.

5.  Mrs. Adkins alludes to her work as a teacher in a short summary of her life that she wrote in 1945 for her entry in Living Authors of the Ozarks and their Literature (see footnote 4.)  She wrote, “It was only a step from public school teaching to the field of Christian education.”  In a letter to the editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times dated July 24, 1964, Mrs. Adkins wrote about attending an Arkansas history course at the University of Arkansas during the first decade of the 1900s.

6. According to Thomas Elmore Lucy, known as the “Globe-Trotting Poet-Humorist of Arkansas,” who was popular in the state’s Chautauqua Circuit, H. S. Mobley (his first name was “Hazel, which he understandably did not use) arrived in Washington County about the same time as Mrs. Adkins to be the “district evangelist of the Christian Church in Northwest Arkansas.” He traveled by horse and buggy to rural areas of the county to hold “brush arbor” revivals and other services. For a while, Lucy had accompanied him as song leader for some of the services. According to Lucy, Mobley had “outstanding personalities among his converts” such as Grace Reese Adkins, “author and community missionary in rural centers.” Thomas Elmore Lucy, “The Shining Cave,” Arkansas Gazette, June 23, 1946, p. 37.

Mobley (1869 – 1946) left this work as a full-time evangelist before 1910. The census that year showed him living in Prairie Grove and working as a “traveling agent” for a farmer’s organization. In 1920, he was farming in Prairie Grove and working for a program to help farmers improve their crops. The census that year showed that Edgar L. Reese, Mrs. Adkins brother, was among the people living on his farm. Mobley spent some years in the 1920s in Washington D.C. as a lobbyist for farmers and later traveled as a speaker for International Harvester Co.  In the late 1920s, he returned to farming in Prairie Grove and was elected nineteen times to one-year terms as president of the Washington County Farm Bureau. He regularly served on the state board of the Farm Bureau during these years.

   

7. In 1925, Mrs. Atkins had another daughter, Lois Margaret (1925 - ?).

8. Advertisement. Northwest Arkansas Times, March 2, 1923, p. 3. According to Mrs. Adkins, her husband was “a quiet person, not given to public work.” Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol. 17 no. 1, September, pp. 5, 7.

9. “Fourth District S.S. Convention August 27.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, August 22, 1917, p. 3; “County Sunday School Convention May 26-27.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, May 24, 1919, p. 1; and “County Sunday Schools to Meet Here Tuesday.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, June 27, 1921. Mrs. Adkins was president of the district Sunday school association and secretary of the county association.

10. “Sunday Rally Day at First Christian.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, Sept. 27, 1922.

11.  H.W.D. 1920. “Review of the Sex Life of Girls and Young Women.” Social Hygiene, vol. 6, p. 303. Accessible through Google Books.

12 “Initial Bulletin Issued by Society.” Arkansas Gazette, December 29, 1918, p. 16. Also see,

“Authors and Composers Society Holds Meeting.” Arkansas Gazette, January 8, 1919, p. 1 and “Appears in New Dress.” Arkansas Gazette, Feb 8, 1920, p. 45. I have not identified the magazine in which the serialized novel was published nor found any evidence it was published as a book.

For more about the society, which had an active membership of 122 in 1921, see a summary article in the July-August 1921 issue of the “The Arkansas Writer.” The article reprint is in C. Fred Williams, et al. (eds.). 1984. A Documentary History of Arkansas, University of Arkansas Press, pp. 198–199. 

13. Note, Arkansas Gazette, January 30, 1921, p. 29 and Note. Arkansas Gazette, February 2, 1921, p. 4.

The February 1, 1921 meeting featured authors from Northwest Arkansas. Both Mrs. Adkins and Thomas Elmore Lucey, mentioned in footnote 6, made presentations at the meeting.

14. “P.T.A. to Hold Social Meeting.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, June 16, 1922, p. 2 and “District W.C.T.U. Meeting Held at Fayetteville.” Arkansas Gazette, March 19, 1930, p. 2.

15. Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7.

16. Bethany, a town mentioned in the New Testament, was the home of Lazarus, who – according to the Bible -- was resurrected by Jesus four days after he died. Bethany is also the West Virginia city that was home to Alexander Campbell and is the name of the college he established there in 1840.

17. Mrs. Adkins stated specifically that her camp was first held the same year that the Erieside Camp first met. She wrote, “I tried to strengthen the churches of the county through their youth by organizing Bethany Bible Camp, the same year Erieside was started. But while it did much good, it could not turn the tide of apostasy in the churches.” Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory. The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7.

The following is from a 1948 newspaper article, likely based on materials written by Mrs. Adkins, that briefly told the history of the Bethany Bible Camp:

Bethany Bible Camp was one of the two first camps in the modern Christian Service Movement for young people. The other was located in Erieside, Ohio. Both camps started in 1927 without knowledge of each other and have served as models for many years until the number of the camps now totals 197 in the United States.

The main idea behind the service camps is education in Bible scriptures and preparation for Christian work on a non-sectarian basis. A large number of recruits for full time gospel and missionary work enter Bible colleges each year from the services camps.

The first site of Bethany Bible Camps was at Wesley, and the school house there was used for assembly, tents for dormitories, and the improved outdoor kitchen for cooking. It has also been held at Brentwood, West Fork, Farmington, and the Adkins home north of Fayetteville, where tents, garage, basement and barn lofts were combined to provide dormitory accommodations.

For the past three seasons the camp has been held at the Highland Community building with tents used for sleeping. A permanent camp ground has been acquired nearby, but it is not yet ready for use.

“Bethany Bible Camp Pioneered in Modern Christian Service Movement for Youth.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 24, 1948, p. 8.

For a discussion of Christian Church camps, see the entry on “Camps” by Reuben G. Bullard in the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, edited by Douglas A. Foster, published in 2004 by Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

18 “Community missionary in rural centers” was Lucy’s description of Mrs. Adkins (see footnote 6). Lucy knew Mrs. Adkins through the Arkansas Authors and Composers Society of which both were members in the early 1920s and through mutual association with H. J. Mosely and his family.

19. Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7

20. Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7

21. See these articles for descriptions of various Bethany Bible Camps and vacation bible schools:

“Farmington.” Northwest Arkansas Times, July 15, 1941, p 2.

“Bethany Bible Camp to Open July 10.” Northwest Arkansas Times July 9, 1942 p 4.

“Bethan Bible Camp Plans Reading Course.” Northwest Arkansas Times Aug 6,1942.

 “Bethany Bible Camp to be Held at Devil’s Den.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 9, 1945, p. 3.

“Preparations Made for Bible Camp of Christian Church.” Northwest Arkansas Times July 20, 1946, p. 2.

“Guest to Speak at Central Christian.” Northwest Arkansas Times July 5, 1947, p. 2.

“Youth Week is scheduled at Bible Camp.” Northwest Arkansas Times July 10, 1948, p. 2.

“New Course to be Featured on Bethan Bible Camp Program.” Northwest Arkansas Times July 9, 1949, p. 2.

 “25 Enrolled at Church Bible School.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 5, 1944, p. 7.

 “Central Christian Church to Have Bible School.” Northwest Arkansas Times June 2, 1945, p. 3.

“Christian Bible School Continues.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 29, 1946, p. 2.

“Evangelist [Billy James Hargis] to Hold Meetings Here.” Northwest Arkansas Times May 24, 1947, p. 2.  Note. Northwest Arkansas Times, May 31, 1953, p. 2.

22. Mrs. Adkins mentioned this story as her favorite in her entry in Florence Woodcock McCullough. 1945. Living Authors of the Ozarks and their Literature. Self-published, pp. 3-4. (See footnote 4.)

23. The title was Standard Mother’s Day Program Book. See “Work of Local Pastor Published.” Northwest Arkansas Times, April 30, 1949.

24 “Ozark Moon: Lines of Doctrine.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, Nov. 14, 1935, p. 4

25. Florence Woodcock McCullough. 1945. Living Authors of the Ozarks and their Literature. Self-published, pp. 3-4.  (See footnote 4.)

26. This poem was published in Florence Woodcock McCullough. 1945. Living Authors of the Ozarks and their Literature. Self-published, pp. 3-4. It is based on a story in the New Testament (Luke) about Jesus visiting the house, located in Bethany, of sisters Martha and Mary. While Martha was distracted by preparing a meal, Mary sat and talked at length with Jesus. Martha was not pleased.

27. See https://hymnary.org/person/Adkins_Grace

28. Other songs in hymnals include “This is the Way the Wind Doth Blow,” “‘Tis Written in his Word,”  “All Through the Day while I am at Play,” “Under the Snow,” and “The One that the Children Love.”

29. Note. Northwest Arkansas Times, July 21, 1950.  Note. Northwest Arkansas Times, Aug. 7, 1950, p. 5

30. “Lumber Plant Resumes Work.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Aug 2, 1937, p. 9.

31. I found no records that document his preparation for the ministry. A search of Fort Smith city directories and the city’s newspaper for the years 1949, 1950, and 1951 provided no record of Huckelberry serving as the minister of a church in the Fort Smith-Van Buren area during these years.

32. An article in the Northwest Arkansas Times reported that he would be speaking to the “Fayetteville Bible Mission” and described his as follows: “Mr. Huckleberry is known as a forceful speaker and talented musician. He will bring with him a number of instruments, which he will play at the service.” “Rev. Fred Huckleberry (sic) to Speak at Mission.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 30, 1951, p. 2.

 One of Huckelberry’s sisters was Mrs. Isabel French, who wrote a weekly column, “Hills of Home,” for the Arkansas Gazette for more than two decades. “’Hills of Home’ Writer Dies (Mrs. Isabel France).” Arkansas Gazette, Feb. 24, 1963

33. Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7.

34. Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7.

35. Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7.

Also, “Fred Huckleberry (sic) Revival Service.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Nov 26, 1951, p. 2.

36. One of the members added through baptism that week was Bernice Durning, my mother. 

37. “Picnic Announced for Christ’s Church DVBS.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 12, 1952.

38. See these articles:

“Berean Class Organized at Central Christian.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Jan 26, 1952 p. 2.

“Halloween Party Given at O’Dean Karnes House.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Oct 31, 1952 p. 2.

“Skating Party Given by Christ’ Church.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 16, 1953, p. 2.

“Christ’s Church Has Bible Institute Work.” Northwest Arkansas Times, March 27, 1954, p. 11.

“Christ’s Church to Re-Open Bible Class.” Northwest Arkansas Times August 28, 1954.

“Boys of Christ’s Church Organize Harmonia Club.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Nov 11, 1954.

39. “Mrs. Adkins Editor of Gospel Challenge.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 3, 1953.

40. Grace Reese Adkins. 1952. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” The Restoration Herald, vol 17(1), pp. 5, 7.

41. Both were elders when the church installed new officers for the coming year in late September 1955. “Christ’s Church.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Sept.24, 1955, p. 3.  After preaching at a local Baptist church during most of 1956, Odean Carnes was the minister of Central Christs Church when it opened its doors 425 South Government Street near the beginning of 1957.  

42. I was probably the last person that Huckelberry baptized at Christ Church. It was his last Sunday there on January 28, 1958.

43. “Daniel Schantz Joins Evangelizers.” Wilmington News-Journal (Ohio), Jan 11, 1960, p. 6. Note: Reading the article it is unclear because of poor punctuation whether Huckelberry or “Midget Lowell Mason” was the “singing evangelist.” It was Mason, who later was known as the “world’s smallest gospel singer.”  “Lowell Mason Will Sing at Service.” Joplin Globe, December 31, 1975, p. 10. 

44. See https://revivalfires.org/about/

45. See https://www.rocksolidministries.org/staff

46. See the short bio at  https://www.rocksolidministries.org/fdhaudio/

47. My mother and most long-time members stayed at Christ’s Church. I was attending church at the time of the split, but as a teenager, I did not pay much attention to what was going on and why.

48 Central Christian, Northwest Arkansas Times Nov 7 1964 and New Bible Class. Northwest Arkansas Times Feb 5, 1966, p. 5, I was in the Thanksgiving church program she directed in November 1964.

49. “Obituary: Mrs. Adkins.” Northwest Arkansas Times, January 11, 1974, p. 2.

50.  As the list shows, Carroll Cole, who departed as minister in September 1965, returned six years later to again take on the ministry. He fell ill in Summer, 1973 and passed away in December. He was followed by Sterling McBee, the man Cole had replaced in January 1964.

51. “Hospital, Church Settle Property Dispute.” Northwest Arkansas Times, Aug. 15, 1983, p. 1.

52. “Central Christian Church.” Northwest Arkansas Times, December 21, 1981.

53. Tresa McBee Riha. “Returning to the familiar.” Northwest Arkansas Times, January 8, 2000. My mother continued attending the church until health issues intervened in 2013. My dad joined the church in the late 1990s and attended with my mother.