May 2014

May 26, 2014May 27, 2014

First Baptist Church – Wehking Alumni Center

When I was working at The Athens Messenger with Bob Rogers, we had a technique we used when we wanted to goof off. We’d shoot something like a old general store in a decaying coal town and run a photo of the outside of the building along with a brief description and a promise “tomorrow we’ll go inside.”

I’m going to do the same thing with the Aleen Vogel Wehking Alumni Center, formerly the First Baptist Church at 926 Broadway. Tomorrow, “we’ll go inside” to see the plaster reproductions of ancient, Medieval and modern works of art that Louis Houck bought at the end of 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Third First Baptist Church

This building was really the third home of the First Baptist Church.

The original First Baptist Church was organized Aug. 13, 1834, with a membership of nine. I did a post about Cape’s first Protestant church across from the Common Pleas Courthouse in 2012.
The church’s next home was at Broadway and Spanish. I photographed the steeple of the church being painted in 1967.
Here’s the bell that was salvaged from a sunken steamboat and used at the first church.
After the university bought this building, the congregation moved out to 1289 Lexington Avenue.

Billy Sunday swelled ranks

The congregation had swelled to 719 by the time it moved to 926 Broadway. Part of the growth – an increase of 258 – was attributed to Billy Sunday’s revival in Cape in 1926. Here’s The Missourian’s front page account of Billy Sunday’s arrival in town.

University bought building in 2003

The university bought the church in 2003 for $3.5 million. The congregation relocated in 2006, and the university remodeled portions of the building in order to occupy it in 2007. The stained glass windows remained.

Photo gallery of Wehking Alumni Center / First Baptist Church

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery. And, don’t forget, we’ll go inside tomorrow.

May 26, 2014April 17, 2021

Flags in the Cemetery

Eighty veterans are buried in the three cemeteries that served The Ridges, formerly known as the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Curator Jessica and I were fortunate enough to quickly find the graves of two men who served in the United States Colored Infantry in the Civil War.

Daniel Mischal was a sergeant in the 27th United States Colored Infantry, Ohio’s second African American regiment. The regiment was organized at Camp Delaware on January 16th, 1864, and served until the end of the Civil War; it was then mustered out September 21, 1865.

Battle of Crater

Here is the grave of Corp. Israel Johnson.

The Colored Infantry not only fought the Confederates; they also had to contend with racism on the Union side. The Ohio Historical Society repeats Sgt. James H. Payne’s account of the August 12, 1864, Battle of the Crater:

“…(T)wo regiments [the 43rd USCI and 27th USCI] drove the enemy from their breastworks, and took possession of the blown up fort; but while they did, all the white soldiers lay in their pits and did nothing to support our men in the struggle; they lay as if there was nothing for them to do for one hour after the explosion took place…How easily Petersburg could have been taken on the 30th of July, had the white soldiers and their commanders done their duty! But prejudiced against colored troops prevented them…I can only conclude that our men fell unnecessarily in the battle on the 30th. In their retreat, they received the cross-fire of the enemy, and no small number were killed by our own artillery.”

Burials were austere

A visitor’s guide to the cemeteries says “Virtually everything about burial on the Ridges was austere. The unembalmed bodies were washed, wrapped in simple shrouds, and placed in plain wooden coffins. Normally, the funeral “procession” was comprised of six people: four gravedigger/pallbearers, a representative of the hospital and a chaplain.

“The service consisted of an opening and closing prayer and, in the case of Christians, a reading from Scripture – no personalized eulogy, no one else in attendance. From the 1870s to 1943, graves were marked only with small, sequentially numbered, marble stones which corroded rapidly and were easily broken – no names, no dates.”

Vets not recognized until 2005

This particular cemetery served the Asylum from its opening in 1874 until about 1913, so the flags you see flying recognize servicemen who fought before World War I.

Two other cemeteries on the property received bodies until 1972, After that, unclaimed bodies were taken to two rural Athens County cemeteries.

In all, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), which has taken on the task of identifying the graves of veterans, has found two who fought in the Mexican War, sixty-eight from the Civil War, a member of the Confederate Army, and another two veterans who served with the United States Colored infantry. Three veterans served in the Spanish–American War, and seven fought in World War I.

Starting in 2005, the Ridges Cemeteries Committee has been organizing Memorial Day Ceremonies for the many veterans buried at the asylum. NAMI started the Memorial Day Ceremonies to help restore dignity to the patients on the Ridges and to help recognize the sacrifice of the veterans, many who had probably suffered through post traumatic stress disorder as well as other post war symptoms.

May 25, 2014May 29, 2016

Seeing the Elephant

It was the summer of 1975. Saigon had fallen and the Vietnam War was over. My draft lottery was high enough that I wasn’t called, even though my draft status was 1A for a brief time in 1969.

I talked The Post into sending me to Camp Blanding with a local National Guard unit for a week of summer camp. I wrote about the experience in 2012. On this Memorial Day weekend, my thoughts turn back to that era.

National Guard was a safe haven

The unit was a mixture of young guys with long hair who wore wigs over their tresses serving alongside men with gray in their hair. One guardsman wore jump wings on his cap and sported tattoos on his arms listing almost every major battle in the Pacific during World War II.

Seeing the elephant

The phrase “seeing the elephant” popped up in many Civil War letters and diaries, but Curator Jessica said it’s been around longer than that. G.W. Kendall, in Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition in 1844, wrote, “When a man is disappointed in any thing he undertakes, when he has seen enough, when he gets sick and tired of any job he may have set himself about, he has ‘seen the elephant.'”

I didn’t know much about the background men in the unit, but I could see in the eyes of some of the guardsmen they were looking way beyond the pines and palmettos of north central Florida. What was a war game to most was very real to some.

2000-Yard Stare

Life Magazine published a painting by World War II artist and correspondent Tom Lea in 1945. The 1944 panting of a Marine at the Battle of Peleliu – the site of the highest casualty rate of any battle in the Pacfic – became known as the 2,000-Yard Stare.

Lea said of his subject, “He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-sleeps at night and gouges Japs out of holes all day. Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?”

Memorial Day is more than picnics and a day off from work.

May 24, 2014

St. John’s United Church of Christ

While Mother and I were roaming around Jackson and Fruitland, we came upon a shiny white church off Hwy FF that had a cemetery behind it. I hate to disappoint some of you, but that orange orb isn’t a UFO or a spirit materialization: it’s just an internal reflection caused by shooting into the sun.

We had a busy day. Before getting to St. John’s, we visited

Church and cemetery photo gallery

I couldn’t find much information on the church and its cemetery, so I’ll offer up this photo gallery and count on you to tell me more about it. I’m particularly curious about what kind of plant that is. (Wife Lila thinks it’s a Dogwood.)

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.