Building the Church Building in Monticello, IN

Growing Up with a Preacher Man 

Rev. William "Lester" Howard (1929-2021)
Mary Eulalie McLean Howard (1933-2021)

Building the Church Building
____________________

by Carolyn Ann Howard

When we lived in Monticello, I took a lot of pictures. When I first got married, I entrusted those photographs to my parents, who had a much bigger space than I had in my tiny apartment. My pictures ended up in a box with a bunch of other pictures kept in my mother's bottom dresser drawer. I didn't take the pictures to my home when I bought a house, because I thought they were safe in that bottom drawer. They weren't. They're gone now. All gone. I have no idea where they are, and it is a regret. Because one, they were my pictures but two, I should have retrieved them years ago, and I just didn't do it. And now I'm trying to blog about my father's life and have very few pictures to jog my memory.

We moved to Monticello in 1963 and the cornerstone of the church states it was built in 1966, so my father wasted no time in his mission. The church hired an architect to design the church, but it was built largely from sweat equity from the members and by my father. It was a beautiful space, and we were very proud of it, rightly so. The only thing is that they didn't put in air conditioning, because in 1966, it wasn't as hot as it is now. The church had a "whole house" fan and we also had one in our house, next door to the church. During the summer, we would open all the windows and let the whole-house fan run, and it was just fine.

As an aside, it was pretty dark back there, living off the road like we did. So dad put up a dusk-to-dawn light that was visible from the piano room window. That light gave me such comfort. Click on photos to enlarge

The church building itself was beautiful red brick with stained glass windows. The wooden arches in the sanctuary were gorgeous, and the fellowship hall was fitted with portable wall dividers so that it could be converted into Sunday school classrooms. A switch on the wall rang a bell that let everyone know when Sunday school was over. Howard Shine was the ringer of that bell every Sunday without fail. The only thing were those ball lights in the sanctuary. I had nightmares over those things!

The Fellowship Hall
with its dividers

I felt so at home in that building. Not only was my house my home, but the church building was an extension of that home. I remember playing a new Partridge Family album nonstop in the foyer one winter day, when school was out for Christmas. The information booklets that most churches keep for their parishioners to buy/borrow was also on a table inside that foyer. "Good News for Modern Man" and "My Heart, Christ's Home," were two examples.

My father valued privacy/modesty almost above all else, and so the restrooms had a barrier in the hallway to shield their entrance. This was his invention. He had the restrooms put in as far away from the sanctuary as possible, and the nursery was also across from these restrooms. Everything about that building was perfect and perfectly placed. Even though small, we had plenty of room for every activity.

The building always welcomed me and was never judgmental, even when my weight started to creep up, and I started to get bullied at school. I was bullied at the school, but not at the church. As a child, I didn't understand the link between weight and food, and our house was filled with chocolate cereal, donuts, chips, and other unhealthy foods. Additionally, I needed my teeth fixed, which never happened, and I still have trouble pronouncing "s" (even though I had my two front teeth fixed after my first marriage, but they could use a bit more help.) I had to take remedial speech in grade school when what I really needed was just my teeth fixed.

Under my father's ministry and guidance, that building became a home for many of us, though, not just me. And it was BUSY. Many activities went on inside and outside that church building, and we all felt like a family, because we were!

My father certainly had a win with this church. In his later life, he wished he would have stayed in Monticello and retired from there. This would have been good for my mom as well. But we had a wonderful 14 years here and I'll take it!

Pictures are from the Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection.

© 2022 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC

My Parents' Back Story - WIlliam Lester Howard and Mary Eulalie McLean

Growing Up with a Preacher Man 

Rev. William "Lester" Howard (1929-2021)
Mary Eulalie McLean Howard (1933-2021)

My Parent's Backstory
____________________

by Carolyn Ann Howard

After my father graduated from the high school in Alfordsville, Indiana, in 1947, he went to Indianapolis to hang out with his brother, my Uncle Willis. They lived in a boarding house together, and my father got a job at a cardboard factory making 55 cents an hour.  After only a year, he stated he "received the call." This is how at least Baptist pastors say how they know that God is "calling" them to the ministry. Uncle Willis and Dad next got jobs at a Christian Church doing construction for an expansion, paying $1.17 an hour, but that job ended when the summer ended. After that, my father got a job at Standard Brands. 

My father at this point wasn't quite Baptist yet. He grew up in the Methodist Church there at Alfordsville, infused with an unhealthy dose of "holiness." I'm pretty sure some of the Methodist doctrine has changed since the late 1940s, but I know that all the rules my father felt like he had to follow were not part of that doctrine.

After a year in Indianapolis, my father had saved up enough to attend Taylor University. This school continues to this day as a nondenominational Christian college and is located in Upland, Indiana. He attended for one year before his savings ran out. He loved it at Taylor University, and I'm sorry he let money make the decision for him that he could not afford to continue there. That was The Silent Generation. Hard-working, thrifty, loyal. That was my father. 

After the year at Taylor was over, he went back to Alfordsville to live with his brother John, sister Esther, and his mom. Not knowing what else to do, he wrote to the District Superintendent (D.S.) in Evansville and asked if there were any jobs open for a student pastorate. The D.S. gave him the Methodist churches of Gentryville and Buffaloville. Dad was 19, and the pay was $20 a week. A woman in Gentryville by the name of Kate Pittman fixed all his meals for $3.00 a week. They were very good company for each other. He lived in the parsonage at Gentryville. Click on photos to enlarge

In or around 1948
Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection

Yankeetown sanctuary, now razed
Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection

After a year, the D.S. felt Dad should be closer to Evansville, since he had made the decision to enroll at Evansville College. His churches at that time were in Warrick County, Indiana and included Yankeetown, Pelzer, Union, and Oak Grove Methodist Churches. It was common at that time for young Methodist pastors in rural areas to have two or more churches.

Dad wasn't happy at Evansville College, though. He didn't like their liberal outlook towards religion, and he thought, again, it was just too much money. Therefore, after two quarters, he decided to transfer to Oakland City College.

My mother went to the Yankeetown church with her family when Dad was pastor there. Dad told stories of eating Sunday dinner at my grandparent's house each week. I'm sure it was my grandparent's plan all along to set my father up with my mother. And my mother was happy for the arrangement. Although she dearly loved her parents and, after they passed, idolized them, at that point in time, she wanted out of their house more than anything else. She was 17. My father was 21.

11 Jul 1951
Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection

After Dad married my mother in 1951, the D. S. transferred my father to Selvin, Folsomville, Garrison Chapel, and Mt. Pleasant Methodist Churches. It was here that Dad decided to switch from the Methodist Church to the American Baptist Church. He never liked infant baptism, believing that people should make their own decision for Christ and then be baptized, making a public confession at that time. He also thought that communism was infiltrating the Methodist Church, and that concerned my father greatly. As someone remarked to me after Dad died, "So... McCarthyism got to him?" Um, that would be a yes.

Once this decision was made, he quit the Methodist Church, which meant The Methodist Church was no longer there to give him employment. Because of that, my parents moved from Selvin into an apartment on Governor Street in Evansville. My dad got into a lot of debt at this time, buying appliances and other things to set up the household. He felt that he had to work, so he got a job at Briggs, which made Plymouth bodies for the Chrysler Factory that was in Evansville at that time. This was at the corner of Columbia and Evans. He got out of debt, but the schedule was grueling. He worked second shift, and then would drive to Oakland City College, and then would come home and do school work, and then go back to work. My mother, in the meantime, worked at Mead Johnson on their secretarial staff.

Briggs Manufacturing
USI Special Collections via Historic Evansville

Once my father graduated Oakland City College in 1954, he enrolled at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, leaving my mother to live in her parent's garage. She hated this, and one thing Dad was good at was *trying* to make Mom happy. It wasn't long, then, that she was living with Dad in Louisville in seminary housing. It was here that she learned to sew. It was also here that she gave birth to a son, Wayne, whose namesake was after a man my father would never see again. My namesake is similar.

In or around 1951

1956
Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection

After his graduation from Southern Baptist Seminary in 1958, Dad took a job at Hills Baptist Church in Kirklin, Indiana. American Baptist Churches are different from the Methodists in that the individual churches form search committees to look for a pastor. The pastor applies for the job, and then the search committee decides whether to hire the candidate or not. 

Graduation Photo
Louisville, KY

In 1961, I was born in nearby Noblesville, Indiana as Kirklin didn't have a hospital.

Me at 3 months with unknown neighbor
This is definitely not my mother

From Hills, Dad bounced to Centerville and, stating to me later that he didn't care for Southern Indiana, he jumped at the chance to move his family to Northern Indiana.

At Centerville
In or around 1963

My father evidently forgot about his dislike of Southern Indiana, because 14 years after the move to Monticello, Indiana, we moved back to Evansville, Indiana, which is located on the southern border of the state. Can't get more south in Indiana than Evansville.

© 2022 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC

Our Arrival at Monticello, IN - 1963

Growing Up with a Preacher Man

Rev. William "Lester" Howard (1929-2021)
Mary Eulalie McLean Howard (1933-2021)

Our Arrival at Monticello, IN - 1963
____________________

by Carolyn Ann Howard

My first memory, whether planted or real, was on moving day, 1963. I was 2 years old. The memory I have is clutching my black velvet purse and probably my doll, Billy, who had apparently been given to me as a gift. Billy was a Madame Alexander knock-off, and she was my best friend. I was closer to that doll than to anyone else. In this memory, I was walking on a sidewalk, heading toward our car. We didn't have car seats in 1963 or seatbelts in the back seat. I made it out alive, though.

The second memory, whether planted or real, is that of Bill and Ruth Kretchmar showing us around the house we were going to move into. It was located on Beach Drive in Monticello, Indiana.  My father had taken the position there as pastor for the American Baptist Church in this small resort town. The church had been started about five years prior, and they were meeting in a store front on the east side of Monticello. My father's mission, and he accepted it, was to build a church there on Beach Drive that would become The First American Baptist Church of Monticello.

I don't remember anything else after that until they were ready to begin preparations for building the church. The first project was moving our house back from the street to make room for the church and its parking lot. My only memory was of Moving Day. This was in 1965. I was 4 years old. I was crying - bawling - looking for perhaps my mother. I don't know what was wrong, but I'm sure I was clutching Billy. It might have been Mr. Mann who found me. Someone who wasn't my mother calmed me that day. Click on photos to enlarge

Moving that house was genius. My father was very good at building things. He and the church members built a basement that the house would stand on. This made our house huge. One of the additional rooms added - that would eventually become my bedroom when I got older - was big enough for a bed, desk, chest of drawers, dresser, perfume table, cedar chest, and a rocking chair. Even with all that, there was still plenty of room for me to sit on the floor and play cards - an activity that got me through the stress of being "Rev. Howard's daughter". But... I'm getting ahead of myself here!

After moving day, our house also had enough room for a playroom for me and a huge bedroom for my brother. We had a shower room and laundry room in the basement. We also had a living room in the basement with dark wood paneling. In the evenings, when the sun was setting and the wind was blowing through our many trees, it would shine into the window, casting moving shadows onto the wood paneling. To make things even better, someone had put a plastic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in the sill.

Mom sitting in our green chair in the downstairs living room
Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection

The rest of the walk-out basement contained a huge kitchen and dining room with cabinets all around. And a pantry! Upstairs were three bedrooms, a piano room for me, a full bathroom, my mother's beauty shop and a formal living room. I always remembered that this house was one of those with two front doors. The first front door allowed visitors into the formal living room without letting them into the rest of the house. So the house could be a mess, except for the formal living room, and visitors would never know it was a mess! But our house was never a mess. My mother kept it tidy and clean, almost obsessively so. As for the memory of the two front doors, it is a false memory. Clearly the pictures above show just one front door.

We also had a large attic that had a real walkable floor - probably installed by my handyman father. And it was tall enough to stand in. This was my dad's space that he called his "study". He kept all his books there and, looking back, all his mess. I have been told that men like to have all their stuff out where they can see it. In this space, my father could have all his stuff out. His papers, his booklets, his books, his brochures, and his pictures. A plus for me, there was a small roof outside the attic where I could sunbathe and no one could see me. I don't remember if my mother ever went up to the attic to clean or otherwise, but I don't think she did.

My mom in the back of our big house
Notice the windows above in the attic
Carolyn Ann Howard Family Collection

We lived on 7 acres of land PLUS behind the home was a large, wooded area and behind that, the old, huge Monticello City Cemetery. It was heaven living on that property. I would spend most of my time in the woods and in that cemetery. It is probably why I became a genealogist. I would walk through the cemetery and study the stones and wonder what their stories were. I still do that today.

I lived in Monticello with my family for 14 years and enjoyed all the pleasures of living in a resort town that featured twin lakes - Lake Shafer and Lake Freeman. It was here that I experienced so much pain and suffering, joy and sorrow, fun and happiness. My experiences here, growing up as a preacher's kid, gave shape to my entire life. That life in the end is very happy and satisfying and fun. But it took a while to get there.

© 2022 by December Moonlight Publishing, LLC