East Lake Elementary, East Lake Junior High and Rossville High School. What do these three centers of learning have in common? Just the fact that I attended all three and now they are all gone – nothing but a memory and in two cases, nothing but a shell of a building left to note that they were once there.
I sometimes wonder if I should alert the University of Maryland of their impending doom. To the fact that every educational center that I ever matriculated from is destined to disappear and they are probably next – good for a few more years if the system works the way it has in the past.
There was also another center of learning from my past that no longer exists and in a way, it is the one I was most sad to see go.
On the corner of 34th Street and Dodds Avenue a building still stands. It is now used as a child care center, as well as a church of another denomination, but during my childhood and into my teens and early adulthood, East Lake Baptist Church stood like a beacon in a neighborhood already beset with deterioration, crime and blight.
It was where I learned the Golden Rule and how to play “red rover, red rover” during Vacation Bible School. It was where my family and the families of my friends went each Sunday to worship.
It was where I learned to drive a church bus and as an older teen, did so for VBS for several years. Driving that bus on Sunday mornings also allowed me to meet many of our churches’ older members. What dear saints they were.
The church was the home of such men as Vince Gagliano, Henry Hankins, Tas Grammar and Jim Butler who taught us what it was to be a man of God. Mr. Butler was a survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor and “Mr. Tas,” I found out later after a tour in Germany myself, was one of the first liberators into the concentration camp at Dachau.
Mr. Gagliano, along with Leon Haley as members of the East Lake Lions Club, was instrumental in bringing Dixie Youth baseball to the East Lake Center and Mr. Henry always had a joke and a piece of candy for we kids as we came into Sunday School every week. I can still see him now at his post at the bottom of the stairs leading down from the sanctuary.
Sundays were a day my grandmother, Beatrice Clark, always made sure we were in church, whether we drove or walked. When I got my driver’s license church was the first place I ever drove her.
What brings all this back just now? Why now am I recalling memories from my days at the church of my youth?
Memories that include pastors like Brother Livy Cope and L.B. Crantford, along with the man who baptized me, Rev. Ben Peacock, and John Yarbrough and others.
These thoughts are usually all with me, somewhere rolling around in nearly 55 years worth of memories, but lately have become front and center due to a Facebook page started by another member of that group from East Lake Baptist, Polly Brock Westbrook.
Facebook has become a wonderful way of reconnecting with old and dear friends. It has enabled me to discover what my former high school and Air Force friends have been up to these past years. And, now, it has allowed me to share some of my best memories with those people who were there when they were created.
I’m finding out about such friends as Sylvia Swift Hawkins, now a nurse living in the Memphis area, who recently saw one of her boys go into the military. I’ve touched base with Tammy Fugatt Burns and her family. They were major players in my years as a Boy Scout in Troop 108, sponsored by the church. Sadly, that troop is now gone, as well.
My scoutmaster, N.G. Carter, came to Germany, along with his wonderful wife Sally, and was best man at my second wedding. Without his prodding I would have never made Eagle Scout and I will be eternally thankful for that. N.G. is no longer with us, but he left a multitude of boys behind whose lives he changed forever.
I’ve also found sisters Carlinda and Ivana Patterson, who I remember as having the most wonderful singing voices as they sang the old time hymns in church.
It has also been wonderful to find friends like Judy and Lake Jones, who were favorites of many of my age group as youth leaders.
And why would I want to write about these times and these people who were and are special to me? Well, those of us who have reconnected on this great new thing called social networking have decided that what is really called for is a face-to-face reunion of all these wonderful folks who were so much a part of our formative years.
For not only did we all pretty much find salvation at the same little church there in the East Lake community, we also discovered what real friendship meant and what it meant to belong to a family that extended beyond our own homes.
We experienced many of the things that are missing from our society today - things such as love and trust and going to church as a family and joining with a larger family whom we knew loved and cared for us just as if we were related to one another.
So, let the word go out to others from the old East Lake Baptist Church family know that come June 25th there will be a reunion in the spirit of a good old-fashioned Baptist meeting on the grounds.
Carlinda and her committee are working on the arrangements now and just as soon as they are set, you’ll be notified. If you are on Facebook, search for the East Lake Baptist Church group. If you are not, just send me an email where you can be reached. My email address is at the end of this article.
Won’t it be great to get together and share our memories and sing the old favorites like, “I’ll Fly Away” and “There’s Within My Heart a Melody?”
Stay tuned for more information…
(Email Dennis Norwood at dennis.norwood@att.net; follow him on Twitter at DennisENorwood)