Good-bye to a dear old church

Feb. 22, 1999

Grand Forks N.D.

Dear classmates and friends,

As the years go by and the population of the Eureka area continues to dwindle many of the old familiar places are not what they used to be. Remember Artas? Its bar, store and post office are all history. Or consider Venturia, N.D., where my grandfather, Gust Haupt, then 19, got off the train in 1912 after his long journey from Poland. Today Venturia has a few houses, a church and the Duck Inn bar. All that remains of Greenway is a few basement holes and a cemetery. The little town of Hillsview too is just a memory.

And last week another of my favorite places suffered a great loss. On Ash Wednesday a fire destroyed Salem Emanuel Lutheran church, the only church remaining in Long Lake, S.D. I have fond memories of the Long Lake church, a white clapboard structure that had an altar painting of our Lord ascending to heaven. Built in 1941, it was home church to many in my extended family, including my mother’s aunts and uncles, Ted and Christina Wolff and Ted and Frieda Martell, all now deceased and buried in the Long Lake cemetery.

It was also home church for a number of years for my uncle and aunt Otto and Hildegard Haupt. In June 1961 I was a flower girl there when my cousin Donna Haupt married Dale Gohl. A couple of years later Donna’s sister Marie took her vows there, too, with Darwin Heyd. Those were wonderful weddings and to a little girl not yet 9 years old they seemed ever so glamorous. Donna had three attendants and two flower girls and we all wore pale pink dresses with lacy bodices and full skirts and matching satiny shirred headbands in our hair. Marie’s bridesmaids wore shimmery aqua blue taffeta. Family legend has it that when Darwin and Marie knelt at the altar you could see the word "help" written on the bottom of Darwin’s left shoe and "me" on the right. After both weddings there were big dinners with sausage and kuchen at the Long Lake Legion Hall followed by much celebrating and dancing. At wedding dances in Long Lake in the 1960s everybody danced: grandmas, grandpas, little kids, big kids, women danced with women. The main thing was to find a partner and get out there and have fun. Today I look at pictures of us taken at those weddings and I smile to see how young and handsome and happy my parents and their friends looked.

Remembering those weddings also reminds me of my tangled family roots. Donna, Marie and their younger sister, Evie, are my "double cousins" because our fathers are brothers and our mothers are cousins. I am also related to Dale Gohl through my great-grandmother. As my mother has often pointed out, by the time our generation got married it was high time to start looking for partners outside our ethnic group.

In the 1960s Long Lake was a busy little town. It had two Lutheran churches – one ALC and one Missouri synod – a grocery store, implement dealership, elevator, gas station, bar and café and other businesses. It also had a two-story eight-grade school. Long Lake was often the site of McPherson County Rally Days, where we and other kids from the rural schools competed in athletic events such as the 100-yard dash, three-legged race, sack race, high jump and long jump. I also remember our family going to Long Lake to shop and to visit, to eat at the café or to go to carnivals and other celebrations.

I last visited Long Lake in 1996 for the auction sale Aunt Frieda had before she moved to the Eureka nursing home. Long Lake was a shadow of its former self. The school had closed years before to open later as a doll factory but that had closed too. The grocery store also was gone.

Salem Emanuel still had regular services but was being ministered to by the Lutheran pastor from Leola. Today Long Lake has a post office, meat market, insurance office, auction business and bar and café. The bar and café annually hosts a well-known and widely-advertised Rocky Mountain oyster feed called "The Testicle Festival." Long Lake may have changed over the years but folks there still have a sense of humor and enjoy a good time. This week I’m guessing there are many heavy hearts in that dear little town. I haven’t heard yet if the church will be rebuilt but it seems doubtful. And next to the family home, there are few places as important to people as their church, the place where they exchanged their wedding vows, baptized their children and said good-bye to their loved ones. A church is a place of prayer and devotion, but it’s also Christmas programs and Easter sunrise services and church suppers eaten and gallons of coffee consumed. It’s choirs singing heavenly praises and ladies aid meetings and Sunday school. A church is not just a building, Salem’s pastor the Rev. Michael Jacobson said in a TV interview after the fire. A church is people, and though the building may be gone the people remain. His words reminded me of a lovely old hymn that we used to sing when I was a girl. It went like this: "My church, my church, my dear old church, my father’s and my own! Onprophets and apostles built, and Christ the cornerstone; All else beside, by storm or tide, may yet be overthrown, But not my church, my dear old church, my father’s and my own."

Your friend, Paulette