Part II
After its first decade, the First Baptist Church and the community of Winslow had to face the coming of the Great Depression. Men would take any job and stores would let families buy groceries on their promise to pay later. Children helped the family finances by letting their parents use money from paper routes and babysitting jobs. The Santa Fe kept men on the payroll, but only paid them when there was a train to repair in the roundhouse or to run on the rails. Both Winslow banks closed and First Baptist Church lost funds from that development.
Twenty-nine members left to form the First Baptist Mexican Church on West Second Street. After Rev. Ray Gorsage accepted the call to pastor the First Baptist Church in October 1929, just before the stock market crash, 30 new members joined. The women cooked chicken dinners accompanied by biscuits in the church basement for more than 100 at a time. The many railroaders and cowboy bachelors paid willingly for the home cooked meals. Funds from this activity helped the church pay its bills.
The Old Trails Highway, which was to become Route 66, was paved with federal funds in 1923. The highway entered on East Third Street, turned south on Warren Avenue, then followed West Second Street because of the little clay hills that were in Winslow west of Warren. Hopi and Navajo people camped among those hills when they came to town in their horse drawn wagons to sell little peaches, blankets, baskets and jewelry. They would then shop for flour, coffee, sugar and other needs.
The dry red dust blew freely while residential streets had to wait almost 10 more years to be paved. People needed to pay their street assessment before the town could pay the bondholders.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected for the first of his four terms in office in 1933, he established the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which hired men to build a number of projects in Winslow. These included the Williamson Street underpass, the outdoor swimming pool, cement sidewalks and the municipal golf building, which is used today as the Head Start Building.
Bi-planes had been landing on what is now Mahoney Street on the north side of town, but in 1928 federal funds helped build the present airport southwest of town to serve Air Transport, which became TWA.
La Posada was built over the site of the original roundhouse in 1929. Movie stars stayed there, and car tours took tourists to the Hopi villages and the Painted Desert.
The city bought ice from the Santa Fe ice plant east of the roundhouse, and then sold it to Winslow residents and businesses to help pay off sewer and gas company bonds.
The federal government built the Public Health Service facility west of town in 1931. That is now the Indian Health Facility and not only is still in use, but has recently been renovated and improved.
Prohibition was repealed in 1933.
The First Baptist Church of Winslow paid off its $1,500 debt and was selected to host the state Northern Baptist Convention in 1934.
Social Security was enacted in 1935, and Congress passed legislation regarding banking and the stock market to protect the country from another depression. Winslow started organized summer sports for its youth under Glenn Olmstead, a high school teacher. The State of Arizona began sharing tax revenues with cities and towns. The Winslow City Council voted to give itself a salary for the first time.
In the next 10 years there would be many changes in Winslow, the country and the world. War was coming in Europe with the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and aggressive moves by Germany and Italy in Europe and Africa. Winslow’s only movie theater brought people the newsreels of the increasing war in Europe and some would bring film reports of American war efforts after Pearl Harbor.
The church began conducting Bible schools that lasted two weeks each summer. Over 100 attended business meetings held after delicious chicken and biscuit dinners served by Mrs. Alta Turner and crew in the church basement. Rev. Fred H. Dahler answered the call to pastor First Baptist from May 1937 through May 1941. His son Verne still attends his Winslow High School Class of 1944’s reunions and church celebrations. By 1939, First Baptist had gained 122 new members, doubling its enrollment.
The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, federal troops entered the Japanese colony east of Winslow’s roundhouse and herded all the families into passenger train cars. Many people in Winslow stood in shock and were heartbroken to learn their Japanese friends were being put in detention camps in California and later in one at Leupp.
Shipping war materials and then thousands of troops, Santa Fe hired hundreds of trainmen and roundhouse workers to service the growing number of trains that ran every day. Troop trains stopped in Winslow and extra Harvey girls were hired from among Winslow’s married as well as single women to serve the soldiers nutritious meals on paper plates. The anxious mothers often asked the soldiers to relay messages to their sons and husbands already in the service. Soldiers left letters to be mailed under their dinner plates. Many of the community’s men were absent from their homes, either as soldiers or making back runs on trains. Only the roundhouse crews worked regular shifts.
Winslow’s population tripled from 4,500 to 13,000. First Baptist served a Thanksgiving dinner one year to 125 soldiers stationed at the Winslow airport.
The Federal Housing Authority built apartments on Apache Avenue, North Alfred, East Colorado and in Coopertown to help house all of the newcomers. Families stayed in the Statler Hotel, the original Arizona Hotel built by Winslow’s first official settler, Fred C. Demarest, while they waited for an apartment.
First Baptist Church gained more and more new members transferring from Oklahoma and Texas. They called Rev. Edward L. Larson, who served as pastor from June 1943 to September 1946 when he resigned to become a missionary for the newly formed Conservative Baptist Missionary Society. Rev. Larson married Bob and Rosalie Lowrie in 1944 in a three-story adobe building. The church started a savings program in U.S. bonds to build a larger, ground level auditorium next to the three-story church.
The membership voted to give the Conservative Baptist Missionary Society the Arizona level of the Northern Baptist Convention and use Southern Baptist literature. They voted not to support the Federal Council of Churches. Thus began a debate that clouded the next five years at the First Baptist Church of Winslow.
***
The First Baptist Church of Winslow, located at Aspinwall Avenue and Warren Street, will celebrate its 100th anniversary July 17-19.
During the celebration there will be a building tour at 6 p.m. on Friday, July 17. On Saturday, July 18 there will be registration and tours from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. There will be sharing in the sanctuary beginning at 2 p.m., with a historical slide show and an open microphone for guest sharing and singing. A dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs will be served at 5 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall.
On Sunday, July 19, regular worship services will be held at 8:30 and 11 a.m. with Matt Gaston preaching. The regular Sunday school session will be between those services at 9:45 a.m. Lunch will be served at 12:30 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall, with seating for 240 people. There will be a program in the sanctuary with former pastors sharing and congregational singing at 2 p.m.
***
The next installment in this history of the church will be published on Friday, July 10.
