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The Chicago Memoirs:
Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, 1967-1972
Chicago, South Side, 1971 (Part Three)
“I was grabbed from behind again, but this time ducked down and threw my assailant over my shoulder off to the side. One teen stuck his hand in his pocket with a finger pointing my way as if it was the muzzle of a gun. Without looking back, I broke into a run for the drug store.”
— Joel Nickel, The Chicago Memoirs
By the end of the summer the Redeemer Royals had taken second place in the Washington Park league, and our congregation bought them all trophies, thanks to the discount Edna Groskort, one of our faithful white members, obtained at the trophy company on 59th Street where she worked. The Redeemer Royals and their cheerleaders (for a baseball team, even) were the beginning of my new confirmation class that Fall. It was to become one of the best classes I ever taught, and they taught me a thing or two in the process. All of a sudden, with a little trust and encouragement from us, our former antagonists became close trusted friends, and we entrusted them with a key to the Community Center and let them use the Dugout for their meeting room — a fitting name befitting a baseball team.
The Redeemer Royals
Part baseball team, part confirmation class, part acolyte corps, the Redeemer Royals drew young Englewood residents into a small but service-oriented community.
Our Redeemer had its black dropouts too, who felt the church wasn’t doing enough or going far enough in its program. Tolerance in a pressure situation is always difficult to maintain. Greg Armstrong, Les and Betty’s son, an active member of our youth group and basketball team, left to join the black Antioch Baptist Church where he felt he could get better acquainted with his roots and celebrate the black experience. He had the courtesy, prompted by his mother, to stop in to bid me farewell. We would never be able to sing those black Baptist hymns the way the black church did and didn’t even try to compete. Our worship style may have seemed anemic to many black people in the light of black consciousness, but we did have integrity. One of our young adult members whom I visited one afternoon in the hospital, told me she thought it was time for me to leave, that it was impossible any more for a white man to minister in an all black community. She was intelligent and articulate, and spoke without any acrimony. “You may have feelings of empathy, but you really don’t know how it is unless you’ve lived through it, and unless you’ve lived through it, you can’t minister to it,” she told me. She hit me at a very sensitive spot and there was some truth behind her words.
By this time I hesitated to make house calls outside of a three block radius from the church where I was unknown. I had visited a woman who lived just five blocks away from Our Redeemer near Englewood High School. She had twice visited our worship services, so I thought a house call might encourage her to affiliate with the church. I wore my clerical collar identification badge, but it was evident that she was embarrassed by my presence at her door. She never came back to Our Redeemer even though she was hospitable to me while in her apartment. In cases like this, I always applied the reverse of the double standard: if I were white, living 30 blocks straight north in Mayor Daley’s Irish neighborhood, and had a black pastor call at my door, how would I react? What would the neighbors think? My white presence was a liability.
Still, there were inconsistencies. I attended a meeting that was held at Antioch Baptist Church where Greg was now a member. Painted on the wall in large panorama was a picture of Jesus and his disciples, and their skin color was decidedly white. I made a mental comparison of this scene with the small black Jesus portrait that was still on our parish hall wall next to “the old rugged cross.” How was it that this successful black Baptist preacher, whose congregation had just built a high-rise apartment building, “Eden Green,” 30 blocks south of Englewood, showed a white Jesus to his people every Sunday morning, and I, a success-challenged white Lutheran preacher, showed a black Jesus to everyone who walked through our parish hall? Norm Theiss had a ready, most probable, explanation: “Look at it this way. Deep down many black people are still looking for approval from white people, and approval from a white Jesus would negate and cancel the dehumanizing effects of white racism.”
Otis and I had a good working relationship. His blackness, contacts with black leaders, and development of EWRO made my presence viable. The fact that I still held the Sunday church together with subsidy from the English District, had contact with other clergy and congregations to bring in resources, gave Otis some resources to work with. We understood each other’s work and respected each other’s autonomy. Otis invited me to serve as “chaplain” at EWRO meetings, and I in turn had him reading lessons and even doing some preaching on Sunday morning. We both were janitors, painters, carpenters, errand boys, counselors, youth workers, food distribution agents and general trouble shooters. Otis took the lead with our housing program board. We already had written options on about 60% of the land within our target area.
In July we took another camping trip to Wyoming, this time with the Hrbeks, introducing them to the beauty and serenity of Louis Lake with its abundant trout. We hiked in the Grand Teton National Park and camped in our underpowered VW bus. We came back to a VBS that enrolled 70 children. Oliver Carter, one of Otis’ part-time workers, installed a basketball backboard on the far end of the parking lot, and thanks to the security floodlights attached to the parsonage, the night basketball games went on into the early morning hours.
One hot summer night at about 2 a.m. we were awakened by gunfire. Such sounds seldom bestirred us, but these were close. I looked out our bedroom window to see a young man hugging the tree in front of the church, shouting down the street at his hidden assailant. He would jump out from in back of the tree after shots rang out. Both shooter and shootee had been drinking as was obvious from the poor marksmanship and the unsteady taunts that were shouted into the night. Considering the law of averages, I figured there was danger enough to call the police ... as a last resort, the first such call I’d ever made. In the space of three minutes, five squad cars, sirens screaming, lights flashing, were parked in front of the parsonage. All the cops were white. I walked out to them, still in my bathrobe, pointing them in the direction of the shooting. By this time both men had vanished. Window shades in the one inhabited apartment building across the street shot up and I could read their minds: the whitey ‘reverend’ panics at the first sound of gunfire and calls on his white cop brothers. My “last resort” call had been a mistake. The squad cars left except for one, whose officers came inside the parsonage to fill out their forms and record my “eye witness” account. It was reassuring to realize how prompt the police response was — they were “serving and protecting.” I thanked the two officers for their prompt response as they left; they probably wanted to know why Sue and I with our three children lived where we did. Few people actually voluntarily chose to live in this “hood” but were here out of economic necessity.
At the time the Nixon administration again refused to release housing funds to Chicago unless the city would build low cost housing in all neighborhoods, knowing of course that no neighborhood, black or white, actually wanted “low cost housing” next door. HUD officials insisted that most of this low cost housing must be built in white areas to “make up for past discrimination.” The result was that no housing was being built.
On Labor Day we drove brother Mark to St. Louis to attend Concordia Seminary. We got as far as Lincoln, IL when the underpowered VW blew a piston. The engine was “frozen” at 75000 miles. As luck would have it, there was one garage open in Lincoln on Labor Day, Harold’s Garage, and they rebuilt VW engines. We rented a car and continued on our way. Back in Chicago our housing program was faring about as well as the VW, as HUD and FHA turned their backs on us even though we wanted to build low cost housing. We put our housing program on hold in October. Progress was up against the proverbial brick wall, even though there weren’t many such walls still standing in the area around the church.
By the end of September we still didn’t have the VW back up and running, and being without wheels in Englewood made life difficult. On Saturday I walked over to 63rd & Halsted to buy food and a new tackle box in which to carry my art supplies to CAFA since the old tackle box is in the VW in Lincoln filled with fishing tackle that was never used. We seldom bought food in Englewood, since most of the chain stores dumped their over-the-hill produce onto their ghetto outlets, but without a vehicle we had to shop on foot. At 64th and Stewart I got stoned by some teens, only a block from my house. I’m well known by the police; why can’t I get known by these teens? A white man walking these streets is a rarity even if he has white liberal credentials. Cut me some slack.
I took Philip to Wrigley Field where the home team in typical Cubbie fashion blew a lead and lost to the Pirates. Only 8000 fans were in the stands. Being the fan of a loser is fine moral training. We’ve learned to applaud Ernie Banks even when he strikes out, as this was probably his last game in “the friendly confines.” At least the hot dogs tasted good and the ivy was still green. According to Ernie, it was still “a beautiful day to play ball.”
Thanks to the loan of Aunt Frieda’s car, we drove down to Lincoln to retrieve our VW with the rebuilt engine. They had to order a new engine block and the repair costs went up $100. It would only last 10000 more miles before blowing the engine again. Bad news comes in threes: Robert Hopkins, our ‘new’ janitor, was hauled into court on a drunk driving charge; he was also driving without a license. Our Redeemer has a janitor jinx.
I started classes again at CAFA, 18 hours a week this term with classes in advanced drawing, painting, and volume design and sculpture. When I arrive home in the afternoon, I hold a “show and tell” art session with Philip and Joy who bring work home from Ancona. Being a student in the Loop allows me time to visit the Art Institute where I discovered the work of black sculptor, Richard Hunt, a Chicago native and graduate of Englewood High School. The “Group” of couples of which we are a part commissioned me to create an oil painting for the Hrbeks who are moving to Cleveland where George will work with Dick Sering. I used our 8 mm movie projector to “throw” some images on a white canvas, and then painted over this “moving picture sketch” for an abstract scene, actually the Nickels and Hrbeks hiking in the Tetons. The “offering” of $21 didn’t cover my expenses, but I thought the painting turned out well. It is difficult to see the Hrbeks leave their house church experiment.
On a cold Saturday night in November I found myself without any pipe tobacco. To relieve my nicotine fit, I resolved to walk a block and a half up to the drug store on 63rd Street under the “L” station where I knew they had my favorite “Cherry Blend” pipe tobacco. It was after 10 p.m. but I walk briskly. I saw some figures lurking in the dark doorway of the book binding company and decided to cross the street under streetlights. On the other side of the street, by the St. Bernard Hospital parking lot, I met a man whose son had used the parish hall the week before for a wedding reception, free of charge. I thought he might have some residual good will in his heart, offer the protection of his presence, so I stopped to strike up a small conversation. We both saw the three teens start walking across the street, one of them behind and two of them in front of us. Correctly reading the scene, he quickly said “good night” and walked off.
By this time I was closer to the drug store than to the parsonage, so I decided to head toward the closest refuge. The two teens accosted me under the “L” tracks. “Hey, man, you got a quarter?” one asked. “No,” I lied. One of them grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms back. The third teen came alongside. “What you guys want, anyway?” I asked angrily, as if I didn’t know. I shook loose and moved cautiously in the direction of the drug store. I was grabbed from behind again, but this time ducked down and threw my assailant over my shoulder off to the side. One teen stuck his hand in his pocket with a finger pointing my way as if it was the muzzle of a gun. Without looking back, I broke into a run for the drug store. Both they and I knew there was an armed security guard at the store. I pushed through the door, out of breath, pale and shaking. I bought my tobacco (this near mugging in itself should have cured my nicotine habit, saving my lungs, but addictions die hard) and asked the security guard to watch me on my homeward walk. He agreed. My assailants had disappeared. When I arrived home and told my story, my wife just shook her head, and asked, “Was this a learning experience?” She loved me, but offered no sympathy. I had already prepared a sermon, but on Sunday morning threw it away and preached extemporaneously on the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are more relevant than the 10 commandments, and raise the question, “are these counter-cultural blessings worth it?”
Otis and I encouraged crossovers between the Sunday church and the weekday church. People like Betty Armstrong attended EWRO meetings and Rosetta Chambers, who first came to the community center for help with her social security check, eventually joined Our Redeemer. A couple of years later, when I was co-pastor at University Lutheran Church in Champaign, Rosetta attended services with her daughter, now a University of Illinois student. After the service Rosetta gave me a big joyous hug in the center aisle to the amazement of a hundred college students. Rosetta was expressive; she had no trouble hugging this whitey preacher. Our annual Christmas dinner, sale and program was a joint effort between the Sunday and weekday churches, and about 100 people crowded into the parish hall for the meal and talent show. People were free to sell their handmade goods. Oliver Carter, once a student at the Art Institute School himself, could draw a rather good portrait. People showed off flower arrangements, baked goods and stitchery. Such “congregating” was an incentive to keep moving forward among the conflicts and troubles of the work ahead.
Sunday December 5th, Dr. William Poehler, brother of one of our members, Bernard Poehler, worshipped with us. Dr. Poehler was the retired president of Concordia College, St. Paul where both Sue and I had gone to school and started our courtship. Dr. Poehler often came to Our Redeemer with his brother on his trips through Chicago and was interested in the work of the congregation. He offered to preach for me the next time he was able to visit, but this was not to be. Dr. Poehler died suddenly the following week in St. Paul. This was a week for sorrow. Otis’ secretary in the community center, Minnie Wilson, died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage. She was only 19. Death respects no age or season; it is an intruder, an enemy guilty of breaking and entering, destroying lives, a satanic agent in this irrational world.
Bill Woldt, English District mission executive, often came through Chicago and stopped in to check on us, affirm the District’s support, and take us out to dinner. Those dinners were a true gift, a relaxing connection to the larger church and a measure of the true quality of the English District’s care for its workers. If only the whole “Missery Synod” would imitate our district! We often phoned our favorite rib shack in Hyde Park over on 55th Street for carry-out and built this ghetto favorite into our family’s culinary memory.
The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas was a time during which we needed to collect resources, for it is the period of generosity and altruism that would typically fill up our converted coal bin with canned goods and other non-perishable food. Farmers harvest in late summer; we ‘harvest‘ in December. Our in-gathering this year was plenteous.
Next: The Chicago Memoirs of 1972
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