Foundation of faith

PALMER — Sunday service for many means dressing in your best, piling into the family people-mover and spending a few hours sharing faith and worship with others.

For a select few in the Mat-Su Valley, like the members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Palmer, Sunday service is a tradition that dates back to the days of the colonists for those who worship at St. John’s. At St. John’s, attending the church on Sunday is a tradition as old as Palmer itself.

Now celebrating its 70th year serving faithful area Lutherans, the land St. John’s occupies was set aside in 1935 by the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corp. for colonists to build their churches. It was, and still is, a place of worship and neighborly fellowship. Located downtown on Elmwood Street across from St. John’s stands remnants of St. Michael’s Roman Catholic and Palmer United Protestant churches. At one point, all three denominations began as small log cabins built on foundations of faith.

Before it was St. John’s, colonists named the church’s original log building the Lutheran Church for the Colonists, and it stood on Elmwood Street through the Great Depression, earthquakes, tsunamis, a shifting fellowship and other challenges for its first decades.

St. John’s has grown up with Palmer and the Valley, and with it Arlene Fox. Fox’s parents were original colonists who attended the church and she was baptized there in 1937, the year the church opened. Fox was one of a handful of longtime St. John’s members who gathered Thursday to share memories of their church. Fox still attends services regularly since and said she feels the history in the church’s walls.

“I remember walking to church with my father up that long road to get to church,” Fox said. “I wiggled around a lot back then — still do actually, my mother told me that when I was 60.”

“You were in my Sunday school class I was teaching. You were in seventh or eighth grade, I believe,” Willie Pedersen proclaimed, pointing at her as if she’d just remembered.

“Was I? Oh my, it’s all a blank to me,” Fox said.

Pedersen, Carol and Norma Christensen, Barbara Lentzare and Robert and Phyllis Williams are all longtime members of St. John’s congregation and have stories that stretch over 70 years. As a group, they have six children and 11 grandchildren still attending the church, and more that have been baptized there over the past seven decades.

“Alaska has a pretty lengthy history,” said Jonathan Rocky, the church’s current pastor. “It’s a blessing for us to have people here today that have been here since the beginning of our church’s history.”

Pedersen moved to Alaska the summer of 1948. She was picked up by a kind man in Anchorage and taken to Palmer to live in the dormitory near the church, she recalled. She came to teach fifth grade and had contracted to teach a class in Palmer for just one year. She got more than she bargained for.

Later that autumn, Pedersen, a devout Lutheran, was asked by soon-to-be-departed pastor Walter Zeile to be caretaker of St. John’s after he left, she said. Agreeing to help out her church, Pederson moved into the parsonage attached to the church with another single girlfriend and looked after the log structure for the next 18 months.

“I shoveled in five tons of coal and took out three tons of ashes,” she said. “The place was difficult to heat then. Wind would blow in and the heat blew out, so I tried my best to keep it warm.”

After that tough first year, Pedersen fell for a local bakery owner, married and settled in Palmer for good.

Humble beginnings

The Rev. R.M. Frieling arrived in Palmer in 1935 to find a congregation of close to 70 people living in a tent camp. Like the other clergymen of his day, Frieling toured camps and held services each week in white, burlap tents. But once ARRC donated 2 acres to the Lutheran congregation, the construction phase of the church began and a solid church was built in 1937.

Dedicated to building a house of prayer, area Lutherans hauled siding from a sawmill in Eklutna, adding this feature not for visual appeal, but to meet ARRC regulations of the time that mandated all buildings had to be of log structure. That first church building was donated to the Alaska State Fair grounds in July 1975, where it is now used as a theater by Valley Performing Arts. St. John’s current building was built from a $75,000 grant from the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League.

Growing with the Mat-Su Valley, St. John’s Lutheran Church has baptized more than 800 members over the past 70 years and sees its weekly attendance average about 240 members. Pastors Rocky and Richard Allen now preside over St. John’s and are gearing up to share its history with a 70th anniversary service and celebration next week.

Between 1935 and 1961, St. John’s went through many pastors — nine total — with dedicated members holding the church somewhat together, Pedersen said. It was tough times and the church knew it. Pastor Joseph Frenz of Anchorage took the St. John reigns for a short time thereafter, but, almost abruptly, he too decided to move after a long, cold winter.

“St. John’s had many in-and-out pastors during that time,” she said. “We had maybe 25 [worshipers] that attended and a little more at Christmas and Easter. That’s it. I think [the low membership] had to do with the fact we didn’t have a minister at the time staying long enough to keep it all together.”

“Before, people would come in, find out there’d be no pastor for the service and leave,” Robert Williams said. “That’s the way it was.”

But in 1958, a new hope came in the form of Pastor Rolland Fritz, who took over the duties and sermons of St. John’s with fervor and passionate Lutheran drive.

“Pastor Fritz really hung around long enough to keep the faith-driven coming back,” Pastor Rocky said. “He became a trustworthy companion to the small service this church possessed.”

Pastor Fritz held a mass in Anchorage at 9 a.m. and quickly turned to the Valley to hold 11 a.m. service at St. John’s.

“He was a go-getter,” Lentz said. “Once there was talk from headquarters that St. John’s would have to close its doors due to funding. Pastor Fritz smoothed that right out.”

Carol Christensen and his wife, Norma, came to Palmer in 1960. Hard work and determination kept them stable in their community and their church. The Christensens had four children baptized at St. John’s, including son Rod, Palmer High School’s head football coach. For Carol, being involved with his church is a necessity, so he jumped in with both feet. It’s what good church folk do.

“A member came up to me outside and asked why I wasn’t on the church board and that’s sort of how I got involved,” Christensen said. When the big earthquake of 1964 hit Alaska, St. John’s stood tall, despite the devastation felt throughout most of the Matanuska Valley.

“It was Good Friday, so we had a service that night,” Christensen said. “There was no electricity, and people would come in wearily, wondering if we’d have a pastor or not, because the temporary pastor lived in Anchorage. No one really knew what was going on, but they came anyway.”

As it turned out, Pastor Lowry, who stood in for Pastor Fritz, was already in the Valley, having come in a day before the earthquake struck. The road from Eklutna had a 3-foot trench torn through it, keeping many from attending. But many came and praying commenced.

A place for fellowship

Barbara Lentz remembers from an early age how St. John’s became the place Lutherans would go to enjoy fellowship, good prayers and adults would discuss the state of the Valley.

Born on Christmas Eve, Lentz was baptized at St. John’s in 1945 and has had children who’ve grown up with the church as well. For her, St. John’s was the ultimate playground for childhood activities that gave youth something to do besides maintaining vegetable fields or kicking up dirt.

“Growing up, church and school were the only activities for kids to do,” Lentz said. “It was the youth groups at the church that got us involved. We had hay rides, socials and what not; where friends came to play. I see that now, with the church having a youth director, there’s a full bulletin board and you can actually see different activities crop up. It’s heartwarming.”

Each year, St. John’s blossoms during the holidays when the Ladies of the church make their annual Christmas bags. Then there’s Thanksgiving, where the congregation comes together to give thanks for the year. Easter breakfast is a tradition too. Men serve breakfast to the women in a traditional sunrise service, and the annual egg hunt is a favorite with the young ones. It’s a tradition that began with St. John’s.

“We’d color these elaborate eggs and hide them right outside here for the kids to go find,” Pedersen said. “Arlene, you used to be a part of that.”

All was well with the tiny church in Palmer, even when another Lutheran church, Good Shepherd, opened it’s doors in Wasilla in 1965.

“St. John’s is the oldest and largest meeting of Lutheran church denomination in Alaska,” Lentz said. “We’ve gone from being a small mission church to a self-supporting fellowship by the 1970s. It’s humbling to have all of this history in place now that we’re at 70 years.”

Contact J.J. Harrier at valleylife@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.