The artist turned out to be our son Ben, now 27. We had entirely forgotten this story. Tracy had passed on the drawing to the building committee, the head of which kept it, bringing it forth this week. We were certain that the story could not be quite as advertised, but on examining the documents, it was clearly Ben's work.
The church looks just like this, BTW - though we went with a truer shade than the burnt orange on the upper left. An expressionist sort of building, very avant garde. So you see, children, adults do listen to you and take you seriously.
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There is a legend that the Roman Catholic Church in St. Francis, South Dakota is a bright blue color because the adults could not agree on what color it should be (there has been a lot of restoration work done the last several years), but the children could.
Larry, it would appear that the color of the Roman Catholic Church in St. Francis, South Dakota is lavender
I can't find the reason for painting it lavender. A man deeply involved in Native American traditional religion and much taken with plant spirits thought it was because of the importance of lavender to the Lakotas, but he cites no source. I think he just decided that himself.
I have no recollection of such a drawing, but that's clearly my handwriting... even 20 years later I can recognize it.
Mom and I were talking about the move to this church, and my only recollection of it was that when we moved from the temporary building to the new one, I lost my Green Lantern action figure, and I was upset we weren't going back to the old church to find it.
Speaking of all the old church memories (and with another snow storm looming in the forecast and frigid temps whistling around outside), I remember as a very young child going to your "snow day church" for a pancake breakfast of some sort. I just thought it was the coolest thing that you lived close enough to civilization to have a backup church in case of snow emergencies
I'm not sure if you were in your previous house back then or the current abode, and the former brings back several more hazy but happy memories...
Erin, just to make sure you aren't mixing memories, when we were at Gethsemane Lutheran, they had Easter Breakfast every year. We left there when Jonathan and Ben were almost eight and almost four, so you would have been six. We did have a storm church that we attended when the snow was dangerously deep - First Congregational. We walked from the old house, but from Hermsdorf we always drove.
As for Spring St, there was a central room with dark wood paneling like wainscoting strips - walls and ceiling both, and there was a clerestory window over the front door in a foyer shaft about five feet higher than the already high ceiling. Large in comparison to the other rooms, and to a 3-6 year old likely seeming huge. Not so big, actually. Woodstove on the left, double doors on the right leading to a fireplace room - also the stage for Jesse Tree. Bathroom door was upper right, clearly an exterior door put to interior use because it had a glass panel in the upper half. Tracy painted a stained glass pastoral scene on it that I didn't like at the time but now look back on fondly.
What a neat memory!
The church my daughter does choir in also burned the mortgage last sunday. Odd coincidence!.
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