Winona at 100 Third Wave Rising

Terry White

Description

The charming little village of Winona Lake, Ind., is once again a tourist destination as lovers of art, culture, education, and good food come to experience life at the little artisan village nestled on the eastern shore of Winona (formerly Eagle) Lake in north-central Indiana.Winona is currently in its third wave of development and popularity. In its first wave-beginning in 1881 and culminating in Spring Fountain Park and the religious Chautauqua programs that drew thousands for its rich offerings in the early 1900s. Then, after a period of decline, the town revived for its second-wave popularity as the home of the world's largest Bible conference, the founding place of Youth for Christ, the launching pad for Billy Graham's ministry, the home of baseball evangelist Billy Sunday and his songleader/publisher Homer Rodeheaver and much more.Now, in its third-wave rising, Winona is once again a beehive of activity through Grace College and Seminary, cultural festivals, the emergence of the Village at Winona with its many shops, programs, world-class restaurants, and more.Enjoy the history-and some little-known anecdotes-from two who have lived in, and loved, Winona Lake for many years. This centennial history celebrates the unique town that was incorporated on June 2, 1913, and has had worldwide impact.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: BMH Books
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780884692911
• Langue: English

Extrait

Winona at 100: Third Wave Rising
The Remarkable History of Winona Lake, Indiana
2013 by Terry White
ISBN:978-0-88469-284-3 (trade paper)
ISBN: 978-0-88469-291-1 (e-book)
RELIGION/ Christianity/ History
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design: Terry Julien
Cover photo: Al Disbro (cover photo is the swan pond at the corner of Ninth Street and Park Avenue in Winona Lake. The statue, The Student, was purchased in Paris and presented to the Winona Lake Christian Assembly by H. J. Heinz of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
T ABLE OF C ONTENTS
Introduction
Welcome to Winona
Winona Lake: A Capsule History
T HE F IRST W AVE -I NDIANS , S ETTLERS , A ND C HAUTAUQUA D AYS
Chapter 1 - Indians and Early Settlers
Chapter 2 - Spring Fountain Park (1884-1895)
Chapter 3 - The Winona Assembly and Summer School Association (1895-1914)
Chapter 4 - Winona Schools
Chapter 5 - The Town Incorporates: The Great Fire of 1914
Chapter 6 - The Glory Years (1895-1920)
Chapter 7 - Winona s Most Famous Resident- Baseball Evangelist Billy Sunday
Chapter 8 - Winona in the 1920s
Chapter 9 - Winona s Heritage of Sacred Music
T HE S ECOND W AVE -T HE W ORLD S L ARGEST B IBLE C ONFERENCE
Chapter 10 - The Winona Lake Christian Assembly (1939-1968)
Chapter 11 - Winona s Influence Spreads Worldwide
Chapter 12 - Youth for Christ
T HE T HIRD W AVE R ISING -A C ULTURAL R EBIRTH (1969-P RESENT )
Chapter 13 - Changes in Ownership
Chapter 14 - Winona Restoration Partners - The Park Avenue Revival
Chapter 15 - The Lakes Are Alive With the Sound of Music
Chapter 16 - Churches of Winona Lake
Chapter 17 - Winona Lake and the Grace Brethren
Chapter 18 - Notable Locations, Organizations and People of Winona
Chapter 19 - Crimes and Tragedies
Chapter 20 - The Enduring Values of the Winona Movement
Appendix A - Winona Lake Town Leadership 2013
Appendix B - A Walking Tour
References
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index
INTRODUCTION
W INONA L AKE WAS INCORPORATED AS A TOWN ON J UNE 2, 1913 . T HE years surrounding the 100 th anniversary of that event provide a good opportunity for an overview of what Winona Lake has been, what it is today, and what it might be in the future.
I (Terry) first came to Winona Lake in the middle 1950s when my parents and couples from my church in Pennsylvania came each summer for the Grace Brethren National Church Conference. About 1958 or so, I saw a pretty and talented young high school girl from Maryland who played piano for the Brethren Youth Conference in the old Quonset hut auditorium which is now the Town Hall. Years later, I would marry her and have a piano/organ accompanist for life.
My future father-in-law, a tool and die maker from Hagerstown, Maryland, who once had three children attending Grace College at the same time, was taken with his first visit to Winona Lake. In an article published in his denominational magazine in August of 1960, he wrote, Winona in general seemed like another world. The complete absence of profanity, tobacco, and alcohol was in striking contrast to the outside world. Everywhere could be seen people carrying Bibles, even the teenagers on the way to and from their various meetings.
He observed that life in Winona, seemed to center about the Eskimo Inn. If one were to be separated from his friends, he could feel confident of meeting them sooner or later at the Eskimo Inn, Where Friends Meet. I wonder what the attraction is there-the good food, the air conditioning, or the pretty waitresses?
About Grace College, he observed, [The school] showed that they are abreast of the best in contemporary evangelical scholarship deserves our support to the fullest. He later became a member of the Grace College and Seminary board of trustees, as did my own father.
My father, E. M. White of Kittanning, Pa., was one of the 12 new Grace board members (along with four from the Assembly board) who made up the combined board of directors when Grace College and Seminary took over the Christian Assembly s assets and liabilities. He and other members of the new board are pictured on page 1 of the Tuesday, October 1, 1968, Warsaw Times-Union .
My other memory from the 50s was seeing Ma Sunday, the widow of the late evangelist Billy Sunday. She was a colorful figure and still a powerful platform personality. Years later, while working on a doctoral dissertation, I would explore the love letters Billy Sunday, the White Stockings pro baseball player, wrote to her from various ballparks around the nation. Many letters contained a lock of his hair, a penny dated from the year the letter was composed, or pinches of pitcher-mound dirt from the various baseball diamonds where the White Stockings played.
I came to live in Winona Lake in 1960 as a Grace College freshman. Except for short times away for graduate study, my wife (the keyboardist) and I lived here for the next 17 years as we began our family and I was engaged in a variety of educational, civic, and business ventures. Winona as a town had declined remarkably, with much of the summer seasonal housing now ramshackle and unsightly. Along with several friends (Jim Wharton and Ron Kinley among them), we began purchasing the worst of the properties, remodeling them to higher standards, and selling them or renting them out to college and seminary student couples. But it seemed too little, too late. Winona Lake as an attraction had crumbled into sad neglect and abandonment.
Employment then called us away for 26 years, and ultimately we found ourselves planning to move back to Winona Lake in 2003. Imagine our surprise and delight at the metamorphosis the town had experienced! Park Avenue and the canal were now lined with solid, quaint shops inhabited by artists, photographers, glass blowers, potters, and woodworkers. One first-class restaurant had opened-the BoatHouse-and another, the Cerulean, was in the planning stages. The Billy Sunday Tabernacle was gone, as were McKee Courts, where I lived for two years while in college. Three buildings in particular, the Westminster Hotel, Mount Memorial (the former Free Methodist headquarters), and the Winona Hotel, had undergone spectacular restorations and were now gleaming attractions in the re-birthed little village. There had been a Park Avenue revival!
Patrick Kavanaugh, whom I had known in Virginia, moved to Winona the same month we did in 2003, to make this the permanent home of MasterWorks Festival and its parent organization, the Christian Performing Artists Fellowship. The west wing of the Westminster, formerly Rodeheaver Hall-Mack Company, was now the Reneker Museum of Winona History. The old summer school of theology property was now a town park with play equipment, a beach, a senior center, and other attractions.
The term third wave rising was popularized by futurist Alvin Toffler in his 1980 book, Third Wave, where he observed that society was moving from the Industrial Revolution (second wave) into a third wave based on actionable knowledge as a primary resource. The broad-scope three-part framework seemed to fit, as Winona Lake s first phase included the Spring Fountain Park and Chautauqua movements, followed by the rise of Winona as the world s largest Bible conference. Now, in its third wave, which is rising, it is an artisans colony, a center for top-flight classical music, and an educational and cultural center linking the higher education activities of Grace College and Theological Seminary with the unique opportunities afforded by orthopaedic manufacturers in neighboring Warsaw, The Orthopaedic Capital of the World.
A word about sources. In this Internet age, a wealth of material is available through search engines, though, of course, one must always be careful about accuracy and credibility. One of the great treasures of this area is the yesteryear/Clunette website ( http://yesteryear.clunette.com/ ). Much general history is also available, either through Wikipedia or through sites obtained via search engines. Until this writing, the definitive history of Winona Lake has been The Story of Winona Lake: A Memory and a Vision by Vincent H. Gaddis and Jasper A. Huffman, published in 1949 and updated in 1960. Research for this book leaned heavily on the archives of local news media, a source that is often accurate, but is always open to reporters interpretations or to reporting mistakes made in the rush of getting an issue to press.
While living elsewhere, I missed most of the Winona Historical Society s fun times of re-enacting the Sunday/Rodeheaver days, publishing commemorative historical calendars, the Centennial Trip with Billy Down the Sawdust Trail in May of 1996, and much more. The then-active Historical Society was formed in 1985 to further the ideals of Winona. My collaborator Steve Grill, who has lived here continuously since his own college days at Grace, was instrumental in accumulating and re-birthing much of that history.
Now, in the years surrounding the 100 th anniversary, we once again have the opportunity to share some of the delightful history of this remarkable little town. Enjoy the journey, and observe Winona Lake s third wave rising!
W ELCOME TO W INONA
By Victor Hatfield
When the snow and ice have melted and you feel the breath of spring;
When the earth is bathed in sunshine, and the birds begin to sing.
When you hear the bees a-humming and the flowers are in bloom;
And the atmosphere is laden with an exquisite perfume-
It s then the time the sun is addin