Close-knit Everett church celebrates 50th anniversary

Published 10:48 pm Friday, May 30, 2008

EVERETT — Where Pacific tree and red-legged frogs once croaked now sits a church carved out of a swampy patch of land where a youth bell choir and an Evangelical Lutheran congregation worships and sings.

It’s called the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. And it turned 50 this year.

Little boys and girls can still chase tadpoles and crickets — as the boys and girls did decades ago before the property was transformed into a church with 350 baptized members and parish offices in the Eastmont area of Everett.

Before the Lutheran church was built, the area just off 19th Street SE below and east of I-5 was a tangled mess of swamp grasses, blackberries and evergreens, bounded by the Woods Creek watershed that was then Everett’s major water source, said historian David Dilgard.

Then in 1958, a group of families with children helped build the neighborhood church on 3 acres donated by the D.A. Dur­yee Co., a real estate company that’s still in business.

Over the years, many of the same families have stayed, first building their church, then expanding it with their own hands, raising children, forming committees, taking care of each other in good times and bad. About nine of the original charter member families still attend the church.

The quality that best describes them, say longtime church members, is that they’re a family.

Last Sunday, church members celebrated their anniversary when services were first held in the congregation’s new building. That was on May 25, 1958. At the celebration, church members started with a service that moved from the old sanctuary into a new one.

The highlight was the tailgate brunch between services. As they often do for special occasions, the families of Prince of Peace turned the church’s parking lot into a tailgate party with music, food and a few costumes.

Cars with opened trunks decorated in various themes boasted homemade treats and a few store-bought muffins, egg casseroles, cakes, coffee and a tasty Jello Spam dish at the trunk decorated with new and old varieties of Spam cans.

Prince of Peace Lutheran Church began when the Board of Home Missions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Minneapolis realized the population south of downtown Everett was growing, but had no Lutheran church nearby to serve it, charter member Pat Parkins said.

The board sent parish worker Viola Stene to knock on doors to invite people to a new church they wanted to form in the Eastmont area, she said.

The new church met for the first time with nearly 60 people in the basement of pastor Bernt Dahl Jr.’s home in September 1957.

By January 1958, the congregation had grown to 101 baptized members.

At last week’s anniversary services, attended by about 75 people, Pastor Jack Richards, dressed in a white robe with green embroidered vestments, asked those who had been confirmed at the church to stand. About 35 people stood. Glen Human said he was confirmed in 1958, Lawrence Stubbs said he’d been confirmed sometime in the 1960s. Pat Parkins said she was confirmed on Jan. 26, 1958, in the basement of the old parsonage.

Choir director Rob Gillespie, who lives in Silver Lake, is a second-generation member of the church. His mother, JoAnn Gillespie, has been in the choir for 20 years and still attends the church, he said.

Ardath Kramer, a charter member along with her husband, Bill, said she came to the church after being invited by a parish worker.

“I remember I was painting inside my house and the doorbell rang. It was a parish worker from Minneapolis who asked if I’d like to attend a new Lutheran church that was starting up in the area. I had four sons, one ready to start his confirmation, so I said, ‘Yes,’ ” she said.

Paul and Pat Parkins, other charter members, raised their two children in the church. Though her husband died in 1985, Pat Parkins has continued to worship at the church, serving as its unofficial historian and newsletter writer.

She said a contractor built the main structure of the congregation’s first church up to the sheetrocking and spackling, but church families helped finish the work.

“Everyone had a talent,” Parkins said. “Palmer Pederson, whose wife is Millie, built the first set of chancel furniture. They had seven children. Bob and Betty Shatzka, charter members with three children, helped finish the woodwork. Bob stained the cedar beams in the original sanctuary. We stained wood, laid tile, and over 13 Saturdays, worked to get the new church ready for our first service there. The kids were outside catching tadpoles.”

Today, Prince of Peace also runs a preschool for about 500 children, many of whom are from different denominations, Richards said. The school, which began 35 years ago, operates from sites in Snohomish, Mill Creek, Silver Lake, Bothell and other locations.

“It all boils down to family,” Kramer said. “We grew up together; we formed a bond because we all helped build the church from the ground up.”

And with that bond, this Eastmont church family looks forward to its next half-century.

Reporter Leita Hermanson Crossfield: 425-339-3449 or lcrossfield@heraldnet.com.