This was my dad’s birthday, and is my sister’s 16th wedding anniversary. That makes it an even more special day than my usual graceful response that every day is “The day the Lord has made/ Let us rejoice and be glad in it!”
This is what I’ve written about my dad in my new book’s manuscript, Bless You Bouquets, that I’m striving to complete.
My dad, in my Memory Garden, is the row of pine trees which towered over our front yard. When I was about five years old, we were living in a little house near Bunker Hill. Very conscious of growing taller, I overheard him tell my mother that we were outgrowing our house.
Of course, not even imagining that my second sister, their third child, was about to be born, all I could think of was the sagging beam connecting the kitchen and the dining room. My father had to duck to keep his head from hitting it.
Naïve as I was, I thought of him as the tallest person I knew, like the pine trees. But the metaphor worked on another level as well.
I’ve told you I loved to read under those trees. When the wind blew, there was a magnificent singing, a soft sighing (or as the British novels I loved to read would say, “soughing”) of the branches, like the music he liked to play on the piano at night to help lullaby us to sleep. It was protective, sheltering, just as those pines represented to me a sense of dancing beauty but lofty strength, symbolizing the trust I placed in him.
Learning life lessons was caught, not taught, from my dad. A devout Christian, he lived by Christ principles, and everyday occurrences became teachable moments. One particular occasion, the fire which destroyed our church building, became a lesson for me that I’ve never forgotten.
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Teachable Moment
3-2-6! … 3-2-6! The Hudson Fire alarm blared through our community. 3-2-6!…3-2-6!
In 1955 on the “good old day’s calendar”, that ear-piercing signal meant we raced to the kitchen closet, digging behind the flyswatter and the broom handles, to the Code Card, printed boldly and appropriately in red, to find out where the fire was.
You see, in those days, the volunteer firemen served the community as shopkeepers, policemen, taxi drivers, dentists, farmers, and delivery people as their day jobs, responding to code calls as needed. The date was May 8, 1955, my freshman year in high school.
3-2-6!…3-2-6!!… blared the sirens yet again.
Then 3-3-3!…3-3-3! That, everyone knew, was a Mutual Alarm.
Big trouble.
No one needed to look that one up. All the neighboring communities, usually bickering about boundaries or politics or rights-of-ways, cohesively battled the attacking demon, FIRE.
We grabbed our coats, slamming the storm door on its screechy hinges, and engaged in a favorite pastime—fire chasing. We’d seen some doozies, relived them for weeks, even surreptitiously enjoyed the sooty smells that lingered in our wool coats for days afterwards.
When history was made, at least for the fire department, we were frequent witnesses. There wasn’t much to do in Hudson. It was a sleepy town, still is, (Even ‘tho Martha Stewart has recently “discovered” it) and events were few and far between.
Everyone knew everyone’s business; heaven only knows how the town supported both a morning and afternoon newspaper with mostly gossip about folks taking a road trip to Lake Taghkanic, now spelling-simplified to Taconic, or page-and-a-half accounts of so-and-so’s wedding, the social event of the season. (My account was a three-column treatise!) But I digress.
So when the fire alarm sounded, unless the all-clear echoed within minutes, Dad herded us into our woody station wagon, and we scouted the sky for a smoke plume.
“No, Lu Lu Belle, you can’t come this time!” Our mutt was usually the first one in the car, jumping to her accustomed place in the wayback, near her own sliding window.
Certain times of dramatic input stick with our memories so vividly that we remember, the moment, the adrenalin rush, the sights and sounds, the intense emotion when disaster strikes. The world as we know it pales; we are changed forever.
You remember the feeling: the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, the Challenger disaster.
This day would etch its events indelibly into my very soul.
3-2-6!…3-2-6!
Then 3-3-3!… 3-3-3!
Sirens, more sirens, honking and traffic at a snail’s pace, we inched our way down Harry Howard Avenue, to Columbia, to Fourth Street, toward Fifth. We abandoned Woody and ran toward the now-huge conflagration.
Acrid smoke billowed skyward. On the continuum of the usual chimney fires or alley garage ones set by kids with nothing better to do on a Saturday, this was almost off the scale.
Plumes of black, then grey, then white smoke ascended, and ash started descending on the assembling crowds gathering along Warren Street. The crescendoed shouts of the adjoined fire-chiefs from their gathered agencies urged each one to put into practice the chains of command they’d infrequently practiced together.
Mutual Aid was a big deal in a little community.
Hoses snaked from overburdened hydrants; lights blinked from the one hook-and-ladder truck Hudson owned, and pumpers were positioned on Sixth Street, on Allen, on Fifth. Already two were dispersed to the Hudson River to resupply and shuttle back and forth, bringing precious water.
The generators moaned as they struggled to fight the dragon into submission.
We reached the scene. Dad gathered us close, his shoulders slumped, a worried look on his face. Near the corner of Sixth and Warren stood our second home, our oh-so-familiar First Reformed Church of Hudson, New York.
Our beloved edifice, the church where for generations the Whitakers had worshiped, was belching smoke, under attack from within.
This place, the site of his baptism and his father’s and his grandfather’s, the marriages, the funerals, the celebrations, the Sunday School classes, the Christmas programs, and the baptisms for my three siblings and me, this precious place, was now threatened. Our lives changed before our very eyes.
From what we learned later, the fire licked through the over-a-century-old roof beams, the hand-hewn huge rafters which had long held its lofty ceiling and her steeple spire soaring over the city.
Reaching with insatiable appetite, the fire-dragon relentlessly chewed its way around and through passageways.
As the flames fed upon the dried timbers, the hapless firemen tried valiantly to break through the slate roof, so carefully laid by long-dead dedicated craftsmen who pledged to keep water and snow out all these years. Its very craftsmanship now threatened the building’s survival.
Now that tight roof, having served so well for over a century, became a barrier to the very element which could have saved the sanctuary, its balconies, its pipe organ, its two stories of meeting rooms and kitchen, its well-worn pews and stained glass windows from certain destruction.
We stood there for hours. The spectacle held us spellbound. We were caught up in the drama, the heroic efforts of the firemen, the dedication of the Women’s Auxiliary hovering over their men with anxious faces.
I cried. Only two weeks ago, I had joined this church as a communing member. I was thirteen. My dear grandmother had sponsored me as I seriously vowed to follow Jesus, to let Him guide my life, and as the eldest, I knew my parents rejoiced in the results of their prayers and guidance in this precious church building.
Just last summer, the sanctuary had been renovated, painted a beautiful fresh green, carpeted, and rededicated as it reached its 125th anniversary celebration.
Next month it would host the New York State Christian Endeavor Convention. Committees of members had lovingly labored in preparation for over a year to welcome 500 young people for worship, meals, housing, and a weeklong event.
Tears streamed down my face as we heard the first beam land, shooting showers of sparks and intensifying the flames. Gallons of water descended through the hole in the roof. Perhaps now they could fight the demon fire. That was the hope.
We watched in horror as the entire roof descended, the outer walls buckled, and there was fear the entire structure would collapse.
“The church is gone!” I cried.
Then, I learned the lesson I will never forget. Then I discovered the phrase that has nourished my soul for the rest of my 72 years. Then I recognized the truth my naïve faith needed to hear.
My dear dad, who had invested so much of his life in this place, who served as a deacon and as an elder, who sang in the choir for forty years, who taught Sunday School and led men’s worship, taught me the life lesson in that teachable moment.
“Honey. The church is not a building; it’s God’s people.”
Then it struck me, like the proverbial ton of bricks, that walls, and pipe organs, and hymnbooks, and pews, and stained glass, do not make a church. God’s people are the church. It’s especially precious when I realize, every Sunday when our present-day congregation meets in an all-purpose room, the gymnasium for our Christian school, that the building is NOT the church.
Now that the organ is a thing of the past, a screen dangles as the focus of worship—even hiding the cross displayed behind it—and there is nothing whatsoever worshipful in the room itself, not even hymnbooks and pew Bibles, I know that church fire so many years ago is a living lesson for me. I need to get over the edifice-complex.
I learned a powerful truth that sustains me to this day. The church is not defined by a place.
The church of Christ, His Bride, cannot be held within walls.
I am at one with the house churches around the world, with the thatched-roof ones we just helped build in Ecuador; the lean-to’s in India, the tiny first-church building we just erected in Cuba. The places, sometimes secret in Muslim communities or hidden in Communist North Korea, are strong churches, built in the Spirit and beloved.
Now, as I listen to Laura Story’s beautiful song, “God’s Blessings in Disguise” I’m once again reminded of how blessed I am to have gone through that devastating experience at the right time in my life for it to impact my faith walk.
That same little community, where I thought nothing ever happened, that same little town I had thought of as boring as I read about fascinating other places in the world I thought were more alluring, that same tight-knit environment I had thought was stifling, became a teacher of mercy following this tragedy.
That same little town newspaper put out a special edition about the fire, the heroic efforts of the united firemen, the noble quotes about rebuilding, and thanksgiving that no one was hurt, and that every effort would be made to discover the cause.
The financial effects were discussed; the morgue photos of the church’s interior for this-or-that affair were published; our beloved pastor was interviewed. The town had conversation material for weeks.
But beyond all this, I learned what “community” meant. The Jewish Community Center offered its place of worship for our congregation to use the next day.
The local theater, whose offer the Consistory did accept as a long-term solution, opened its doors, rent-free for the church to use, even for the expected convention planned three-weeks away.
Other churches brought boxes of hymnbooks and Bibles, and one hastily constructed a huge cross from charred wood from our sanctuary. What a blessing that became as a sign of hope that from the ashes, a new beginning would emerge.
A construction company lovingly removed the stained glass window from the front of the sanctuary, a beautiful triptych of Jesus holding a lamb in his arms, a depiction of the 23rd Psalm. They stored it safely to incorporate it into a new building when the congregation needed it again.
The Dutch company which had so recently rebuilt the pipe organ came to assess the damages, and carefully removed its pipes and console. Beams had fallen all around it; amazingly, she would live again to boom out melodies from her reassembled 2000+ pipes.
But the most powerful message of the day, to this teenager, was the spirit and faith of God’s people. would leave goods, families, security, and everything to follow an itinerant preacher who changed their lives. I now know how the catacombs became a refuge for Roman Christians.
It is not the place that matters; it is being together through persecution, through torture, through judgment of others, through sacrifice, that makes the Church strong.
It is the country church of a few members who live out Christ’s love through daily life events, hatching them, matching them, dispatching them, from cradle to grave in the loving arms of Jesus.
It is the hidden church in China, memorizing whole chapters of the Bible and sharing those passages in secret.
It is the Gregorian chant which soulfully recites the essence of scripture
It is the nursery worker changing diapers and singing “Jesus Loves Me” to little ones while the sermon is preached to the world-weary adults.
It is the Women’s Guild preparing yet another Providence Meal when the family attends a Memorial service of a loved one or welcomes a new baby into the home.
It is the pregnancy resource and the women’s shelter, saving lives and bringing hope.It is the Homebound Saints visitation with prayer and scripture for a hospice patient.
It is the dedicated pastor preaching Sunday after Sunday, wondering if he’s reaching anyone with the true message that Christ’s love is what the church truly is.
It is the missionary who sees no converts during his stay, but who launches a church which multiplies into hundreds of others, trains ministers, and reaches millions who share Christ’s message, even through persecution.
It’s the church reaching out into the community with sports teams and free meals and overnight shelters, and addiction ministries, and language acquisition, to show the love of Christ to those who so need its redeeming message to provide help, hope, and a cool cup of water in the name of the Savior.
And it’s Daddy’s daughter passing on this message from the Church universal and forever, the very Bride of our Savior.
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While our dad was a wonderful man and provided as best he could for us, he was rarely home. He owned a small business, and the only time he wasn’t attending to the needs of Pitcher Accessories, Inc. was Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and even on Sundays, he had the time cards to do. In the plant kingdom, he was the bulb garden, with the roots firmly planted, the life blood foundation, and the occasional blooms just when we needed them to bless us. The crocus, the tulip, the Easter lily, the orange tiger lilies, the amazing amaryllis, the lilies of the valley that spread their fragrance to bless others.
We have great memories of his taking us on little field trips, to Lake Taghkanic, to Texas, to Grandma and Grandpa’s in Coxsackie, and to Aunt Neva and Uncle Bruce’s farm way back in the Catskill Mountains. A couple of times he even drove us to New York City to see the Bronx Zoo and the Empire State Building.
He loved playing bridge and golf, was a member of the choir at church for over forty years, served as an elder and deacon, and led the Soap Box Derby, watching eagerly as LJ won it one year.
He was active in the Lions Club, served on the Greenport Board of Trustees for the School District, and played piano in several trios and bands to supplement his meager wages from work. This is the dedication I wrote about him in my book, Job Loss: What’s Next? A Step by Step Action Plan.
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To Loren J. Whitaker (1915-1976)
who taught me what it means to work hard, to always give my best, and to appreciate the service of others. As a business-owner who employed and deeply cared for others, he treated his employees and their families as his own, and despite the hardship of losing his business to a devastating fire, he promised to rebuild bigger and better than before. And did. He leaves a legacy of honor, respect, and dedication to excellence which those who knew him admire and emulate.
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My dad celebrated his 61st birthday on August 8, 1976. He had reveled in the national bicentennial festivities the month before, had just had the roof redone on the house, had made some significant business decisions, all of which, as we look back at that preceding month, must have been premonitions of his impending sudden death a week after his birthday.
Not that anyone is ever prepared for a massive heart attack suffered just as a concert was beginning at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. What was ironic about the situation is that so many of our family members were present at this outing. Grandma was there, Mom, of course, Ellen and her family, and Ev and I. As we circled him, praying, crowds of others were there as well, unknown folks, who embraced us, knelt, and comforted us.
I would like to share an article I wrote to the Church Herald, the magazine of the Reformed Church in America, as a follow up to a feature they had written a few weeks previously. It discussed funerals. I think my father’s service was the first joyful memorial service I had ever attended, and now I find this is the Christian celebration of life I now embrace.
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Several weeks ago in the Church Herald, I read an article upholding the virtues of a funeral following the death of a loved one. At the time of my reading the piece, I mildly said to myself, “I disagree.” I am now, however, positively opposed to the entire funeral concept, and offer an alternative.
My beloved father died on August 14 at the age of 61. My dad was first a Christian, then a true witness to the world of honesty, consideration, generosity, and love to his fellow men. He lived a joyous committed life to Christ’s glory. When his sudden death occurred, there were several basic challenges we as a family needed to confront, in addition to our severe sense of loss.
We decided to have no viewing hours at the funeral home. We secondly planned a prayer service at the funeral home for just the family and close friends where we said our personal goodbyes. Because Dad was a leading business and civic leader, we realized his associates deserved a chance to pay their respects. But a funeral was not the answer we chose.
With the guidance of the Rev. Dr. Albert H. Van Dyke and his wife, who held a similar service for their beloved son Donald, we planned a service of praise and thanksgiving for God’s blessings in sharing this life with us. There were hundreds of people singing praise to God and responsively reading Psalm 118. We sang “Open Now the Gates of Beauty” and “Now Thank we All Our God.” The church choir beautifully sang “The Beatitudes” and the organist’s postlude was Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus!”
Dr. Van Dyke’s message, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” from Psalm 116, praised the Lord, not the man. How powerful God’s word is in this Psalm! No one left this service without a feeling of triumph and knowing the assurance of God’s love
We sat in the back so we were not visible to most, and greeted the congregation at the door with smiles and joy, as Dad would have greeted his friends—all to the music of the Hallelujah Chorus. Guests were informed they could call at the funeral home, which many did, but the family gathered at our home, for a dinner reception with our family and close friends.
For the Christian only, this victory is possible. I would not suggest to the general population this is the answer. It is only through Christ we have victory over death and the grave, and can assert in the Apostles Creed our belief in the “resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.”
I’d also really like to suggest the importance of people’s discussing their wishes in planning for this event which, surely unless the Lord comes first, will come. We knew of Dad’s wish to be cremated, and we knew his dismay at the thought of whisper-filled viewing hours and weeping family and friends.
This, as far as I am concerned, is a blessed alternative to the traditional funeral. It was an affirmation, and an honorable tribute. “The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
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So today, as I remember Dad, I’d like to think that he is wrapping my brother LJ in his loving arms, welcoming him to heaven, catching up on precious moments spent here as a prelude to eternity together.
As for Ellen’s celebration with David, I’m so very thankful that they found each other after their previous marriages, and that they have created a wonderful new family relationship with grown children, grandchildren and a great grandchild, all enriching their lives this side of heaven. My recent experiences with Ellen while attending our brother’s final days and entrance into heaven were rich blessings, a time of reflection and renewal we both needed. David has richly blessed our family in so many ways through his caring and loving nature founded on living the way Christ taught us to live, with true regard for others and eagerness to help in any way possible to make this world a better place. I wish them many more happy anniversaries to come.
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