‘Everything went through Washburn’

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Bob Gripe, one of the last members of Washburn Congregational Church, flips through the pages of the Bible that has been displayed on the altar for years. The Bible and other effects of the church will be carried out of the building Sunday as part of a c

Updated: November 28, 2011 8:19AM

For years, they held it together, because ... why not?

Washburn Congregational Church may be down to 10 members, all elderly, but they believed that they still had a future together. In its 175-year history, this area’s first Christian fellowship had seen plenty of trials, and they hoped that their dwindling numbers would be just another dark hour with a successful end.

Instead, this is the end. On Sunday. Washburn will hold its final worship service. With little realistic chance of the church sheltering another generation, the members’ question had become ...why keep going?

Bob Gripe, Washburn’s treasurer, janitor and bearer of numerous other hats, said that when the small congregation could no longer find a good answer, they decided the best thing to do was bring the body’s work to a dignified conclusion.

“It’s like losing a family member,” Gripe said, sitting in the church’s basement. “Something that’s near and dear to you. I basically grew up here.

“We always had the faith that ‘Hey, it’s going to build up again,.’ But it never did.”

This conclusion will actually be Washburn’s second — it disbanded 100 years ago, only to be reformed by an out-of-towner. On Sunday, its final faithful will worship together for the last time at the church, 240 Olde Half Day Road, the fourth building in the church’s history. It is adjacent to the still-standing original building at 250 Olde Half Day Road ... a structure that predates not just the street, but any government that could have assigned it an address.

‘Historic firsts’

“(The church) is amazingly full of historic firsts,” said Lisa Marie Smith, the youth services librarian at the Vernon Area Public Library who is writing a book about the area’s legacies. “Everything went through Washburn.”

According to the volumes of records Gripe has collected, the region’s first congregation began sometime in 1836, when enough settlers had moved here to warrant a church. They met in a log schoolhouse on Milwaukee Avenue, and the church may not have even had a name. In 1840, landowner Seth Washburn donated a corner of his property to the group, which, at that point, named itself the Middlesex Congregational Church, with the Rev. Elbridge G. Howe as its original pastor.

Middlesex erected a wood-framed building with tin interior walls, separate entrances and seating for men and women, and no insulation in 1844. Among other uses, it later became the Vernon Town Hall. The group also began Lake County’s first graveyard, now known as Vernon Cemetery, where Capt. Daniel Wright, Laura B. Sprague and other local luminaries rest.

Construction of the church’s first building began in 1844. After the Civil War, membership grew; and Washburn built a second building in 1875. That structure survived a fire while still under construction, and served the growing populations of Vernon and Half Day.

But sometime in the early 20th century, the church disbanded. Gripe’s records do not indicate why. Rebirth came in 1914, with an “incessant tolling” from the dormant bell tower.

“Upon investigation, the people found an old white-bearded preacher who claimed his calling was to open closed churches,” reads a history of Washburn that Gripe found. “Following his fervid testimony of faith, church life was renewed in Half Day and has continued to this day.”

Gripe has no record of the preacher’s name, where he came from or where he went after he restarted Washburn.

“Like a ghost,” said Joan Wilts, who asked to be identified as “a senior member of the congregation.”

“There are some older than me,” Wilts said. “Only they’re in nursing homes.”

Fire, lightning

Washburn’s second building caught fire a second time, and could not be saved. The membership built a third church in 1918 ... and it was struck by lighting and reduced to ash in 1919. Gripe’s history credits “courageous men” with rescuing the giant, 15-pound Bible. Little else remained, but “molten metal from the bell.”

After two years of meeting in their original building, Washburn began construction of its fourth, present and final home in 1921. The chapel seats 120, but membership grew beyond that, and for a time, two services were held to fit everyone.

“In the ‘80s, was that?” Wilts asked.

“’70s,” Gripe answered.

Both have decades of memories of the church’s glories. Wilts recalled when the building was the polling place where Adlai E. Stevenson cast his ballots during his presidential campaigns.

“I didn’t vote for him,” she confessed.

But as Washburn carried on, the community around it changed dramatically. Members’ children grew up and moved away; other members grew old and passed away. Affluent young families looking for subdivisions moved to a town that had come to be called “Lincolnshire,” and were attracted to the video shows and choirs of the megachurches.

Washburn carried on, but it did not change with the community. After years of losses, the group held its final weekly Sunday service on Easter, and has been holding since then ... looking for an answer to the question “Why not?”

Still used

The building has been in constant use — a Korean church rents it seven days a week, which pays Washburn’s bills — but for the owners, getting out of the nursing homes became too difficult. This summer, the group decided to hand over their land, both churches and the three-bedroom parsonage next door to the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Gripe and Wilts met with members of the UCC last week at the church they grew up in to sign it over to them.

“We would like to see the building preserved,” Wilts said. “It should be.

“But there’s no historical society in Vernon Township to get behind a push to do this. There’s no money.”

The Vernon Library’s Smith said she could see how hard it was, especially for Gripe, to end Washburn’s existence.

“He is heartsick,” Smith said. “He’s so upset.”

After the UCC folks left, Gripe walked up the steps from the basement into the sanctuary. The 15-pound Bible, rescued from the third building’s fire, has sat open to the same page for years. When he turns the pages, clouds of dust blow off of them.

The members will hold a traditional closing ceremony during which the Bible and chalice will be carried out of the building. Someone will take the cross off the wall and carry it out, too.

“That’s a nice gesture,” Gripe said to Wilts.

“Not if you’re going to be the one carrying it out,” Wilts replied. “I’m not.”

Of course, after the ceremony, the symbols’ bearers will turn around, come back inside and remount all of the wares. The Korean church will continue to occupy the building — though its builder will no longer exist. The structure will carry on with its purpose.

Why not?