East End church celebrates its centennial
For the past few weeks, leaders at Bennett Memorial United Methodist Church have been in the mode of capturing and recording church memories.
They’ve learned after making social media posts of vintage photos and talking with citizens in the greater community, that “everybody has a Bennett story,” said its new pastor, E.J. Simmons.
The stories are about a church, firmly planted in Henderson’s East End for decades, that’s about to celebrate its building centennial on Sunday, Dec. 1.
In the spring of 1924, construction began on a newly purchased tract of land at the corner of Letcher and Cumnock streets.
The congregation of Clay Street Methodist Church, whose congregation had existed since the spring of 1890 mostly at Clay and Mill streets, had decided to relocate to a bigger lot that would accommodate a church and parsonage.
The construction project started rolling through the leadership of the Rev. E.R. Bennett, who had been assigned to the congregation the year before and who was known throughout the Methodist conference as “a builder of churches.”
But Bennett wouldn’t live to see the completion of the new building. He became ill on Thanksgiving Day 1924 and passed away on Dec. 5. His funeral was held in the unfinished church, and soon after completion it was rechristened Bennett Memorial in his memory.
If Rev. Bennett had lived, he would have seen the church blossom in the East End and become wholly involved in the neighborhood over the next 100 years.
Church members recall “very active” Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, a Ladies (and Youth) Temperance League, everybody walking to church on Sunday morning, weekday quilting groups, Methodist Youth Fellowship meetings, a robust church choir led by Tommy Tate and, of course, services and prayer meetings several times a week.
“I remember being in church almost every time the door was open,” said Bill Burton, who grew up near Powell and Letcher streets and whose father was on the building fund committee for the current church. “I have a rich history with the church.”
He remembers going to church with his mother for “quilting group” as a very small child and playing under the frame while the ladies sewed and talked.
Burton said it was an environment in which everyone in the church took on the role of raising up the neighborhood’s many children.
“It was a neighborhood church,” he said. “Parents tried to surround their children with men and women who had the same kind of values.”
It was a daily thing, but even more intense on Sundays at Bennett, he said.
“The thing I remember is a cadre of little old ladies that taught Sunday School and hovered over the children and made you feel so special,” Burton continued. “There was a lot of head patting. I had much more fear of disappointing them, more so than what my mother and father said.
“I just remember the love of the people there,” he said. “I always felt like they held me to a high standard, and that kept me accountable.”
Burton added that “hardly anyone had a car,” so most church members lived right in the East End neighborhood, once known as Audubon. But when cars became more prevalent, Bennett Memorial attracted people from all across Henderson.
Both Burton and church member Joyce Bingemer share a fun memory of taking advantage of the 15-minute break between Sunday School and church to make a beeline down to T&T Drugstore for ice cream, a soft drink or candy.
“There was two-for-a-cent candy,” said Burton, who went for the malted milk balls and cinnamon drops. “Those got you through church very easily.”
There were playful instances of neighborhood networking, Bingemer said.
“In the early years, the women had a group called ‘Galloping Tea,’” she said. “Once a week in the afternoon, they met at the church and took roll count. Then they all went to the house of one who wasn’t there. That person had to serve refreshments. So, if you weren’t going, you’d better be sure you let someone know and have a good reason.”
The men of the church had their own section in the sanctuary.
“There was an actual ‘Amen’ corner when the church was first built …,” she said. “It was separated from the rest of the congregation in the front on the Cumnock Street side.” The “Amen” corner was eventually dismantled when the church was redecorated.
The Rev. Gary Chapman, a retired UMC minister who served out his calling in several regions of Kentucky (including Henderson County), grew up in Bennett. His uncle, the Rev. Leslie Chapman, was also a beloved minister reared in the church and preached for the congregation’s 80th.
Rev. Gary Chapman said that when two United Methodist conferences (Louisville Conference to the west and Kentucky Conference to the east) merged in 1996, a book of church history authored by the Rev. Dr. R. Kenneth Lile (“Thy Hand Hath Provided”) offered a list of congregations that stood out for the number of persons who had been “called, trained, credentialed and sent into ordained Christian ministry.”
Out of approximately 600 congregations in the Louisville Conference over its 150 years, Bennett Memorial sent 18 into ministry—the most of any other church.
Chapman said he once asked beloved Bennett pillar Roy E. Webster Sr. (whose son Roy II was one of those 18 clergymen) how—and why—that was.
“His answer was unexpectedly simple but … profound,” Chapman recalls. “He said: ‘Oh, I don’t know … we just raised you right, I guess.”
Chapman has his own sense about the why.
“Throughout my life from the time I was a child until now as an old, retired preacher, I have never ceased to believe and to feel that I have an extended family that lives in the church house … at 503 Letcher St.,” he said.
“Even now … I embrace Bennett Memorial as the spiritual cradle that rocked me and protected me and loved me into me being who I am. It is a church that took seriously its own calling to nurture and discipline all the people that God gave over into their care.”
So why did he become one of the 18?
“They just raised me right, I guess,” Chapman added.
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A celebration for Bennett’s centennial is set for 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 1. The Rev. B.J. Brack, a UMC district superintendent in Tennessee who grew up at Bennett, will be the speaker for the service.
Below is a small sample of historical photos supplied by Bennett Memorial United Methodist Church.
