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Saturday, Aug. 09, 2008

Pastor's wife has supported church's integration policy for 50 years

As Trinity Baptist Church celebrates Helen Brown's 50 years of service as organist and director of children's ministries this weekend, it will recognize her other legacies as well.

But her most powerful gift may be that she and her husband provided the leadership to integrate the church — a decision that came at tremendous cost.

In the early hours of June 14, 1969, an arsonist burned Trinity's new church to the ground.

Helen and her husband, the Rev. Bob Brown, were awakened by their daughter, who was roused as the huge glass windows of the A-frame atop a hill at the end of Strader Drive were blown out from the blaze.

”The sanctuary was bombed — it just went up,“ Helen said. ”The police were here immediately, and they kept Bob from going inside.

”The cross was the only thing left standing.“

Former Urban County Council member Fred Brown, a member of Trinity at the time, thinks the church was torched because it welcomed blacks and made no secret about it.

”Bob preached on things being fair and right,“ Brown said. ”A group of radicals were against what he said. There's no doubt about it — it was arson.“

No one was ever charged with the crime. Helen remembers how Trinity's congregation gathered outdoors the next Sunday, near the ruins.

”It was bitterly cold, almost like the day Christ died,“ she said.

Joined through faith

Helen and Bob met in the late 1940s, when both were teenagers working with youth in church groups. He kidded her about being older, because she was born two days before he was.

They enrolled at Georgetown College in 1948 and would often take black students to their Northern Kentucky homes on weekends because blacks, even black missionaries, were not welcome in Georgetown's Baptist church, Helen said.

”They went home with us to Visalia,“ where Bob was preaching on Sundays, she said. ”They probably weren't welcome there either, but people wouldn't dare say anything. There would have been a war.“

After they graduated in 1952, Helen and Bob got married and a year later entered Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, where he studied for the ministry and she polished her skill as an organist.

The couple moved to Lexington in 1958, when Trinity's 11-year-old congregation worshiped in a Quonset hut on the former Chevron property at Winchester Road and Strader Drive.

”In the summer, it was so hot you thought you were going to die,“ Helen said. But in the winter, the Quonset was so cold that Helen had to manipulate the organ's foot pedals with her boots on, she said.

The couple immediately launched a successful program to build a church, and Helen said congregants ”came in droves. We had 10 buses.“

And Trinity integrated.

”That was unheard of,“ Helen said. ”Trinity was criticized by the Southern Baptist Convention, and was asked at one time to leave the association.“

Trinity's resurrection

After the church fire, Trinity met at what is now Crawford Middle School, and started from nothing to raise money for a new church.

”We had $250,000 in insurance, which is what our debt was on the (A-frame) building,“ Helen said. ”After the fire, we had nothing.“

But Bob turned to the congregation and also brought his fund-raising message to radio and his TV program Encounter, and construction began. ”We just recently burned the mortgage,“ Helen said.

Bob died in 1980 of a heart attack he suffered while addressing school administrators in Louisville.

Helen pressed on with her organist and children's ministries duties, and she continued as organist with Milward's Funeral Homes at both the Broadway and Southland Drive locations, where she has played for 35 years.

Her stance on seeing all people as equals has not wavered

Robert Chirwa, a computer science instructor at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, was an exchange student at the University of Kentucky when he and his wife, Tambu, met Helen at Trinity in 1989.

”Helen immediately adopted us as if we were her family,“ Chirwa said. ”When my wife became pregnant, we didn't have any money. Helen organized (a fund drive) to help us out. She was in the delivery room with us at Central Baptist in 1991.

”She works with children a lot,“ said Chirwa, who is from Malawi, a small East African country tucked between Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. ”She never says, "This kid is this race or that race.' She works with them all. ... And she has passed that legacy to the children.“

One of Helen's biggest chores is to organize Trinity's Vacation Bible School program. The Bible school meets at six off-campus sites as well as at the church.

”This church is very VBS-minded because some of us give it our all,“ she said. The program serves groups ranging from infants to adults at each location, and requires the participation of about 125 of Trinity's members.

”It keeps a momentum going that you need to have,“ she said. ”It's the biggest thing this church does all year.“

Billy White joined Trinity in 1954, about four years before Bob and Helen arrived.

White said Helen ”is a loving, unassuming person who goes about her tasks with the Lord without expecting any great proclamations from anyone. She is multi-multi-talented.“

And Helen is also very well equipped to recruit the people she needs to continue her ministries, White said.

”When Helen calls you, you say "Hello,' "Yes' and "Goodbye.' “