ALBERT V. LAWSON -- IN OHIO AND ILLINOIS

Springfield, Ohio

After preaching a trial sermon on August 2, 1931, at the First Baptist Church in Springfield, Ohio, Albert conducted his first worship service as resident pastor on Sunday, September 6, 1931.

Springfield, the seat of Clark County, lies 40 miles west of Columbus on US Route 40, the old Cumberland Road. A 50th anniversary issue of Newsweek magazine (Spring 1963, pp 29-61) includes a lengthy study of the city. According to that article, the Depression hit the city hard, and by the time my parents arrived in town, some of the large firms were wiped out completely, laying off many employees. Not the best time to arrive.

The First Baptist Church began on December 25, 1835, and was incorporated in 1843. Its large red brick building was dedicated in 1882. With about 1000 members, it was one of the significant American Baptist churches in Ohio. Aside from two mission churches which it helped to maintain, it was the only Baptist church in town at that time, although the internet reports at least 20 Baptist churches of all types there today. The salary was adequate, but the church provided none of the benefits a minister usually expects today, such as parsonage or pension plan.

Because Albert and Inez had no money to cover moving expenses, they sold the few furnishings they had acquired during student days at Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, and the seminary loaned them $100 to help tide them over. Albert wrote, "All we had in the world was this debt of $100, a big load of faith and hope, 300 books, and a complete dedication."

By this time, Albert was an excellent public speaker. He had over 15 years' experience. He did all the things the pastor of a large city church should do to help put his church on the map. He joined the Lions Club; Inez joined the League of Women Voters. He joined the YMCA. He represented Colgate University at the installation of three presidents of Wittenberg College. He participated in the local ministerial association, was a member of the Executive Club, the Springfield Adult Education Board of Directors, and the Board of Directors of the Salvation Army. A partial list of his public speaking engagements follows:

Springfield High School
IOOF Home of Clark County
Clark County Association
Springfield Lions Club
Springfield city jail
Clark County Children's Home
Springfield Community Center
B'nai B'rith
Wittenberg University Field House
Lions Club
Summer School, Wittenberg College
Springfield Senior High School PTA
Schaeffer Junior High School
Calvary Baptist Church
Jewish temple
Clark County Infirmery
Lincoln School PTA
12-week lecture series at YWCA
Ohio Masonic Home
County Sunday School superintendents
Knights of Pythias Home
Baccalaureate sermon, Senior High School
Invocation, Wittenberg College graduation 1940.

In 1939, as president of the Clark County Ministerial Association, he arranged for a city-wide "Spiritual Recovery Campaign" at the Civic Auditorium. He served as vice moderator of the Dayton Baptist Association of the Ohio Baptist Association (1932-1933), Board of Managers of the Ohio Baptist Convention, and chairman of its Service Committee.

He conducted worship services on Sundays and on Wednesday evenings. There was no church secretary, so he prepared all the service bulletins on his own portable Remington typewriter and delivered them to the printer. In addition to the usual pastoral duties, he participated in the local ministerial association's weekly radio program. He began publishing a church newsletter, "The Baptist Messenger," mailing copies to all members and paying the postage himself.

By March 30, 1937, 75-100 new members had been added to the rolls of the church, which was numbered among the "Honor Churches of Ohio" by the state convention.

In July 1941, he and the Springfield church agreed to go their separate ways. Albert had been pastor in Springfield for almost exactly ten years. While he searched for another church, he worked as an editor of technical manuals at Patterson Field Air Depot (now Wright-Patterson Air Base) near Dayton. His commute to Dayton in the family Graham-Paige was long, and he worked from 8 am to 4 pm at a salary of $1800 per annum. This was considerably different from the work he had in mind when he began his 12-year educational odyssey. But in October 1942, he became a Chaplain in the US Army and the odyssey continued.

[This is a shortened version of a chapter from a biography written and copyrighted by his daughter. For further information, please contact
BJWalters1(at)aol.com)

Benton, Illinois

Benton is the county seat of Franklin County, Illinois. The population has remained steady since 1946 at about 7,000. It is in the center of an area known as Little Egypt. The heart of Benton is the city square, dominated in the center by a red brick courthouse built in the Second Empire style about 1875. Around the square in 1946 was an amalgam of small dress shops, jewelers, a furniture store, two drugstores and other small businesses in addition to the local skyscraper--the six-story Wood Building. Small shops continued for a block or so in each direction on North, South, East, and West Main Streets.

The First Baptist Church stands one block from the square at 201 South Main Street. In 1947, it was the largest church in Benton, an imposing building in Italianate style, with broad steps leading to the front doors, two-story columns on the porch, and a square bell tower on one side. The church sanctuary, which aside from the high school gymnasium was the largest auditorium in the city, had a balcony around three sides. The building contained ample room for religious education, fellowship, and basketball. With more than 800 members, the church program included a large Sunday School, local and mission work, and adult and youth activities. Albert wrote a friend that the church "has a facility worth $175,000, built in 1922, and has no debts." The church was used for civic events such as the annual high school baccalaureate service.
Albert's first Benton sermon in January 1947 was entitled "The Future Begins Today." On his first Easter Sunday, 408 attended Sunday School and over 200 participated in the main worship service. Over 100 men attended the Men's Brotherhood banquet in March 1948. There were big potluck suppers, and always an Easter breakfast after the sunrise service.

At the end of his first year in Benton, Albert recorded 72 new members, $18,000 received, 45 high school young people involved, and the Men's Fellowship monthly dinner attendance had gone from 65 to 125. Every week he officiated at Sunday morning and Sunday evening services as well as a Wednesday evening prayer meeting, and attended fulfilled the usual pastoral duties of committee meetings, conducting weddings and funerals.

Albert again set about making community contacts. He joined the Rotary Club, and was Chairman of its Youth Committee and Civic Committee in addition to serving for several years as its song leader; he had a a jovial way of getting people to sing, after his years of conducting hymn sings as an Army Chaplain. He was elected President of the county and city ministers' association. He was elected to the Benton Chamber of Commerce in 1954. He gave invocations, benedictions and speeches at countless high school graduations, baccalaureate services, Memorial Day and other civic occasions such as the dedication of a reproduction Liberty Bell near the public library.

By 1950, he had added to his church duties the teaching of the Agoga Class of 20-25 men. In 1953, the church membership stood at 802, with church school enrollment of 485.

When he arrived in Benton in 1947, it seemed at first glance to be a thriving town, but the economics of the city were centered around the coal and oil industries. Sulphur-producing soft (bituminous) coal was losing its markets, and the AMW was actively organizing and agitating in southern Illinois. When St. Louis prohibited use of soft coal in the city after 1951, it was a major blow to southern Illinois economics. A county report indicates that "By the early 1950s, the unemployment rate in Franklin County exceeded 20 percent and only 4 of its 27 coal mines were still in sporadic operation."

The Orient #2 mine, located midway between Benton and West Frankfort, was said to be the deepest shaft mine in the world at that time. Shortly before Christmas, on December 21, 1951, disaster struck, when an explosion in Orient #2 killed 119 miners. Most people in Benton knew or were related to families who lost family members.

It took several days for all the bodies to be recovered and a pall hung over the Christmas holiday that year. On December 26, Albert conducted funeral services for two of the victims (Richard Carroll Bridges and Paul M. Taylor). In a letter, Dad wrote: "With the Christmas season's usual pressure, we had the sad yet heavy task added of caring for the bereaved and broken hearted due to the mine disaster... While not one was a member of my church, a number of those who perished were relatives of my members. About half of the number of those who lost their lives were from Benton and the immediate area. Since the main office of the Orient Mine is located at West Frankfort (six miles from here) the disaster actually took place beneath a suburb of Benton called West City. On Friday evening [1/4/52], at our church, we had a community-wide memorial service sponsored by our Ministerial Association of which I am president. It was a beautiful service. In attendance were the leaders of the city, including the Mayor."

In a letter of January 30, 1952, Albert wrote about his busy life in Benton: "I teach one of the three men's classes; [Inez and I] have taken on . . . two young people's meetings every Sunday evening. And this besides the two services of worship. I had twenty-seven in my class last Sunday, and our youth groups (junior and senior high) range from fifty to sixty-five in attendance every Sunday."

In November 1953, they took a group of young people to St. Louis to hear Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick speak at Kiel Auditorium. Evidently there was a weekday boys' club, too. One of my high school classmates wrote that Dad served as referee for boys' basketball in the church gym. "As I recall, your dad was not keen about running up and down a basketball court. So he would stand in the middle of the court and referee our games. . . He loved to blow that whistle and grin at us."

At home, Albert never stopped talking about Paris, fine art, and museums, and his desire for his children to go out to see the world and get a college education. He often quoted this poem by Edgar Frank:

"How can you live in Goshen?" said a friend from afar,
"This wretched country town where folk talk little things all year
And plant their cabbage by the moon."
Said I--I do not live in Goshen.
I eat here, sleep here, work here;
I live in Greece where Plato taught and Phidias carved and Epictetus wrote;
I dwell in Rome where Michaelangelo wrought in color, form and mass,
Where Cicero penned immortal lines and Dante sang undying songs.
Think not my life is small because you see a puny place;
I have my books, I have my dreams;
A thousand souls have left for me enchantment that transcends both time and space.
And so I live in paradise--not here.

Why yes, I live in Goshen: this little town of little streets and ways and little folk and great.
I eat, sleep, and work here--and laugh and weep and agonize and pray.
I dream in Greece and Rome and try to bring my dreams to Goshen
And sometimes do, but mostly fail.
But here I meet my friends--my living, breathing fellows.
And we walk and think and bless and hurt each other every day.
Here I see great men sometimes small,
And small men sometimes great.
And out of all Goshen's ugliness great beauty grows.
And so I live in paradise--right here.

On May 30, 1954, Dad gave a Memorial Day address at the church and, at its close, announced his resignation to be effective July 1, 1954. He had accepted a call to Grace Baptist Church in Belleville, New Jersey.

Betty Lawson Walters

Daughter of Albert V. Lawson, Jr.

Education: B.A., MacMurray College, Jacksonville IL

Employment: Museum Technician, National Museum of American History 1961-1969
Secretary; Asst. Registrar, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington DC 1988-1998

Publications:
"The King of Desks: Wooton's Patent Secretary," Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology #3 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1969).
Furniture Makers of Indiana 1793-1850. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1971.
"The Lean Years: John Casteel's Diaries, 1931-1942," in Oregon Historical Quarterly (Fall 1988).

Portions of the Lawson family papers are in the collections of the New York State Historical Association and in the US Army Chaplain Museum.
Material on this website is under copyright protection by the author and the archives involved.
Please address comments by e-mail to
BJWalters1 (at)aol.com

AVL Biography

Biography and Chaplaincy
241st General Hospital
242nd General Hospital