In today's paper

UP, UP AND AWAY

............SHADES OF FRIEDENS UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST. We watched a crane lifting the steeple safely down to blocked-off street at 13th and Juneau in Milwaukee. It was about 1983, the year Dee and I were married. After decades of standing watch over the city skyline at the direct west of the Pabst Brewery, the mortar of the ancient steeple was crumbling, pieces of terra cotta were falling in the street below, and there were no funds to effect a repair.

Friedens was scheduled to be phased out due largely to a change in demographic make-up of the neighborhood, and severely diminished attendance. But the UCC stood justly behind the church, and sent a fresh-from-seminary preacher there to minister and also oversee the demise. Those were unforgettable and life-changing moments.

As we watch the phoenix-like return of the Waukesha E & R UCC church from the flames of a fire, burned down by a fluke (as we lay abed in a convalescent home), we hail the stalwart members of the old church on Wisconsin Ave and their will to live, overseen, captained by our friend, the able Rev. Jim Gorman.

The irony of this steeple-raising is not lost upon us.

^.^

photos and newsprint by the Waukesha Freeman