HCC – 60 years!

Today was an especially important day in our church history:  we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the first service of the Hempfield Church of Christ.  Out of the 100 original charter members, seven were in attendance this morning, and three others who attended that first service but were too young at the time to be members.  Our family became members shortly after the charter membership closed, but had been attending from very close to the beginning.  I stopped to think about it, and I am the third generation of five who have attended HCC. The first few years, services were held at the Jr. Mechanics Hall in Greensburg (there was more of a name to it than that, but this will do!).  Raldo Cook was our minister and served there from 1958 until 1970.  I was eight years old. Our current minister, Mike Hazelton, is the 7th.

One of our former ministers (Bob Berry and his wife Sue, who by the way sang a touching duet for us!) came back to Hempfield to be a guest preacher this morning, and had some memories of his own to share.

The pulpit on stage was the one that was hand built by a charter member, Joe Blanset, as the Mechanics Hall did not have anything to serve in that capacity.  It came out of storage for the occasion!  After the formal worship and music services, we enjoyed a pot-luck lunch – and there was way more food that could even begin to be consumed!

And the desserts were actually dangerous!  The tables were decorated to enhance the theme of the 60th anniversary, which is Diamonds, and to also reinforce the ‘Church on the Hill’ as HCC was called in the early days, sitting as it does high above Route 30.

It was so fun to see Ailene Wirick (she’s married now but can’t remember her last name!) and Janie Close Ball – both of whom were close friends in our high school youth group.  Several people shared memories of those early years, and what the church family has meant to them as they grew up and established homes and families in the area.  Our church family is very precious!  The last thing on the program was a game of Jeapordy, in which Kathy Earnest Heckman, Carole Means Ryder, and myself were the contestants.  I was convinced that I would completely lose and not even have any points at the end, but it was a very close race up to Final Jeapordy.  Kathy snaked ahead with the right answer, after having wagered her entire ‘winnings’.  We all made a good showing and there were a lot of laughs and memories shared. 

I was thinking as I was driving home, though, that I wondered what the next ten years would bring, and I hoped that we could get back together and do it all again.  As Dianne Enyeart Gresham is our church clerk – and has all the records of dates and events – I’m sure she’ll be up for the challenge.  And right now, I want to take this opportunity to send a huge thank you out to her as she picked up the reigns from her father (Dr. Harvey Enyeart) as historian and recording clerk, and let her know that we absolutely couldn’t have gotten this far without her!  Thanks to all who made this celebration a fantastically fun and hugely successful day!