Plymouth Magazine-Fall26-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 3
The Plymouth Church Story
By Amy Elbert (she/her)
Plymouth Archives Committee: Co-Chairs Amy Elbert and Lorna Truck, Susan Lees, Carol Stratemeyer,
Polly Welp, Kathleen Murrin, Dixie Hoekman, and Randy Breese
A crew of volunteers is uncovering
Plymouth’s past, one dusty folder at a
time. It’s been a fascinating exploration.
After four years of sorting worship
Bulletins, deciphering handwritten notes,
scanning photos, and filing, refiling,
and filing again, the Plymouth Archives
Committee is sharing our finds with
Plymouth Church. It’s a fitting time to
look back as we celebrate 100 years in
our church at 42nd Street and Ingersoll
Avenue. Historic photos show us that
it was a blustery December day in 1926
that the cornerstone was set on this
magnificent building.
Exploring Plymouth’s history has been
eye-opening for the committee, even for
us who have called Plymouth home for
decades. With each folder, we discover
another fascinating little nugget of our
history. Did you know Plymouth was the
first church in the city to hire a full-time
music director? And if you think parking
is difficult now, you should know when
Plymouth was one of several churches
downtown, it could be difficult to find a
place to hitch your buggy on Sundays.
This issue of Plymouth Magazine and
the history display on the walls outside
of Waveland Hall share these stories and
many more. Both are the culmination of
hours of work by the Archives Committee
comprised of Lorna Truck, Susan Lees,
Carol Stratemeyer, Kathleen Murrin,
Polly Welp, Dixie Hoekman, Randy
Breese, and me.
For years, the church archives were stashed
in corners and closets around the church,
with the majority of the records stored
in a basement room adjacent to the gym.
Unfortunately, that room was also the
dumping ground for a host of unwanted
items, including outdated audio-video
equipment (think film projectors), broken
office chairs, and dusty costumes from past
pageants. Worse yet, many of the actual
historical records were stacked on sagging
shelves or cramped into rusty file cabinets.
The Archives Committee began to
rectify the sad state of the archives, with
prompting from Plymouth member, Lorna
Truck, who is a retired city librarian with
a background in archives preservation
and digital library organization. Lorna
and I (then serving as Plymouth Church
Secretary) recruited a group of volunteers,
each bringing expertise to the project. We
have met every Friday morning since 2022,
organizing, categorizing, and preserving
the precious documents, photos, and
memorabilia that tell our church’s stories.
The first step was to relocate the
Archives Room to a former storage
room on the Lower Level hall below
the Narthex. (Long-time members may
remember these rooms as Sunday school
classrooms, Family Promise spaces, and
the Bride’s Dressing Room.)
Each folder and document was indexed
into a spreadsheet before being stored
temporarily in plastic tubs for transfer and
re-sorting. After the move, the materials
were sorted into general categories, such
as Sermons, Bulletins, Pastors, Building
History. The Plymouth Foundation
provided a $4,550 grant to get the work
started, funding for heavy-duty shelves,
file cabinets, and dozens of archive-quality
storage boxes and folders. Funds will also
go toward digitizing historic records.
The sorting, indexing, and labeling
continues, but now the committee’s
focus is on digitizing records. (We face
boxes of outdated media such as reel-toreel tapes, slides, cassettes, and DVDs.)
Developing searchable databases and
coordinating the archives digital files
with the church’s Book of Life digital
records are continuing projects.
This has been a slow process but satisfying
and, dare I say, fun, especially for us selfdeclared “history nerds.” From the get-go,
one of the primary goals of the archives
project was to share the stories of Plymouth
with the congregation. That is what we
are doing here. The story continues,
however, and we will continue to share
our finds in future issues of Plymouth
Magazine and on the church website.
Our history enlightens us to the
incredible work of our predecessors,
and gives us purpose and understanding
for what lies ahead. Afterall, only when
you know where you came from can you
know where you’re going.
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