There was a TCU homecoming this fall in September, before the one you think might be the subject of this piece. Homecomings are usually specific in one's mind to high schools, colleges, and universities, and take us back to a temporary "home" that, because of the amount of time spent there and the impressions made, mark us for better or for worse, forever. In a broader sense, however, a homecoming is a coming again to any vital center of familiar conditions and past associations, and a church can serve as well in that context as any other place. So it was to the church on the northwest corner of University Drive and Cantey that I found myself coming home.

It was just by chance that I knew of the Homecoming Sunday at University Christian Church. Granville Walker, Minister from 1943 until his retirement in 1973, was to return to the pulpit to conduct the service and bring the message. Being an inactive church member and not on the mailing list, I heard of it through my mother, who was called by Rosalyn Woodfin, who knew of our long association with UCC and TCU, and who, finding our names among the unfaithful, either thought we should or could be interested. And so we were, and so we went, Mother, Johnny, and I, to hear Granville again in "his house." And I am beholden to Rosie. Since I grew up in both, it is difficult for me to separate University Christian Church from Texas Christian University.

Although no longer officially bound to the university--neither one operating under the auspices of the other--I still think of that particular church as a part of the mission of TCU and, indeed, a physical part of the campus, its red-tiled roof and cream-painted brick exterior blending with the tones of campus architecture. Too, many of the people in the church family seemed always to be the same as in the campus family.

In actual fact, the two were born and grew up in mutuality. In the long-ago of 1873 at Thorp Spring, the infant AddRan College, which in its maturity is called Texas Christian University, was "adopted and endorsed" by delegates of Christian Churches in Texas, and Chapel services were a part of the student's daily routine. As the school grew, so grew the school's "church," so that by 1900, now situated in Waco, the college catalog proclaimed that "...there is under the supervision and control of the University, an organized Christian Church, which worships in the Chapel every Lord's Day."

In 1911, after the school's final move to Fort Worth, precipitated by that fire in Waco that destroyed all but the human spirit, an organized church and Sunday School were established by TCU students, faculty, and residents of the university area. Colby D. Hall, who played so many important roles in the university's administration, was its first pastor. There is evidence that the ministers of UCC were on the TCU payroll at least through Walter Jennings, who resigned as minister in 1922.

All during this time, the membership had no meeting place of its own; Sunday services were held in campus buildings. Finally, in 1933, on land donated by TCU, a modest structure was built that, with considerable subsequent expansions, has been home to the congregation ever since. Perry Gresham was the first to preach from the new pulpit.

By a happy coincidence of time and circumstance, Granville Walker became the fifth minister to serve the Church. On leave from his duties on the TCU faculty, he returned in 1943 to accept the ministry that would last through the next thirty years.

I remember well the first Sunday that Granville preached as UCC's resident minister. I recall the guarded anticipation and apprehension in my house, especially on the part of my grandmother, who had come to think, along with many others in the congregation, that noone, however educated and eloquent, could ever replace Dr. Perry Gresham in that role. She went to church that morning to take her measure of the young pretender and could come up with only "He's too skinny" with which to fault him. It didn't take him and his wife, Erline, very long to become the non-pareils of our church world.

Guided by my father's and mother's regard, Granville was an early hero to me. I recognized that he was someone I might at least consider as a worthy when I grew older and was able to think about and choose among such things for myself. Many early idols crumble on mature inspection; Granville hasn't shown a crack yet.

Homecomings can be risky, but not totally impossible, as American author, Thomas Wolfe, averred. Expectations taken too high can fall to wretched disappointment, ending in a sadness that makes you wish you had left well-enough alone. Not so this September Sunday.

It was like walking back into those thirty years that we so recently left behind. The church was much the same with its warm interior of red brick and stained oak, studded beamed ceiling and windows through which the light comes modulated by the human art of glass staining. The litany was so much the same that I could anticipate its course through the hour without effort, rising on cue and singing the "Gloria Patri" and "Doxology" as if I had only been away for the span of time from one Sabbath to the next.

True, some faces were missing--Mary Beth and Scotty, Betty and Willard and Paul Ridings, Jerome Moore, Don Ver Duin, Lloyd Burns, the Colby Halls, the D. Ray Lindleys, the M. E. Sadlers with their daughter and my friend, Ann, the Herbert Mundhenkes, "Uncle" Thurman Morgan -- and Daddy wasn't there, standing tall among the deacons as they waited at the end of the pews for the communion plates to make their way among the worshippers -- winking as he caught my eye.

And I missed the choir director, Arthur Faguy-Cote, and Q'Zella Oliver Jeffus at the organ. Remembering the vibrato that "Faguy," a voice teacher at TCU, achieved in the Easter hymn, "O'er all the way, green palms and blos-soms gay ...," brought a secret smile to my lips. And Mel Dacus' large voice and Bita May Hall's quieter one were in the assemblage rather than among those of the choir.

But Granville was there in the pulpit, and Erline was there at the lectern, his Reader this hour, his companion in life. And after the first few words, he had us again in the thrall of his calm intelligent reasoning, sprinkled o'er with a humor that keeps one from taking oneself too seriously, the importance of his physical place in the pulpit giving way to a genuine humility that never reached the assumption that because he was the herdsman who had the flock, he was more important than they.

In the "Foreword" to Granville's book, Go Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste, Kenneth Teegarden writes of the "forceful impact of [Granville's] intimate and compelling speaking style." Dean Colby Hall, in his chronicle of TCU, speaks of Granville's "superb and unique ability as a pulpiteer." But perhaps Jeddie McFarland, a cafeteria employee with whom it was my pleasure to work for three years in TCU's Faculty Center, said it best: "If I knew Reverend Walker would speak over me, I wouldn't mind passin'."

With all due respect to Mr. Wolfe, I don't believe that you can't go home again. I can and I have and I will again. And each time I do, I expect I will find many of the same bright windows through which the light shines modulated now by the human art of reflection.

Back to top