Church and Family Memories

The person in today’s post grew up at Hayes Barton Baptist Church. Five members of her mother’s family were charter members of the church.  And she traces her connection to the church to the early 1950s. When she talks about the church, you hear the love she feels for the church and what it represents in her life.  Her family memories are church memories, and church memories are family memories.  The person is Kitty Allers.

“As one grows, the church grows with you,” reflected Kitty Allers as we talked about her involvement at Hayes Barton Baptist Church.  “You just grow.”

Kitty grew up at Hayes Barton Baptist Church.  Family members can be found in the list of charter members:  M. S. Humphrey; Mrs. M. S. Humphrey; W. Glenn Humphrey; Max Humphrey; Pearl Humphrey.  They were the family of Kitty’s mother Lorraine. 

Kitty was born in Durham, North Carolina, to Lorraine and John C. (“Jack”) Allers.  The family moved back to Raleigh and became involved in Hayes Barton Baptist Church in the early 1950s.  Kitty remembers the names of the church staff and the many activities of the church that stood on the Five Points corner before the fire of 1962.

“I remember Sunday nights in the Fellowship Hall which was downstairs under the sanctuary,” says Kitty.  “Bennett Straughn would create chalk drawings to teach Bible verses, and Jimmy Ringgold would sing.  We’d have 300 to 400 people at church on Sunday nights.”

And Sunday nights weren’t the only nights that were busy.  The 1950s saw the start of The Living Nativity at Hayes Barton Baptist Church each Advent.  “More nights, more shifts, more people, and more animals back then,” recalls Kitty.  “My father directed it for over twenty years.  I remember when the cows and donkeys got loose in the middle of Five Points, and I remember the year we had baby sheep born here. My dad was the one who got the calls in the middle of the night about the animals running loose.  And I remember playing all the parts through the years.  I was always brought along to fill in roles that needed filling.”

Kitty was baptized by Dr. John Kincheloe in 1961.  “I was the only one baptized that day.  It happened in the old church baptistery,” recalls Kitty.  “There was a stained glass window that was beautiful.  My grandmother was brought in on a stretcher from the nursing home to see my baptism.”

“After the church burned down,” says Kitty.  “we worshipped at the school in the winter and the theater in the summer.  Sunday School happened all over the place.  I remember people being scattered from here to yonder.”

“Those were the impressionable years of my life,” says Kitty.  School with an eventual degree in business administration and work at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction took her focus away from church and put her on the road often, but, she says no matter she did in life, she always knew she would be welcome at Hayes Barton Baptist Church.

And she never really left as through the years she served on numerous committees and was involved in many activities.  These days she serves as an usher, on the wedding committee, and with food serving.

Kitty knows the heritage of Hayes Barton Baptist Church because it is also the heritage of her family.  “From the 1950s to my high school graduation,” says Kitty, “it was my family.  And it became my family again at other times in my life like when my father died in 1983.”

Kitty happily talked about her dad throughout our conversation, and she said at one point, “In case you hadn’t picked up on it, I was a daddy’s girl.”

The hope of Hayes Barton Baptist Church, for Kitty, is that “it will continue to be a family for people, that it will attract more families because families are what made this church.”  It offers a home to those families that, according to Kitty, is always welcoming.  “No matter what, even if you stray, you are always welcomed back.  You can stray.  Come back.  Stray.  That is the way it has been for me,” says Kitty.

As we finished our conversation, we talked again about The Living Nativity.  Kitty told me of a tree that her Uncle Glenn had planted to overlook the Nativity scene.   “It was a magnolia tree that had to be cut down.  I was given a picture of the tree that is framed in magnolia wood.  It is hanging in my dining room,” says Kitty.  “It means a lot because it is from the church. And it reminds me of my uncle and my dad.”

And so it goes.  Church memories are family memories.