ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 28, 1995 TAG: 9512280008
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
CHURCH Women United, one of the Roanoke Valley's oldest interracial and ecumenical groups, has become more of a vehicle for fellowship than an agent for social change.
But the women still regularly provide money for four service ministries: the Roanoke Valley Institutional Chaplaincy Program, Bethany Hall, the West End Community Center and the Transitional Living Center.
When the national group was organized on Dec. 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, a coalition of church women's groups met to make a covenant for a better world, says Hildegard Kurt, outgoing president of the Roanoke group.
Shortly afterward, the Roanoke Chapter was organized as an arm of the national group which was then called the United Council of Church Women. The councils, both national and local, were outgrowths of World Day of Prayer Committees, a history of the Roanoke group reveals.
Natalie Foster Lemon, who served as Virginia president of the ecumenical group from 1978 to 1980, remembers when the change of name took place. At the national meeting in Indiana in 1967, the United Council of Church Women became Church Women United.
The Roanoke group also changed its name and became more ecumenical, receiving a few Roman Catholic women into membership. Of late though, Kurt said, their activity has declined.
Lemon said that the interracial aspect of the UCCW/CWU always appealed to her. She learned of the organization, she said, while living in Ohio, and enjoyed getting to know black church women there.
Returning to Roanoke as racial segregation was being legally outlawed in the South, she became an advocate for more cooperation between the races in alleviating social problems.
Lemon recalled that though the organization stood for racial equality and social mingling through church projects, it did not engage in protests in the civil rights era. Both she and another longtime member, Antoinette Bruce, agreed that setting an example of working together and eating lunch together in each other's churches has been the major way of reinforcing interracial goodwill.
Twenty-five years ago, CWU started working with Bethany Hall, a 12-room residence for women trying to overcome alcoholism and drug abuse. Mary Pickett, the first woman to serve on Roanoke City Council and president of CWU in 1970, worked closely with members of the adjoining Christ Episcopal Church in renovating the house which the church owned.
"It was a challenge," Lemon said. "The men had halfway houses for alcoholics, and as women, we knew there was just as great a need."
Today, Bethany Hall remains a major concern of CWU.
Other earlier programs, however, have been largely abandoned because, Kurt said, there is less interest in ecumenical cooperation throughout the nation, too few young women are interested in daytime meetings that exist primarily for social reasons, and it is no longer necessary to join a special group for racial mingling.
But mostly, said Kurt: "We're all getting old. I don't know where this organization will go in the future."
Seven years ago the Roanoke Valley CWU had reached such an ebb that some of its officers thought it should go out of business. Members even took steps at the January 1989 annual meeting to dissolve the chapter.
Those advocating the change were discouraged because they had trouble finding leadership and members were getting older. They also said that church women had many other groups where different races and denominations worked together.
Two months later, chapter members rescinded their earlier action. Bruce, a member of High Street Baptist Church, was active in a transitional committee to revitalize the group. When she became the first black president in 1990, the group took on the West End Center, an inner city ecumenical ministry to children and youth, as a project.
Bruce said the leadership was determined to keep going. "We are a Christian service group. Christians don't give up caring for the world. And a lot of our members, especially older black women, really valued their association with the others. We just didn't think it was right to abandon them."
Bruce also said that having meetings at different churches also is educational. Without CWU, she said, she would not know the reason for different colored pulpit hangings and symbols she learned about in a church that follows the liturgical year.
Generally, Kurt said, CWU has obtained its strength from Disciples of Christ, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Church of the Brethren members, Lutherans and Episcopalians. Baptists have come mainly from the black congregations, she noted.
In addition to May Fellowship Day, World Day of Prayer and World Community Day, the Roanoke Valley group holds an annual meeting in January and a Fall Forum in September. At the latter gathering, a local community service agency, such as Bethany Hall or The Turning Point, a Salvation Army refuge for battered women and children, receives a "shower" of needed articles.
Incoming Roanoke President Janice Hale said CWU has become an especially satisfying place for retired black women like herself. An increasing number of them have swelled attendance in recent years.
"We still have plenty of spirit," said Hale, long active in Loudon Avenue Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). "Now that we're not working for pay, we have more time even with more years and a little less energy. We know what we value in our Christian community."
"Look at me," chuckled Pickett. "Who'd have thought that at 88 I'd still be kicking around?"
Despite years and changes, the World Community Day program still brought out nearly 100 women of both races.
It was held in a black church though about two-thirds of the CWU participants were white.
Kurt said she's seen a definite growth in attendance at the quarterly meetings during her four-year tenure. But, she and Hale agreed, there aren't a lot of younger women.
A retirement-age Episcopalian, Jean Kinsey, at the meeting for the first time in many years, said, "It's a great organization. I think I'll come back."
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. Janice Hale (left), new president ofby CNBChurch Women United, and Hildegard Kurt, outgoing president, gather
in the sanctuary of Loudon Avenue Christian Church. color.