ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603280031
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: DUBLIN
SOURCE: NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
A couple recently designated by the Salvation Army as Southern territorial evangelists completed a five-day visit to Pulaski County this week.
For Lt. Col. Eugene Slusher, it was a return home. Slusher grew up here and worked in 1951 at Radford Army Ammunition Plant to earn enough money to enroll in a Salvation Army college.
He and his wife, Lt. Col. Freda Slusher, spent several days in the area meeting with groups of young people, visiting nursing homes, speaking on radio shows and otherwise staying busy spreading the word on the Salvation Army.
For his last speech on this trip, at the annual Pulaski Salvation Army appreciation dinner Wednesday evening at Dublin United Methodist Church, he again talked about the organization's roots in 1865 London when William Booth, a former Methodist minister, began holding meetings for the poor of the city's East End slums.
In 1878, Booth changed the name of his organization from the Christian Mission to the Salvation Army, designed uniforms for its men and women, and spread its activities worldwide. It came to the United States in 1880.
Now it has more than 1.5 million volunteers, Slusher said, including many of those attending the dinner. It has existed for 75 years in Pulaski.
The image of uniformed Salvation Army members holding meetings on street corners, as it has done for about 100 years, is coming to an end in some places, he said. Localities have enacted ordinances banning demonstrations, and the Salvation Army gatherings fall under that definition. "That hit us," he said.
Slusher was national disaster director until a few months ago. The last disaster on which he worked was the Oklahoma City bombing. "As long as there are people reaching out to find help, I pledge to you that the Salvation Army will be there," he said.
LENGTH: Short : 41 linesby CNB