ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 21, 1997 TAG: 9701210064
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Charles Schaeffer had a dream, too.
Long ago, he envisioned racial harmony in the New River Valley and founded a school and many churches as institutions to fulfill America's promise.
Today, however, Schaeffer stands as a man whose legacy has been overlooked or forgotten, as our nation still struggles with the divisive issue of race.
Yet one Blacksburg artist has brought the 19th-century civil rights champion back to life - if only as a figurehead.
Larry Bechtel's hope is that his bust of Schaeffer can be completed and displayed in the predominantly black Christiansburg church that bears the old Christian warrior's name.
It's a gesture of honor and reconciliation, one that Bechtel says is in perfect harmony with the character of Schaeffer, a soldier, bureaucrat and minister who came here after the Civil War and remained until his death in 1899.
"That would be one of the nicest things," said Nannie B. Hairston, a Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church member who assisted Bechtel with the project. "It's really something people ought to look at."
The life-like clay sculpture of Schaeffer is perched at Bechtel's studio, located in the basement of his Blacksburg home. It still needs to be bronzed and mounted, a process he says will cost about $1,000.
While no one knows how the funds can be generated, Schaeffer was always a man to depend on faith to grow a seed from stony ground, Bechtel said.
Schaeffer was born near Philadelphia in 1830. He was a devoutly religious man who came of age during the national crisis over states' rights and the expansion of slavery.
When war between the North and South erupted, Schaeffer enlisted in the Union army and saw front-line combat action at the war's bloodiest battles. Wounded at Antietam and Gettysburg, Schaeffer had to leave active service and resign his officer's commission.
Having sought and maintained friendships with blacks before the war, and making no secret of his desire to remove the "dark spot of slavery" from American society, Schaeffer took a job with the Freedmen's Bureau after the war ended.
The Freedmen's Bureau was the federal agency assigned to ensure that newly emancipated Southern blacks gained the full rights of citizenship. As a social experiment, it foretold the massive governmental social programs of the 1960s, with a track record that fell short of its high-minded mission.
Schaeffer was assigned to administer Freedman's Bureau programs in the New River Valley. Arriving in Christiansburg in 1866, he found the social turmoil of embittered whites and newly freed slaves in a war-ravaged land.
A symbol of the North's victory, and invested with broad powers to register blacks to vote and to settle land and employment disputes, Schaeffer was not a popular man.
"The better classes treated him with silent contempt and regarded him as a social outcast, while the ruder elements openly denounced him," says "The Story of a Consecrated Life," a Schaeffer biography published in 1900.
Schaeffer was shot at and threatened by mobs. He cut himself off from white society altogether to focus on his mission, which was to help blacks join mainstream society.
To do that, he used money from Northern philanthropists to found a school that became Christiansburg Institute, the venerable black public academy that educated generations of pupils before it closed in the 1960s.
He also founded a number of local black churches, many of which still exist. After the Freedmen's Bureau disbanded, Schaeffer became minister of the most prominent church, the tall edifice that sits like a beacon on the ridge near Christiansburg he named Zion Hill.
By the time he died, Schaeffer had come to be accepted and respected throughout the community, even by those who once opposed him.
Today Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church has a portrait of its first pastor in its sanctuary. The congregation also owns the next-door building called the Hill School - the original Christiansburg Institute - and operates it as a community center where a number of civic groups meet.
"He set the tone," Hairston said of Schaeffer. "We have always been integrated on High Street."
Outside of the church, however, Schaeffer's memory faded. Bechtel hadn't heard of him until he read a newspaper article last year about local black history.
An after-hours artist who works as Virginia Tech's recycling program coordinator, Bechtel began to research Schaeffer's life. He contacted Hairston, attended a Sunday service at the church and borrowed a rare copy of the Schaeffer biography.
"It was a tremendous experience," Bechtel said. "It allowed me to sink down into a contemplation of the man and his times."
To craft the bust, Bechtel drew from both Schaeffer's photographs and personal qualities. In his face he saw courage, fortitude, devotion and an abiding sense of spiritual peace.
It took him about 30 hours to complete the bust in low-fire clay. The next step is to make a mold and bronze cast. Bechtel said he'd like to mount the bust on a piece of stone and present it to the church for permanent display.
After donating time and materials, Bechtel said the $1,000 needed to complete the project is beyond his financial means.
Perhaps an appropriate solution might be for the public to help preserve a chapter of history and honor a civil rights pioneer by sending donations, he said.
Hairston said community help to cast the sculpture in bronze would be a welcome gift. When completed, Hairston said, the public will be invited to a ceremonial unveiling of the sculpture.
Donations designated to the "Bust of Charles Schaeffer Fund" may be sent to Benjamin Penn, Church Treasurer, c/o Schaeffer Memorial Baptist Church, P.O. Box 581, Christiansburg, Va., 24073.
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff 1. Larry Bechtel (left) displays his clayby CNBbust of Charles Shaeffer, at his basement studio in Blacksburg. He
plans to donate the completed bust, to be cast in bronze, to the
Christiansburg church named after the civil rights pioneer. 2.
Nannie B. Hairston (below), at Shaeffer Memorial Baptist Church on
High Street in Christiansburg. In the background is a portrait of
Charles Shaeffer. Hairston hopes to enlist community help to pay for
the cost of casting the sculpture in bronze. color.