Newspaper Page Text
Griffin Daily News
Sunny Side Methodist history
(Continued from Page One.)
Hope Malier, S. M. Wayman, S.
R. Spangler, R. G. Manley, E.
H. Calloway, D. R. Starr, J. 0.
Miller, David Griffin, J. A.
Darsey and other members.
Those men have been credited
with bringing the Church
through its infancy.
As the Church entered the
1900’s, Sunday School was held
during the afternoon and
preaching was held once a
month. Under the leadership of
S. R. Spangler, J. A. Darsey and
William Brewster, the Sunday
School continued to grow and
the time was changed to Sunday
mornings... By 1944 more room
was needed and a basement was
Rod McKuen Says He's Home to Stay
Millionaire
Poet Happy
People Take
His Work
Seriously
By DICK KLEINER
HOLLYWOOD — (NEA) —
In his time, Rod McKuen has
been a drifter, a roamer,
footloose and fancy free. No
more. He’s come home.
The poet-songwriter-singer
publisher-and so forth has
found his place. It’s a big
house in a beautiful part of
Beverly Hills. It isn’t exact
ly a mansion but it’s no
hovel, either.
“This is where I want to
live the rest of my days,”
he says. “I don’t care where
it is, it’s home. It doesn’t
matter if it’s Timbuktu or
Los Angeles.
“I walked in and said this
is it. I’m home.”
He showed me around,
room after beautiful room.
He doesn’t know how many
rooms there are—“some
body says 30. but I don’t
know. Someday I’ll have to
count them.”
There are rooms for his
staff—people who help him
with his many enterprises—
to work in. There is his own
living quarters. There are
servants’ rooms. There is the
library, wood-paneled and
lovely.
“I call this the Diana Ross
room,” he said. “I heard
that she was shown the
house before I was, and
when she reached this room
and saw the wood paneling,
she said, ‘Well, we could
always paper over the
wood.’ ”
There is even a room re
served for a ghost. It’s a
small bedroom, tucked away
on an upper floor. Rod’s four
English sheepdogs refuse to
2
added to provide the extra
space. In 1950 the sanctuary
was completely remodeled and
new pews purchased. Under the
leadership of The Rev. Jack
Lamb the Church began to have
worship services two Sundays
per month. Later, under the
ministry of The Rev. Howard
Freeman the Church needed
additional space and Sunday
School rooms were added to the
rear of the present building.
Those were finished under the
ministry of the Rev. Charles
Shaw.
Sunny Side Methodist Church
was originally named Shiloh,
and has always been on a cir
cuit, having been on the Griffin
Circuit and the Hampton Circuit
and the Griffin Circuit again.
When Sunny Side was joined
with County Line and Vaughn
Methodist Churches to form the
County Line, Sunny Side,
Vaughn Charge, the question
arose, “Where will the par
sonage be?” Sunny Side,
desiring the Pastor to reside in
its community, agreed to build
a parsonage. Work began on
May 15, 1962 at the south end of
town and the construction was
done by the men of the Church
under the direction of Mr.
William Darsey (Building
Chairman) and Mr. Howard
-
ROD McKUEN, facing that traumatic 40th birthday,
says it’s “time to reassess my life.”
go into it. He says he be
lieves the original owner, an
opera singer named Gert
rude, died there.
“I’ve seen her,” he says.
“She wears a nightgown,
either white or very pale
blue. She isn’t frightening.”
Besides his four dogs, Rod
also owns seven cats. Some
body once suggested that he
ought to marry Doris Day,
Hollywood’s premiere ani
maleuse.
“Why not?” Rod answered.
“I’m getting close to her
age.”
He says he’ll be 40 soon
and that’s always a trau
matic birthday for a man.
Especially so for Rod. He
used to say he doubted if
he’d reach that milestone.
For some reason he ex
pected to die early.
“It’s time for me to re
assess my life,” he says.
“I’ve been spending too
much time away from home,
too many days and months
on the road. Now that I’ve
found this house I want to do
less traveling.”
Contributing to his need to
Gossett (Funds Raising Chair
man). The parsonage was
completed in October, 1962 and
the Rev. Joseph Wagner and his
family were the first parsonage
family to reside in the new
home.
Under the ministry of the
Rev. Ronnie Gaines the sanc
tuary was again completely
remodeled with new carpets,
furnishings, etc., added in 1969.
Also during his ministry the
parsonage was air conditioned.
Sunny Side, with a present
membership of 94, continues to
move towards a station church.
Presently worship services are
held each Sunday. The first and
reevaluate his life was the
death, about a year ago, of
his mother. That hit him
hard, because they were
close.
“Now I have to figure out
who I’m doing it all for,”
he says. “I think maybe it’s
time I got married. That
might be nice. I came close
twice but never quite made
it. Maybe a houseful of chil
dren, instead of English
sheepdogs, would be a good
idea.”
He does think that the
marriage vow is wrong, that
the wording shouldn’t be
“’Til death do us part,” but,
rather, “’Til we become in
compatible and can't take
each other any more.”
He’d be a good catch for
any girl. From a humble and
unhappy beginning, he’s be
come a phenomenon. He’s
sold more books of poetry
than any poet. Almost single
handedly, he’s made poetry
big business.
He’s happiest about the
fact that “the establishment”
is taking his work seriously.
He says at first the poetry
third Sundays services are held
at 8 p.m. and the second and
fourth Sundays services are
held at 11 a.m. The Sunday
School enrollment presently is
70 and is under the direction of
Mrs. William Darsey, Chair
man of Education, and Mr. Roy
Parrish, Jr., Sunday School
Superintendent. The Rev.
Sydney W. Whiteman is the
present pastor and is the 54th in
line of service in this church.
The oldest living member of
Sunny Side Methodist Church is
Mrs. Goodman Clark, who
joined in 1896. The youngest
member is Miss Mary Jo
Darsey, who joined in 1971.
critics looked on his contri
butions as purely second
rate, hack stuff.
“They felt,” he says, “that
anybody who sold a lot of
books of poems couldn’t be
very good. They kept refer
ring to me as ‘the million
aire poet.’ They forgot, or
never knew, that T. S. Eliot
was a millionaire, that W. H.
Auden does alright, that
Robert Browning wasn’t
hurting, a lot of poets made
money.
"They somehow like to
equate quality with some
body starving in a garret.
I’ve always felt that any
body who starves in a gar
ret probably belonged there.
None of us have had things
handed to us—l had to go out
and work for what I’ve got.”
And he still works and
works hard. There is some
thing driving him, perhaps
the memory of the poverty
he knew as a boy. He turns
out poems, publishes his line
of gift books, produces rec
ords, gives concerts. He has
a new album of his own
songs, called “Odyssey,”
which he thinks is his best
yet. He’s lately embarked on
a schedule of lectures.
But he doesn’t feel that
he’s over-fragmented, that
he’s going in too many dif
ferent directions.
“When I was a cowboy,”
he says, “I had to do every
thing, from milking to brand
ing to mending fences. And
when I worked as a lumber
jack, I had to do everything
from topping trees to loading
lumber.
“I think that people in the
arts should be able to do
many things, too. I like do
ing everything I do.”
He wants to branch out
even branchier—he’d like to
write a novel, perhaps an
opera, an oratorio, a mass.
“But the mass would have
to be nonsectarian,” he says.
“It would be a mass for peo
ple who believe in God but
also for people who believe
in Man.”
(NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN.)