St. Francis-in-the-Fields

It began, as so many things begin, over cocktails. The River Valley Club is an unpretentious looking boat club on the Ohio, but its members are the rich and elite of Louisville, Ky. who tie up their cruisers there to drink and talk and play all-night poker. Church for most of them used to be a place for christenings, weddings and funerals--and perhaps for a service on Christmas and Easter. But somehow, during the war, the River Valley members began to find themselves talking about how the center of each community should be its church--and there was no church among the big, wooded estates of the Upper River Road district where they lived.

Man Bites Dog. The ringleaders in the idea were not noted for their piety. Richard D. Hilliard, for instance, was a hard-living investment broker who had come through 568 days of combat duty at such hotspots as Salerno and Anzio. Owsley Brown, board chairman of Brown-Forman Distillers Corp., said he would put up $15,000 for a church, provided it was matched by other contributions. Almost overnight they had $30,000, and used some of it to buy an old Negro Baptist church down by the river. Then they sent a delegation to the Episcopal bishop of Kentucky.

"This is a case of man-bites-dog," said Louisville's surprised Bishop Charles Clingman. Instead of sending out a missionary to drum up a congregation and some money, here were congregation, money and building looking for a minister. How about the bishop's son, the Rev. Robert Clingman, who was visiting his father at the time?

Robert was not enthusiastic. He explains: "I was just out of service, still in my uniform. I had four months leave and I wanted to use it. I was full of malaria and so nervous I was ready to bawl if anyone looked at me. I agreed to conduct the Christmas service but I didn't want to stay. I wanted no part of society people who were looking for someone to say sweet things to them on Sunday. I know now that I misjudged them, but at that time I didn't think they meant business--that it was just a fad they'd tire of."

But that first Christmas Eve, young Rector Clingman, 38, liked what he saw. There were 166 people in the little church --half of them children. "The children intrigued me," he said afterward. "They were underprivileged really . . . because of the estates they lived on, they had no playgrounds and little contact with other children."

Because of the children, Clingman agreed to stay for a year. He organized Saturday sports--soccer, football, baseball. Other boys began coming, sons of gardeners, or "river rats" who fish for a living. The children brought their parents, helped build the congregation up to its present 210, with a healthier cross section of rich and poor.

"Owsley's Fire Escape." For more than two years Rector Clingman's congregation met in their former Negro church with its old memorial windows ("Given in Memory of Big Boy Howard"). Two potbellied stoves heated it, none too well; Joe Heitzman's boat rental place next door brought confused customers stumbling into church. This spring the congregation moved into a new $200,000 church. The members voted to name it "St. Francis-in-the-Fields"--though not before some friends of Distiller Owsley Brown ("Old Forester" and other brands) had needled him with such suggestions as "Owsley's Fire Escape" and "St. Owsley's in the Old Forester."

The people of St. Francis-in-the-Fields consider themselves a long way from Christian perfection. Says Rector Clingman: "We're not good people. We're not a collection of saints but a group of sinners . . . who are trying to live by the lines from St. Paul: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

This week, when they kneel on Christmas Eve with the rest of Christendom to celebrate the Savior's birth, the sinners of St. Francis-in-the-Fields will begin their fourth year as a Christian congregation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.