By Dr. Milton Loyer, Conference ArchivistJanuary – 100 years ago.
A most impressive memorial service was held Sunday evening, January 26, 1919, in the Bellwood Methodist Episcopal Church [now Trinity UMC], Blair County. More than 1200 persons crowded the church, and many more were turned away for lack of room. Being remembered were two young men of the church – PFC John Max Anderson and CPL John Wesley Colabine, both of whom fell in action in France at the battle of Chateau Thierry, the only ones of the 150 WWI soldiers from Bellwood that were known to have died to that point. The main speaker was prominent attorney and active Methodist layman Harry A. Davis of Altoona. Personal tributes were offered by former Sunday School teachers of the boys as they were growing up – Joseph C. McKerihan of Altoona and Thomas P. Gheer of Bellwood. John Anderson was son of Bellwood pastor Joseph F. Anderson, who had formerly served the Altoona Simpson congregation.
February – 50 years ago
The February 1969 issue of the United Methodist Women’s Response magazine reported the death of retired Methodist deaconess Florence O. Vann at the Bancroft-Taylor Home in Ocean Grove NJ. Born in Detroit MI in 1889, Miss Vann had retired in 1954 after a career that included Central Pennsylvania Conference service at Hazleton and Berwick. The work in Hazleton began in 1913 as the Anthracite Slavonic Center and was renamed the Blodgett Memorial Community House in 1926 when it moved to a building constructed at Twentieth and Peace Streets with money provided by Gertrude Blodgett. Miss Vann was one of the key persons that built up the original mission and guided the transition into the Blodgett House. Following a few years at a Community House in Barre VT, Miss Vann returned to Central Pennsylvania to serve at the Unity Mission in Berwick in the 1930’s. That mission at 910 Warren Street in Berwick, which building is still standing, began in 1919 as an off-shoot of the work in Hazleton. Miss Vann then moved to the McCarty Settlement in Cedartown GA, from which she retired.
