Nelson quickly organized his parish to do its share in caring for the
refugees. Committees fed, clothed, and entertained one hundred and fifty
people on the first occasion, and two hundred on the second. Experienced
dieticians planned and supervised the meals, a trained nurse was kept on
constant duty, and doctors gave medical service and examinations. But
Christ Church did more than provide physical care; it knew the moral
and spiritual needs of the homeless, and each day, through the
cooperation of the government agencies (especially in 1937), city
organizations, and individuals, it provided two hours of entertainment
for them. Every night Mr. Nelson conducted family prayers, and won the
undying gratitude of the refugees by his friendliness and personal
interest in their present comfort and future needs. His reputation
travelled from New England to California, and checks poured in from all
over the country for this work. The atmosphere of helpfulness in Christ
Church was his creation, and many volunteers in this emergency were not
of the parish at all. One mother and daughter engaged in this relief
work found the associations so delightful that the mother remarked to
Howard Bacon, the superintendent of the parish house, "My daughter wants
to join this place; it is the swellest club in the city!" Another
instance revealing the sort of spirit which pervaded the parish house
and filled the people of Christ Church was the serving of dinners to the
American Legion during their convention because colored Legionnaires at
that time were not allowed in Cincinnati hotels.
The fact that the people in the immediate vicinity were coming to Christ
Church and using its privileges in such great measure, calling upon the
clergy for their services, and joining in the work was immensely
satisfying to Mr. Nelson, for this kind of thing was the fruitage of
many years of earnest labor, and amply justified his conception of the
function of the church and parish house as a community center. The
rector always held that the work of the parish organizations should be a
result of inspiration from worship and sermons, something first-hand and
immediate, so that the impetus of the services would not be lost. In
1912, to mention only one year, there were more than two hundred
volunteer workers. In addition, his people were serving in numerous
organizations throughout the community, such as the Juvenile Protective
Association, the Bureau of Municipal Research, the Hospital Services,
the Consumers' League, the Anti-Tuberculosis Society, the Playgrounds,
Fresh Air Society, and Tenement House Reform. Moreover, there was the
inspiring fact that the parish house had become a civic center, and by
channeling the idealism and energy of a group of young men, of whom
Henry Bentley of City Charter Committee fame was one, the Church created
comradeship and generated faith in Christian principles which led later
to far-reaching usefulness throughout the city.
No account of Mr. Nelson's work could possibly be complete without
recording the place in it of his chief assistant, Howard N. Bacon, who
has been superintendent of the parish house for thirty-eight years.
Howard Bacon came to Cincinnati at the age of twenty-two with the
purpose of pursuing a business career. Through Dr. McKinnon of Kansas
City, Mr. Nelson learned of Bacon's marked abilities in church and
social service lines. They had dinner together, and Mr. Nelson outlined
the plans for the new parish house. Though a relative had advised Bacon
"to cut-out the soul-saving business," the avenues of service under
Frank Nelson's leadership impelled him to abandon his planned career. No
agreement was made about salary until much later when Mr. Nelson said,
"We cannot give you much. Will you come for a hundred dollars a month
and live in the parish house?" At the annual meeting of the church on
Easter Monday, 1908, the rector made the announcement: "I am very glad
to be able to tell you that Mr. Howard N. Bacon has joined the staff,
giving up a very promising business future to devote his life to work
among boys and young men. He will have charge of the camp, and manage
the parish house as well as working in the Sunday School." It is not the
slightest exaggeration to say that no appointment to the staff of Christ
Church was ever more momentous and fruitful. He served Mr. Nelson
thirty-one years, though many other attractive positions were offered
him. Upon him Mr. Nelson leaned as on no other. Through the years he has
performed the larger part of a clergyman's office, and though not
ordained is often called "Reverend." He took over the multitudinous
details of a highly organized parish as did or could no other assistant
or paid parish worker; consequently, Mr. Nelson was able to devote his
time to many civic enterprises, and to play a vital role in the national
life of the Episcopal Church. To have rendered such a service means
that he is completely self-effacing and richly merited Mr. Nelson's
tribute: "I would not know how to get on without him."
The phenomenal development of the parish house as a community center
kept pace with the striking growth of the church. During Mr. Nelson's
rectorship the communicant list of the parish expanded from 599 in 1900
to 2089 in 1939; the number of contributors to the budget from 200 to
1002; the parish and missionary budgets from $15,103.00 in 1900 to
$77,493.00 in 1927, to cite a high year; the Endowment Fund from
$11,770.00 in 1900 to $531,384.00 in 1939. In a way it seemed as if Mr.
Nelson had only to walk down Fourth Street and the money met him! In any
case, in the prosperous years it flowed in steadily from a people given
to generosity. One morning he met a parishioner who had been abroad
during the past year, and the man asked Mr. Nelson to accompany him to
his bank. Taking the rector to his safety deposit box, he handed over a
thousand dollar bond saying, "I haven't done anything for Christ Church
in a long time." One Sunday morning in the course of the notices (with
him, announcements were really an art) Mr. Nelson spoke of his friend,
Dr. Paul Wakefield, who had been left stranded in China during the
Communist uprising of 1927, and from whom he had just received a letter.
The special offering that morning, together with contributions sent in
over the week, amounted to five hundred dollars.
In the course of the great forty years of Mr. Nelson's ministry, a long
series of extraordinary gifts was made, including the parish house
already mentioned, memorial windows, an altar, an organ, and numberless
others, all indicative of the liberality of the people. These gifts were
grandly climaxed by the erection of a chapel to commemorate the
Centennial of Christ Church. It was designed to express the beauty,
mystery, and nobility of the Christian faith, and to provide for the
many services for which the large church was unsuited. The Chapel was
largely a thank-offering on the part of parishioners and many others who
had found in Christ Church a spiritual home for which they were
profoundly grateful. Another remarkable aspect of this gift was its
conception in the uncertain days of 1917.
As the years brought the ever-changing conditions of city life, and as
civic institutions, social agencies, and the public schools afforded
gymnasiums, swimming pools, playgrounds, and social centers such as were
scarcely known in the first decades of Mr. Nelson's ministry, he
continued to believe in the religious motive which Christ Church gave to
all these recreational and social activities. To the end of his days he
held that religious faith gives to social work an enthusiasm, a personal
fervor, and a genuineness without which the one thing needful is
lacking. He led his people to see in the drinking fountain outside the
parish house a symbol of the Church's undying service to the world of
men. The fact that passers-by, whether on foot or in pleasure car or
truck, stopped to quaff of its ice-cold water was to him an expression
of man's eternal need for the water of life, a need which, please God,
would always be met by a church whose gospel resides in the nether
springs of God's loving purpose for the children of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Frank H. Nelson.
[5] Frank H. Nelson, _Centennial Address_, May 17, 1917.
[6] Frank H. Nelson, _Year Books_, 1902 and 1903.
[7] Mr. Nelson's report, _Year Book_, 1908.
_The Shepherd
Among His
Flock_
"_And he shall stand and feed his flock in the
strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the
name of the Lord his God: and they shall
abide ... and this man shall be our peace._"
--_Micah 5:4_
3
A Cincinnati taxi-cab driver said to me, "Frank Nelson was sure a real
man. If you had a million dollars, you got a fifteen minute funeral
service; if you had twenty-five cents, you got a fifteen minute service.
He was just as concerned over the family with two rooms as the one with
twenty." This man had lived all his life in the Queen City, and had
driven Mr. Nelson to innumerable services as far back as the days of
horse-cabs, and though he was not aware of the restraint and brevity of
the Prayer Book Service, he unwittingly put his finger on the very pulse
of Mr. Nelson's ministry.
In all relationships with people, Frank Nelson possessed the true
instinct of the pastor because he was moved by the zest and pity of
human life as well as by an eager willingness to spend himself. He
invariably had the right word for the occasion, and responded with a
finely balanced emotion to each individual situation. His discerning
sense of the human element in life's experiences was matchless. He spoke
humorously when lightness and gaiety were in order, and seriously when
the word of faith was needed. There is much to be learned from his
approach. Called one day to a humble dwelling on Mt. Adams where a
mother was hysterical because her boy had just undergone an emergency
operation, Mr. Nelson tore a button from his coat before entering the
room, and said in an off-hand manner, "Oh! this has just come off! Will
you sew it on?"
In a surpassingly unselfish fashion he thought of himself as the head of
the Christ Church family, and it mattered not at all to him whether
people who needed him were on the church register or were connected only
through a parish house organization. When told of someone's illness,
though the patient had membership in another church yet belonged to the
Men's Club for instance, he would say, "Oh! I must go to see him." The
agent for an Industrial Insurance Company tells of calling in a home
where the policy was about to lapse. The woman said, "I will see Mr.
Nelson. Will you come back at five o'clock?" When he returned, she had
the money.
In these tragic years of World War II we have learned that time is of
the essence, and Frank Nelson exemplified this principle in an
extraordinary manner. Through all his years of service he seemed to have
a special sense of timeliness. He acted when one should act but does not
always do so. He was what a minister should be yet is not always. He was
there when needed, not when it suited his convenience. Immediacy again
and again opened an opportunity that otherwise would have been lost and
with it the possibilities for widening his circle of usefulness. An
out-of-town friend telegraphed requesting Mr. Nelson to call on a
certain man in a hospital, a stranger to Mr. Nelson, and he went at
once. On another occasion a new member of the choir who had been in
Cincinnati only a few weeks was suddenly taken ill. The doctors at the
hospital were some time in deciding to operate, and called the girl's
roommate. Although not knowing Mr. Nelson, she phoned him of her
friend's serious condition, and he went immediately to her bedside.
Though the operation was not until midnight, he stayed with her through
the hours of waiting, joked to keep up her courage, and saw her through
the ordeal and was there when she came out of the anesthetic. It turned
out that the young lady was the daughter of a Methodist Bishop, and one
can imagine her parents' gratitude when they learned over the phone that
Mr. Nelson was with her. It was the sort of thing he loved to do, and
people could not say enough of his help during such times of stress.
There was a peculiar radiancy to his ministry which issued from this
alacrity, the special glow that surrounds all lives that are nobly
unselfish. He never spared himself, not even in his later years when
illness had laid its relentless hand upon him who had always been robust
and free of physical infirmities.
In a parish as diverse as that of Christ Church, there were unnumbered
happenings of a tragic-comic nature, and they all bespoke his special
place in the hearts of his people. Howard Bacon was once closeted in the
parish house office on a certain winter's night with a man who became
definitely and increasingly insane. Greatly alarmed, he succeeded in
locating Mr. Nelson, who arrived in evening clothes; together they got
the man into a car and drove him out to the distant suburb of College
Hill. On the way they were stalled by a flat tire, and Mr. Nelson
insisted on Mr. Bacon's staying in the car while he himself put on the
spare. In the midst of all this, the poor man's mind apparently cleared
briefly for he asked, "Do all great men come way out here to do things
like this?" In another instance a choir soloist developed melancholia
and refused to eat, and Mr. Nelson often fed her because she would eat
for him. Nothing was too trivial to be encompassed by his great heart.
Everyone, and sometimes it appeared as if everything, that was clothed
with any need was his responsibility and called out his limitless
sympathy. A friend jested that even the dog fights required his presence
and the remark seemed to carry a kernel of truth! Once he prayed with a
poor, broken-hearted woman who had lost her dearest possession, a pet
canary bird, and again he sat down and talked as one sportsman to
another with a friend who had lost a polo game. To this clergyman these
were the peculiar privileges of his position, and never duties. Parents,
with a true instinct for loving a man who was really good, wanted him to
baptize their children, for in laying his hand upon the infant he was
also laying his hand upon their hearts, and this act was the genuine
blessing of a father-in-God, the shepherd calling his own by name.
There came to me the following letter from a parishioner whose first
child lived only a few hours:
The one thing I wanted to do was to receive the Holy Communion.
My husband called the Parish House and left word. We expected his
assistant or possibly the deaconess, and you can imagine how
honored and comforted we felt when Mr. Nelson came himself. It
was indeed comforting to know that such a busy person could take
time for one of the most humble of his church. We shall never
forget the talk we had with him in the hospital before receiving
the Holy Communion. He asked all about our little boy, and told
us always to speak of him by name and think of him alive with the
Father. Mr. Nelson told us of a baby sister of his who died, and
how he felt about her. He said he always visited that tiny grave
when he went home. He really stands in our hearts.
The strength of the Lord dwelt in his heart else he never could have
given himself so indefatigably to the demands of a great city parish.
There were no barriers of access to him. Until 1919 he did not have a
private secretary, preferring to answer personally all his mail in long
hand, and the only times he allowed himself to be out of reach of the
telephone were during Holy Week and possibly on Saturdays. Everyone who
came to the office was able to see him without any formality. I remember
showing him an article in a church paper on the misuse of the title
"Reverend," and suggesting that it might be well to print it in the
Sunday leaflet. He was amused and only said, "What does it matter what
we are called as long as they _call_ us." This intense desire to give of
himself lay back of his disappointment when friends and parishioners
failed to communicate with him because they hesitated to trouble so busy
a man. Former Mayor Russell Wilson remarked that "Frank Nelson was the
spiritual advisor to many men whom you would not think of as having
spiritual advisors." The downright sincerity of the man and his
"at-homeness" with human beings of all kinds made it natural for men to
talk with him.
There was, however, more in his personality than mere sociability and a
genial manner, because an indefinable power or strength went forth from
him. It was in his ministry to the sick that people felt especially a
certain grace in his faith. He carried about with him "the medicine of a
merry heart," and patients wanted to see him. He was a door through
which a person passed to a deeper consciousness of the mystery and
greatness of life and the infinities which brood over it. Therefore, his
ministry to the sick commended itself to an unusual degree. One of the
leading surgeons of Cincinnati, Dr. J. Louis Ransohoff, declared it his
firm conviction that Frank Nelson gave a patient a double chance. Few
ministers are welcomed by the medical profession in as intimate a role
as this pastor took upon himself. Well known in Cincinnati is the story
of his entering a Roman Catholic Hospital to be greeted by the Mother
Superior with a hearty "Good-morning, Father Nelson," and the Jewish
surgeon, "Good-morning, Rabbi Nelson," while the parishioner-patient
said, "Good-morning, Mr. Nelson." His presence calmed panic-stricken
patients, and if he had sought to carry further along this line, there
are those who felt that he could easily have established a clinic or
healing class. Of no end are those who maintained that they could not
have undergone an operation without his standing beside them. Because he
cared he often came out haggard and worn. Such incidents are revealing
examples of the acceptance on the part of a large portion of the entire
city of the ministry of one who was utterly sincere, utterly genuine.
Those who follow the same calling must with pride point to him as
superbly a man of God.
Frank Nelson was held in the highest respect by the medical profession
because physicians generally felt, in the words of Dr. Ransohoff, that
"his life had a spiritual significance; there was no cant, only
humility." Sometimes he walked to the operating room beside a fearful
patient, and one man later said, "Something came through him to me. The
fear was gone." He often went with parishioners to a doctor's office,
and sent hundreds of others giving them an infinite amount of time and
thought. Because of Frank Nelson the name "Christ Church" was an open
sesame for all the little-known workers and assistants on the staff of
the church. For these countless favors he frequently expressed publicly
his gratitude saying, "We very often have need of the help of lawyers,
doctors and nurses. And we never appeal in vain. Without thought of any
return the doctors and lawyers of the city, the hospitals, and the
Visiting Nurses' Association give us quick response of their very best."
Those who worked with him have unforgettable memories of the way in
which he visited the poorest tenements, always with the same courtesy
and unconsciousness of environment that he showed to wealthy
parishioners. Whether East Hill or Mt. Adams they were his people, and
each received the kind of attention, the friendship, the grave dignity
and consideration that each most wanted. When it was a Communion
Service for the sick in a poor section of the city, he had a deeply
sympathetic approach. Usually he himself would clear a little table in
the dingy room, and when he had placed the fair linen and the silver
vessels where the sick person could watch him and had donned his
vestments, the place was transformed. As he commenced the beautiful
liturgy, read only as the Rector could read it, there was in the humble
room a Presence for which he was the channel.
In his reading of the Burial Office, there was a play of light and shade
upon this man of God who, like Moses, "wist not that his face shone."
The majestic notes of faith and assurance which reverberate in the words
of this service were, on his lips and in his sympathetic and superb
reading, like the overtones and rich harmonies of an organ. There was no
formalism nor coldness, no hesitancy to plumb the stark reality of the
occasion, but only the vibrant convictions of his own great faith in the
goodness of God. Few can fail to recall the clarity and feeling with
which he read St. Paul's immortal passage in 1st Corinthians, nor ever
forget the prayer he invariably used in this service, "We seem to give
him back to Thee, dear God."
Frank Nelson made Christ Church known throughout the city, and on
occasions of trouble and stress, as just mentioned, people other than
those in his flock turned to him naturally and wistfully. Their desires
were not always consistent with the customs of the Episcopal Church. In
one such instance a widow requested a eulogy, but Mr. Nelson told her
that it was not the procedure of his church and, furthermore, he would
not know what to say. Not abashed in the slightest, she replied, "Oh,
that doesn't matter. Just give the address you made at the Mabley-Carew
Department Store dinner!" However, he did read a poem, and in trying to
express her sincere appreciation the widow somewhat astounded him by
saying, "Why, that was enough to make Bob stand up in his coffin."
He knew what was in the human heart, and realized the craving for
understanding in times of despair and sorrow. Somehow he managed to do
and say the right thing. At one time the mother of a parishioner had
died in a distant state, and when the family arrived in Cincinnati, he
was at the railroad station at seven o'clock in the morning to meet them
and accompanied the coffin from the baggage car to the hearse. So simple
an act bespeaks the innate dignity and simplicity of the man. It was his
custom at the cemetery to walk with the chief mourner, and by such
little kindnesses and numberless other courtesies he endeared himself to
each generation in his long ministry. A parishioner whose mother died
late one Good Friday evening remembers that despite the heavy tax of the
day Mr. Nelson came to her house shortly before ten o'clock, and, though
no lights were on, rang the bell, calling, "I want to talk with you." By
his coming, a sleepless night was shorn of its dread and vastness, and
confidence and serenity took their place. At another time when a family
received the fearful word from Washington that a son had been killed in
the Argonne, Mr. Nelson though confined to his bed with illness went at
once to call in the home. On the day of the funeral, before going to the
church, he read the identical service in that suburban home for the
invalid mother. As many people in Boston have said that until Phillips
Brooks came to them in their sorrow they never knew what Isaiah meant in
his words, "And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime
from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from rain,"
so Christ Church people found in Frank Nelson a stronghold in time of
trouble.
There are many incidents that illustrate the ideals of this incomparable
pastor. For instance, the Council of Churches had two social workers in
the Juvenile Court, one of whom was a parishioner, young and beautiful.
Mr. Nelson did not really want her to do such work, but her parents
thought her trained and equipped for it. In his solicitude he went to
the Executive Secretary and asked, "Do you have staff meetings? I want
you to have her there in your office. Give her the knowledge that she is
dealing with the abnormal, and that not all life is perversion." The
welfare of each individual in his church was his personal concern.