Historical Interviews with Geist residents - Part 1

ACCESSION NUMBER: RHP 146
INTERVIEW: STANTON RENNER
INTERVIEW DATE: 8/7/2000
INTERVIEWER: JASON LANTZER
TRANSCRIBER: BARBARA ABEL

STANTON RENNER

Stanton Renner, I'm 54 years old and have lived in Hamilton County all my life. I am a career educator, starting my 33rd year at Hamilton Heights School Corporation, where I am chairman of the high school social studies department. I teach U.S. History and Sociology there. On my mother's side I'm 6 generations Hamilton County, her folks landed here in the 1830s. My dad's side is almost as old. They were Madison County/Hamilton County line pioneers. The county boundaries got changed which put them into Madison County barely. I've lived in four of the townships in the county in my lifetime: Fall Creek, Wayne, Noblesville and Jackson.

TALK A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR MEMORIES OF FARM LIFE.

I guess the first memories I have are of visiting my grandparents -- both set of my grandparents were farmers. I remember visiting my grandparents farm north of Cicero, staying there quite a bit. By that time granddad was retired but they still had a few cattle and chickens. I used to help set the eggs under the hens -- enjoyed that. Always enjoyed raising chickens. In fact I raised them out here until just a few years ago. I always showed them at 4-H and my kids showed at 4-H. I think that's where that love came from, helping my grandmother Kaiser set the eggs under the hens in the spring time and marking the days off the calendar until they would hatch.

When I was about 8 my dad purchased a farm in Fall Creek Township. Before that we had lived in a house with small acreage. He farmed the next 30 some years, and I would help on that farm. We raised hogs and chickens, sheep, rabbits occasionally. Even though I'm not old enough, I'm one of the oldest of the baby boomers, I remember living in a home that did not have an indoor bathroom for a couple of years. We left a modern home and went to a farmhouse that had very limited amounts of plumbing. My mother wasn't too happy about it but dad thought it was a good financial move and it turned out to be. I remember walking out to the path out back and taking my brother. He and I would take baths in the winter time in a tub in front of the stove in the living room. We got indoor plumbing in a couple of years.

Great life. Lots of things to do on a farm. We had a woods -- we'd camp in the woods. Play in the hay mow by the hour. My cousins would come up, they lived in town, and we would have all kinds of interesting and fun things to do in a barn. Camping in the woods was a lot of fun. In the wintertime we'd hitch 3 or 4 sleds together behind a tractor and dad would pull us on the gravel road on the snow. Never had to worry about traffic. Maybe if you're lucky 4 cars a day would go by. This was in the southeastern part of the county, Fall Creek Township. We were probably 2 miles from our little church we went to. I grew up in the 1950s and it was a great time to be a kid.



CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE ABOUT 4-H.

I got into 4-H as soon as I could. Always enjoyed it. The county fair was the highlight of the summer. Seemed like we had very structured 4-H meetings. More so than I remember my own kids attending. We would have entertainment at the meetings. Seemed like they met the year-'round, too. I usually showed Hampshire sheep and chickens. Maybe would take a wildlife or forestry project on the side which I called indoor, city kids projects. It was always fun -- we would go on Saturdays, dad and I, and buy the lamb. Look 2 or 3 places -- always kept it secret, too, as you didn't want your competitors to know where you bought your lambs. Thinking back I'm sure the same 3 or 4 people sold them to everybody. We didn't know it at the time. Getting the baby chicks in the spring was the highlight of my life. We would buy them from Mabel Anderson's hatchery in Noblesville. We'd have to have the temperature just right in the brooder house and check on them 4 or 5 times a day. If the lights went out then it was a big panic and a couple of times we'd box them up and bring them into the house until the brooder stove got fixed again. In the summer the fair was the highlight. Every day you could spend there, every hour, was great. In fact in those days if you were a certain age as I remember, you could actually stay all night in the sheep or cattle barn. You got to meet people from all over the county and developed some strong friendships. Especially those of the opposite sex. There was always a 4-H camp that you went to down at Versailles State Park. That was another highlight of the summer -- seems to me that it took place before the Fair, maybe June. It was a 3 day camp. A great time. A lot of lasting friendships. Still go to the Fair but it's a lot different than it used to be.

WHAT WAY?

Many many more projects -- it's bigger and more complex. It's interesting that you still see some of the same last names associated with hogs or cattle or sheep or chickens that we had 40 years ago. The facilities are a lot nicer than what we had. I served on the Hamilton County Extension Board for 2 terms back in the early 90s -- it's a good way to keep involved with 4-H as an adult. Of my 3 children, 2 were active in 4-H. They also went to camp.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN THEY MOVED TO THAT LOCATION?

They were always there in my lifetime. I think I read it was right after WWII that they purchased that land. I remember there just being 2 or 3 buildings and each year it seemed like there was another building added. There was just a very limited number of buildings when I was first there.

YOUR DAD'S FARM -- WAS IT PRIMARILY A LIVESTOCK FARM?

Livestock and grain. It was a small farm, 65 acres and then later we sold that and bought an 80 acre farm. He worked full time for General Motors in Anderson -- what they called a factory farmer. He worked at the factory days and then farmed nights and weekends. Spring and fall were very busy times. I'd come home from school and get off the school bus and he'd usually have told me the night before what field to disc to get ready to plant, or which field to cultivate. I enjoyed doing that; it was fun. Now my younger brother didn't enjoy it -- he was more into sports and athletics. But I liked the farm. I think one of my best childhood memories would be going with Dad to farm auctions in the winter time. Farmers would sell out and we'd go to look for a particular piece of equipment or machinery. Try to find a bargain. You'd stand around and you'd hear stories and tales and even though it was bitter cold you didn't mind because it was entertaining. You got to go through someone else's barn and look at their set up and all that. It was fun.

SINCE YOU'RE VERY ACTIVE IN SCHOOLS IN THE AREA CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THAT'S CHANGED.

Again, I'm not all that old, being 54, I'm one of the oldest baby boomers but I actually went to a school in Fall Creek Township that didn't have indoor plumbing. It was a 2 room brick school, Bethlehem was the name of it. It used to stand at the intersection of Olio and 136th Street which is now real close to the I-69 interchange out there. What had happened is Fall Creek Township had closed all their one room schools probably 8 or 10 years before and the students either went to Fishers Elementary, Noblesville or Fortville. Then in the mid-50s they decided to build their own grade school in Fall Creek Township. It was not ready when school started so we opened up one of the old 2 rooms schools that had been closed for several years. Of course the kids thought that was great fun -- pot bellied stove there, no indoor bathroom. You had to trot out back to the path again -- I think the boys enjoyed that more than the female teachers did. My mother taught in the other half of the schoolroom. She didn't like to go into the coal bin to get the coal for the stove so I was a fourth grader, she taught second, so I felt real macho and would go over and get in the coal bin, there were mice in there, and get coal for her for the stove. Then after Christmas we moved into the brand new building there at Fall Creek. Beautiful building. And they still use that as part of the Hamilton Southeastern School system. It's just south and across the road Hamilton Southeastern High School. It was a lot of fun. Even in the new building we sometimes had two grades in one room. We'd have fifth and sixth together or second and third. There weren't enough students to make a whole room. So you were used to knowing kids other than in your own classes. It was like a big family. You had the same teacher for more than one year sometimes. You'd have the same teacher for your second grade and your third grade. They knew you very well and you knew them. Eighth grade was as high as the school went. In 1960, when I was an eighth grader, you had to make a decision. The township supplied transportation for you to go to either Fishers High School, Fortville, or Noblesville High School. I remember there were 24 in our class and exactly one third of us went to Noblesville, which is where I went, one third to Fishers and one third to Fortville. That was the bad thing. You split up and you never saw some of those kids again. Except the eight you went with to your high school.

High school was probably not much different except for technology than it is now. Noblesville High School, I was there from '60 to '64, and we had 182 or 3 in graduating class so based on that there were probably 750 to 800 in the whole building. And it was a modern building -- it's where the Noblesville Middle School is now -- about the same as you would experience now except for the technology. I remember we got to leave and go out to eat at lunch time if you had transportation. Certainly more sports now, girl's sports and more things for students to do. The early 60s were a great time to be in high school. Pre-Viet Nam so that wasn't a worry. Less stress.

HOW HAVE THE TOWNS CHANGED -- A LOT OF LITTLE TOWNS THAT WERE THAT AREN'T ANY MORE.

Besides towns, in the 50s and early 60s, we had community grocery stores, little country stores that were also combination gas stations. Those were fun places to go as kids or even as teenagers. There was one at Durbin that sold gas, bologna and cheese and snacks and cokes and men loafed there and played checkers. You could always go there and find somebody. Clarksville had one. We had one down there at the intersection of where the Bethlehem school was -- at 238 and Olio Road -- Byron Johnson was his name and he ran the store with his wife, Kate. They had a candy counter and gas pumps and meat case and necessities and you could go there and catch up on the news. It seemed to me there was always a lot of older men in there -- I suppose they were retired farmers that would come in there and just loaf. Walnut Grove had one up next to Walnut Grove School -- Chiney Moore's Store was there for a long time. I think they sold gas. And you had those dotted around so you didn't have to go to town you could just go to the store. If Mom just wanted a few things, like bread or lunch meat that's where we would go. We went to Noblesville for major shopping. Every Friday night when Dad got home from the factory we'd go. It was a treat. You got to go to Noblesville and eat out somewhere, a sandwich shop or cafeteria. Then afterwards you'd do your grocery shopping. There was probably as many or more grocery stores then as they have now. A & P, Kroger, Regal Market on the north side of the square, Kenleys. Mom was always partial to Kenleys and the Regal Market. Also on Saturday night if you went back to town for some reason, especially in the summertime, people just parked, usually on east side of the square. The sidewalk would be full of people at 7:30 or 8 at night. You'd see all your neighbors and friends and people would walk up to someone's car and talk. It reminded me a lot of when they had the Great Race [antique car race] in Noblesville a few weeks back -- didn't have quite as many people in town in those days but it was that kind of an atmosphere. Now, of course, after dark there is nobody in downtown Noblesville. I remember that being quite a bit different.

The other thing the communities had besides the general stores were grain elevators which were neat places for farm kids to go and hang out. Dad usually went there on Saturday morning to get livestock feed or at harvest time if you were old enough and your feet reached the clutch on the tractor they'd let you drive a load of oats or soy beans into the grain mill to sell. They always had coke machines and candy machines and you'd listen and hear all the conversation. Talk politics -- maybe that's where I got my interest in politics. You'd hear both sides of all the issues in the community or the nation at the grain elevator. They're about all gone, too. Cicero had one, Durbin had one, Aroma had one, Noblesville had two or three, Fishers had one, Arcadia, Atlanta had a couple. They were gathering places for the farm crowd.

DID YOUR DAD HAVE A FAVORITE ONE TO GO TO?

Yes, we usually went to Durbin. We lived closer to it and once in a great while we'd go to Fishers. Dad knew the operator there. You'd go there on a Saturday morning and get the feed ground and buy the hog feed or chicken feed. Sometimes you bought a Coke and talked to a couple of people and you'd be home by dinner time and the truck would be full with feed.

LET'S DIG INTO THE CHURCHES LITTLE BIT. . .

The one I've most familiar with, I've gone here for most of my life, is the Bethel Lutheran Church. I think I'm the 6th generation of my family that has gone there. I had family that were charter members back in the 1850s. It's an interesting church, it evolved really from three sources like a lot of churches, it's like a family tree. Ambrose Sherer was the founder of the church. I read once where he started 19 or 20 churches in the Midwest and I've always thought that when I retire I'd like to research and see how many are still going. He started the one in Cicero. In 1856 Bethel was started in a broom shop in Cicero with 12 people there. But before that there was a sister Lutheran Church called Mt. Pleasant which was east of Arcadia. It actually had existed since the 1830s. So the roots of our congregation go back to the 1830s. A lot of German settled in this part of the country. In fact the whole southeastern part of Jackson Township, used to be referred to as Little Germany, because there were so many German families there. A lot of them came directly from Germany but many are Pennsylvania Germans that had first landed in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Dutch and then moved on into Hamilton County in the 1840s and 50s.

I was thinking about this last night because I knew you were coming, I think maybe one of the biggest changes I've noticed in my life time is that the function of the church has changed a little bit. Even up through the first half of this century, with the exception of some huge city churches. Almost all of them were worship and family centers. You went there to worship and you went there to be with your family because almost all in the congregations were inter-related. There would be 3 or 4 basic families and they all had intermarried and produced offspring over a period of 80 to 90 years and that really was what the congregation was. It was a nice placer where a family bloodline gathers, as well as a place to worship, and because of that I think the function of the church was more like what a family would give you. Church gave you support, encouragement, propped you up in times of stress and mourning, a place for weddings, funerals, baptisms and the confirmations. Now I think the church function has changed a little bit. It tends to be program directed. Lots of programs come out of churches now. Even medium sized churches have all kinds of self help programs available -- 12 step programs. Recovery workshops, they've gotten into preschool, some even have schools now. It seems less personal and you go there to attend a program or programs that you want to take part in. You still worship certainly, for Lutherans that's always been a big part of our gathering. I think the function has shifted a little -- from family worship to the program directed church. People shop around to see what offers the best menu of programs that they want to participate in.

Another thing, the congregational makeup certainly is different. Even up to 25 years ago churches were basically blood related. There were 4 or 5 basic families in the church. I would guess that many of the churches in Hamilton county had less than 100 worshiping members on a Sunday morning. And of those about half or more had connected family trees. One of the main ways the churches grew was through the natural reproduction of those families, occasionally move-ins, but not very often.

Natural reproduction kept the church going. You would have in the congregation great age expanse -- the extremely elderly people and the tiny babies. But it would be full of people that had spent their whole life in that one congregation. Today's congregations, I think, you have people that have spent just a few months and then move on because they are transferred. Probably the majority of the members in our church have been there less than 5 years. It's a minority now of the congregation that have been there their lifetime. It's much more transient. That's the way their occupations are, too, so they have to come and go. And they're not afraid to shop around. They'll worship with you for a few Sundays but if they find something that doesn't fit what they want they'll go shop around and find something else. It's almost a consumer mentality when they hunt for churches now too, like automobiles or other products. I think in some ways, even though years ago you had blood relationships in a church, they are actually more heterogeneous than in those days because you had a sampling of the community. You had the banker and the teacher and the farmer and the widow and you had occasionally an orphan. and the spinster. Nowdays congregations are pretty bland looking. They are basically the same social class with only a few exceptions. While they're not related by blood in any way, they are actually more homogeneous now, more the same. Just a personal observation, it may not be that way at all. There seems to be a lot less different kinds of people in churches. They appear to be similar social classes with similar life styles. Not the variety you might have had 50 years ago. Certainly there isn't the age span any more. There's an average age that would probably catch most people in the congregation. Very few people would be outside that average age. Same with social class. One social class would catch the majority of the congregation. Very few on either end.

The size of the church certainly has changed. There were few churches, even in the city of Noblesville, 50 years ago that had more than 200 worship on Sunday. The township churches had less than 100 worshipping on Sunday, some less than 50. Today they have mega- churches, huge, hundreds, some even in the thousands. There are a couple by Carmel, huge churches. The scale of it is so much different. Our church on a good Sunday we'll have 350 -- 20 years ago we would have had half that. That's probably a healthy thing that you're growing. Would hate to have the opposite problem. Certainly taking some getting used to and some accommodation due to the massive scale. Something as simple as taking communion used to take this amount of time now takes this -- or passing the offering plate. Just because of the scale.

I don't remember when I was growing up as a kid ever having in church anyone in the congregation or in the pulpit ever make a political comment. I don't know if that was just a peculiarity of Lutherans and Methodists, but that was not done. Politics was kept outside the church. We knew inside who were Republicans and who were Democrats and even some times they ran against each other for township trustee or advisory board or town board member but it was never discussed or talked about. I've noticed in the last 10 -15 years, not just TV preachers, but there are some political comments being made now on issues in churches. Some churches are, and some pastors are, very vocal on this national issue or that national issue and that's different than it used to be. The line between church and state, which used to be much more clear cut, is maybe getting fuzzy. Lutherans still don't tend to cross that line very often, they tend to shy off that.

HAS THERE BEEN A CHANGE IN YOUR LIFETIME IN SERMON STYLE?

Certainly. Much more informal. Used to you never saw the pastor except when he was preaching, except when he was behind the pulpit. Now sometimes we wonder why we even have a pulpit as they don't use it that often. That could be a personal style, too. I think sermons are more entertaining and I think it's easier to get the message than it used to be. They are certainly informal which I think helps some people grasp the message more. I don't think you have to be entertained to get the message in the sermon but there are more personal anecdotes than there used to be. I'm sure there is as I can't imagine as a kid a pastor telling me something personal about his own life or an experience he had. Now you have a lot of that. Some people in the congregation can probably relate to that; others I think, older more traditional persons, probably thinks you're telling me more than I need to know. Seminaries are now beginning to blur the line between preaching and entertaining a little bit, too.

WOULD YOU SAY THERE HAS BEEN A CHANGE IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CONGREGATION AND THE PASTOR.

I think that came about because of size. I've talked to our pastor about how it's not a pastor-centered church any more. Churches used to be pastor-centered; they were the church. Now with 350 worshipping on a Sunday in our church, you can't possibly be pastor-centered. Now it's program centered or directed. The pastor is more of an administrator and he has staff under him or her that has to be managed. We have an office manager now in our church. Until I was 35 we didn't even have a church secretary. It's all been in the last 15 or 20 years that we've had a church secretary. Now we're up to one secretary, an office manager -- it's like any institution, once it begins to grow you have to have all these layers of bureaucracy. The pastor is way up here, kinda removed. I'm sure there are some that don't like that. You can't just call and get his voice on the phone any more. You can't have whole church gatherings like you use too -- there's just too many. We still do but we don't get the percentage of turnout that we use to.

I'M INTERVIEWING YOUR PASTOR SOON

Good. You'll enjoy him. He's probably just about to break our record on longevity of pastors. If he hasn't already he's close to it. He's seen the church nearly double in size in 9 years.

IS THIS THE ORIGINAL SITE.

In Cicero the church was started in 1856 - our sister church 20 years earlier near Arcadia. Right down here at this intersection at 206th & Cumberland Road, you saw the old one room school, that was called the Baton Rouge community for some reason. There was a wooden one room school there before the brick school was there. Go east on 206th Street and you'll come to a small cemetery, called Zimmer Cemetery and that's full of all the Lutherans. Those were kind of the two focal points of this community and it's hard to believe that 130 -140 years ago the 4 miles from here to Cicero was too far in the winter or spring when the roads were bad to get to worship so they worshipped informally in people's homes. They also held services in the wooden one room school that used to sit there. Then in the 1890s there was enough interest to build a satellite congregation. So right across the road on the opposite corner of where the school is located now, there's a little modern house that sets there, the SE corner of the intersection they built a Lutheran Church, called Olive Branch. They shared pastors with Bethel in Cicero. It was kind of a circuit but yet it wasn't. They were independent, shared pastors, but made their own decisions. Had their own church council. That lasted until about the 1930s -- the automobile caused the distance between Cicero and here to become shorter and you got families that began to go back to Cicero. Cicero built a new church building in 1930 and that caused a little dissention. Not much, but a little. Some of these people at Olive Branch supported building that new building so they could in turn go to it -- a modern building with a furnace, indoor restrooms. Others held out and were going to be stubborn and stay at Olive Branch. Well, there weren't enough left to make it go so in '32 it closed. What hadn't moved to Cicero then did or they didn't go at all. Sixty -seven years later when we built this new one, ironically it's just across the road from where one of the sister churches had been 100 years ago. The little one east of Arcadia closed in 1936 and it merged with the parent church in Cicero. So Bethel really had 3 sources: the original Bethel, Mt. Pleasant, up north by Arcadia, and the Olive Branch Church. Over a period of years they ended up getting back together into one church.

DO YOU THINK THE DEPRESSION HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT?

Oh yes, it had a lot to do with it. And also by the 30s you began to get, especially the small rural churches like those two would have been, sons and daughters that were no longer staying on the farm and they had begun to wander away. What you had left was a core of people who couldn't support the building. The young people wanted the modern buildings. If you get a chance go to Cicero and look at it -- a beautiful building -- hard to leave it. Architecturally it was very close to a Gothic chapel you would have found in Germany. Amazes me that they started that building in 1929, finished it in 1930 right when the crash occurred. Worked hard all through the 30s and had it paid off by the late 30s. That church didn't have a debt until when they built an educational wing on in the 60s. That's what made, for some, the move to this new building really difficult. Not just that they were leaving a building but that they were leaving a building that they had worked hard to pay for. But it's a beautiful church. We tried to build it in a style that would incorporate the old into the new. I was the president of the building committee when we started. We had to move because of size and facilities but we weren't going to have a structure that Lutherans weren't comfortable worshiping in. It's a beautiful new sanctuary -- we moved some of the stained glass windows from the Cicero building, and all the furniture. It's a lot bigger in scale but its got some of the feeling of the old in it too.

WHAT DID YOU END UP DOING WITH THE OLD BUILDING?

It was sold to a gentleman that has made a series of offices out of it. Architecture is a hobby of his so luckily he's kept it intact. Has not destroyed the integrity of the building. It's been a hard 3 or 4 years -- relocating is always difficult. We lost a few families and gained many more.
I think one of the great strengths of this congregation is that the history gave it deep roots. The history has also given it a lot of great tradition and stability. But luckily all the new people that have joined us in the last 5 - 10 years, and most of them in the last 2 - 4 years have brought in a lot of energy, vitality and spirit. It's been a good mix. I think you have to have both -- you can't exist on just tradition.

LET'S TALK A LITTLE ABOUT THE GROWTH NOT JUST IN THE CHURCH BUT WITHIN THE COUNTY.

I ran across a great quote by David McCullough, one of my favorite historians. He's written a lot on Truman and LBJ. . .one of my personal favorites. "Change is neither good nor bad just always with us. The current change in some localities has outdistanced our emotional ability to keep up with it." I think that's what it is in Hamilton County, especially southern Hamilton County. Emotionally you simply can't handle the devastation that change has brought down there. I'm not a native of Fishers but if I were I think I'd be. . .I don't know what. . .I'd be devastated. There is nothing there any more that was Fishers. The whole area has been wiped out and in 6 months there are 600 acres of tract houses. Not even a tree, not even a landmark left that you can visualize. You can't stop it, it's going to happen. We're just not emotionally prepared sometimes for the scale of the change. Not just the practical parts -- the traffic, the congestion. Just seeing things that have always been there and you thought would always be there that are gone. Not even a trace of that farm, that tree. That's why I got concerned a couple of years ago and I wrote to a couple of state legislators -- they didn't deal much with it but they helped somewhat in the protection of cemeteries so they can't be obliterated. Because that's going to happen as the growth moves north -- there's a lot of cemeteries that you can't locate or find in parts of the state. Change is a constant you can't stop.

HOW HAS THE POPULATION EXPLOSION AFFECTED THE SCHOOLS?

Dramatic! My whole career I've spent at Hamilton Heights, 33 years. We have exactly now twice as many at the high school as we did the first year I was there. And we're one of the slower growing school. You think of northern Hamilton County as being the part that hasn't changed all that much -- but we've doubled. It takes longer to do everything. Pep sessions take longer so we don't do as many of them. We only have 60 - 70 staff members with the four grades of the high school and you don't know them all very well. In the past, not only did you know every staff member, you knew their spouse and the kids they had. It was a family. You taught there, you were employed there but they also were your friends and colleagues that you knew well. I remember going to a conference last fall at Carmel, Jim Garrettson is the history chairman there. He and I were walking down the hall and he was showing off the new part of Carmel's high school and he passed a faculty member and I said "I'm curious Jim, do you know that person's name?" And he said no. We have 250 faculty here and I don't know them by name. What a strange place to teach if you didn't even know your fellow colleagues by first name. But that can't be helped -- 250 of them, you wouldn't know them all. Pass them in the hall you wouldn't know if they were in the science department, math department or where they were. Luckily we're not there yet.

The classroom is probably not as much changed except for technology, which has been a great change. But you can still only get so many students in a classroom at one time. There's a lot of change in athletics, girl's athletics and then all the new sports -- tennis, soccer, girl's golf, swimming, all these sports. Thirty years ago you had two sports -- football and basketball or maybe a baseball team in the spring or maybe a track team. The only girl's sports were through clubs or leagues. Luckily that changed. That brought in a vast array of different sports now which is very different. Always some kind of a sport ending or starting a season.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE ABOUT HOW THE GROWTH HAS AFFECTED THE CHURCH?

I think now it has to be more PR oriented. I sense competition among churches that didn't use to exist. Cicero used to have the Methodist and Baptist and the Lutherans and the Seventh Day Adventists, Catholics and the Christian churches. You knew there were 4, 5, or 6 different brands there in a town of only 1200 people but there was no competition. No one did PR work. In fact you shared and had cooperative Bible Schools sometimes. Now I kind of sense that we're competing for the growth -- you want to get there and get them into your building before the other guy gets there. You call it Evangelism but I wonder sometimes also if it's not -" if we don't get them they'll get them" mentality. When the scale of development is that massive maybe you have to do it that way. You have to put your program out there, you have to advertise what you're about. You didn't use to have to do that. With a congregation of family members word of mouth spread what you're about and you knew if you were supposed to be a Lutheran or not because your aunt and uncle and grandparents were so you didn't go to the Methodist Church. Your good friend was a Methodist and he goes to that church and that's OK except when he stays all night with you then he goes to your church. There was less competition 40 years ago.

HOW ABOUT THE SENSE OF COMMUNITY?

It's eliminated because you can't find the communities any more. They're not there. New Britton used to be a community, north of Fishers there, totally gone. Olio was a little community, all covered by Hamilton Southeastern High School now. Bethlehem was a little community, it's gone. The big churches and the massive housing developments may have created a different type of community. My son just built a new home east of Noblesville, 191st Street. They have their little cul-de- sac and they do block parties -- a different kind of community. Very isolated. It's very homogeneous -- houses, kids, mailboxes, swing sets are alike. By ordinance they have to be. I miss the variety. Or they try to do retro-development. Reinvent the 18th century in architecture and placement of the buildings. I would think it would be like living in an artificial world. It's kind of a surreal feeling you get in there. Inside those beautiful homes it's still the 21st century. It's not as genuine and I think that's something the churches still try to do is to have a sense of community.

TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT POLITICS.

The one thing that hasn't changed in Hamilton County. In fact it's getting to be more of a one-party county. The difference between the two parties is getting wider and wider. Used to be when I was young it's was about a 3 to 1 advantage for the Republicans, now it's 6, 7 to 1. In certain areas of the county it's probably 20 to 1. I'm a sixth generation Democrat in a county that is the most Republican in the state. We like to think of it as missionary work. I don't see that changing -- a combination of the wealth and the growth in this county make it extremely Republican oriented. There is no industrial base here, no bluecollar worker, the farmers are rapidly disappearing. Farmers were not necessarily Democrat or Republican, they were pretty smart voters as they tend to vote their pocketbook more than most groups do. There are few that would have been die-hard like my Grandpa was Democrat. Religious influence use to cause the county to be like it was for a long time. The whole western half of the county was settled by the Quakers and they tended to be staunch Republicans. Still are. The Lutherans tended to be not very evenly distributed -- they were mainly in the north and northeastern part of the county. German Lutherans and Pennsylvania Dutch Lutherans tended to be Democrat and that's why the segment here in Jackson Township and the northeast corner of Noblesville Township and a little bit of White River Township occasionally elected a Democrat. That was that German Lutheran influence. And the Baptists tended to be Democrats and they were located in Noblesville and you had a strong Baptist congregation in Cicero for a while. There was a little overlap. Larry Hopkins, the Republican County Chairman doesn't have much to worry about in the future.

CATHOLICS ARE MOVING NORTH OUT OF MARION COUNTY -- HAS THAT ANY EFFECT ON THE WAY THINGS ARE DONE HERE?

Politically I don't think it is going to influence anything because they are obviously affluent enough to move into this county which probably puts them in a social class that would tend to make them Republican. I don't know that their religion is going to cause the county any great difference in political makeup. What it might do is create relief for the public schools. If they absorb some of the students in Catholic Schools they are building (they're building a new Catholic High School). I don't think the public schools will view that as competition at all, they probably view it as a relief, particularly down in Noblesville and Southeastern districts. Maybe take off some of the edge of the rapid growth in some areas. I would think the parochial schools would do very well in this county -- there is a lot of wealth in this county. People should be able to pay the tuition to send their kids there.

THERE ARE A LOT OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS MOVING UP HERE -- CARMEL AREA, RATHER THAN TRYING TO BUILD IN MARION COUNTY.

I don't know whether they follow the money as the saying goes -- if they aren't moving for that reason it's just an added bonus for them because that's certainly where the money is. Still the wealthiest county in the state.

IT'S NOT AS DIFFICULT FOR THEM TO BE ACCEPTED BECAUSE THEY ARE CATHOLICS. WERE THERE CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN THE COMMUNITY?

I don't think I knew a Catholic until I was probably in high school. I knew the Catholic church in Noblesville was a very small building, north end of town. I knew they had a Catholic grade school in Noblesville but those kids came to Noblesville High School. I don't think I was ever exposed to any pro or anti Catholic feeling. I have a Catholic daughter-in-law and when I got into college I became interested in religion, history and western Europe religions. I remember the 1960 election and my mom and dad were strong Kennedy supporters wondering if his religion would keep him from getting elected. I had a very liberal set of parents. I had some uncles who occasionally told off color jokes, but I remember my mother always frowning when that happened and I got body language from her that that wasn't acceptable. But she didn't make a point of it as I was also taught to respect my elders and he was an older man. But I could certainly read from her expression that that wasn't acceptable.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE PEOPLE TO KNOW OR REMEMBER MOST ABOUT HAMILTON COUNTY -- THE WAY IT WAS?

How uncluttered it used to be. How you could just get in a car and drive with your parents on a Sunday afternoon. Some of the beautiful barns and farm buildings -- not beautiful in terms of wealth but in terms of settings. The outbuildings, the farms, the fence rows. Most of our relatives lived on a farm and we would visit them. On the way to their house you would pass all these pretty farms. Probably the way that parts of White River Township still look -- the last best place to see some of that. But you found that in Clay Township. I miss that. The drive, the fields and the beautiful big barns. And I guess I also miss the small country churches which have all but disappeared -- with the old cemetery beside it. The cemeteries may still be there but the churches are all gone.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO ADD TO THE RECORD?

I just hope we don't become too exclusive in the county. I'm fearful because of zoning ordinances and square footage requirements and those kinds of things. I don't think they're used that way now. I'm fearful that we'll be excluding a variety of people from the county. That we're going to have a very homogeneous mix -- to me homogeneous can be bland, dull and I don't know what to do abut that. I don't know how you create diversity in a county that is this wealthy. I notice it in the schools already. There's not the variety that we once had -- social class wise. Maybe religion, too, I don't know. Then the step beyond being too homogeneous, of course, is loosing your ability to appreciate things that are different. And the step beyond that becomes intolerance. That's a danger.