Advancing the Kingdom

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Mrs. Mary Dillon, who has been gone many

years. It was a daughter of Mrs. Dillon who

married Mr. L. Ray Carter. There was a time

though when the Board of Trustees didn’t

do much except come together occasionally

for some business decision, and Mr. L.

Ray Carter was Chairman of the Board of

Trustees. His mother-in-law, Mrs. Dillon,

was Chairman of the Women’s Board which

actually had charge of the program down

here…

Mr. L. Ray Carter, who had been

Chairman of the Board of Trustees, was of

course a very prominent man in the business

life of this city and was one of the ones

called into

consultation

when it was

first proposed

to organize a

Community

Fund in the City

of St. Louis.

We were not

thinking then in

terms of either

the Jewish

charities or

Roman Catholic

charities; we

were thinking

simply in terms

of Protestant

charities.

The question

was whether

we would

organize a fund

which would

include all

the Protestant

charities and

whether we

would put on

one campaign

which would

secure the

other churches could be interested in it. I

don’t know what the budget actually was,

but I remember that the annual offering at

St. John’s used to be about five thousand

dollars, and my guess would be that there

may have been a budget which got up to

seven or eight thousand, maybe even ten

thousand dollars. Certainly it couldn’t have

been any more than that in those early years

immediately following the time when Dr.

Bradley led the campaign to get the money

to purchase the property for Kingdom House

and when the first Women’s Board took over.

The woman who was chairman of that

Women’s Board in those early years was

budgets for those charities. I remember it

so well I think I could almost quote some

of the language of our discussions in the

numerous talks I had with Mr. Carter about

some of our Methodist institutions coming

into the Community Fund. I can remember

how we used to talk, for example, about the

Children’s Home. We would nearly always

come to the conclusion that there is a way

for us to maintain the Children’s Home; it

isn’t necessary for it to become a part of

the Fund. Every time we would come to talk

about Kingdom House we would realize that

there was need of expansion of the program

down here and that in all probability

Kingdom House should be brought into

that Community Fund. I recall that, often

as we talked about it, we would come up

to this point. Mr. Carter would say to me,

‘Well, I don’t know whether conscientiously

as an organizer of the Community Fund I

can recommend that a church institution be

brought into the Community Fund. We want

to maintain this as a church institution.’

And I would say to him in reply, ‘Well, I am

just as anxious about that as you are, but I

realize the time is going to come one of these

days when the people of St. John’s Church

and maybe in other Methodist Churches,

which may be interested in this movement,

are going to leave us. Whether we can

build up a younger group as interested as

this older group I don’t know. I think its

financial support is rather precarious as we

face each year an annual collection.’ So the

discussion went back and forth. He said to

me finally, ‘I feel reasonably certain of this:

that those who are interested with me in the

formation of the Community Fund realize

that we can’t have a Community Fund here

unless we bring these various institutions

into it. They realize that we are never going

to create the kind of a sentiment we want in

the City of St. Louis for the support of the

Community Fund unless we have behind that

Community Fund the churches of this city.

So I am going to give up any question I have

hoto

“Community Chest Plaque

Award Dinner,

June 1953.

From L-R: Edward M. Hudson,

Pauline Goodwin and Louis

Hagen, Jr., Chairman of 1953

Community Chest Campaign”