<Begin Segment 9>

CE: I should mention about the funds for doing this building. When we began to think about maybe what we did want to have a building project, and our building fund needed to be worked on and so forth, we made some pretty important decisions. And one of them was that we would have a campaign. Incidentally, I insisted on a written mailed vote for going into this big building project, and we mailed out ballots to every household. We got back one hundred percent of them, and there were only three votes no, and those were, three were from individuals. They weren't from families. We made some decisions about there was a Jim Mizote fund, and it has been given in memory, built up in memory of Jim Mizote and had a considerable amount of money in it. And then we had a Masao Yasui fund. It had a considerable amount of money in it, and we, with the permission of the families, we asked them rather than letting those funds just sit if we could put them into the building fund, and they agreed. And I think -- but I'm not really sure -- I think we did the same with the Rose Yada fund. But those people are remembered by, you know, significant contribution to this building. The old parsonage across the street had been arsoned. Actually, the garage was arsoned, but it was so well done that it caught the house on fire too. And so we ended up selling that property to a pair of Caucasian sisters who wanted to build a duplex so that they could live side by side but each have their own house, and that's the duplex that sits there now. So that property went into the building fund; that property sale went into that building fund. We were in a period in that time when the Methodist church was doing what it called ethnic minority/priority. And we were right in the midst of that, and there was a brochure that said that an ethnic church could apply for, could apply for a grant, and it said you could apply for a grant up to fifty thousand dollars. I thought nothing wrong with that. I think I'll give it a try. So I sent off my application, and one day this nice man from New York City arrived, wanted to know what in the world I was doing here, that I would apply for that amount of money. And I said, "Well, we have a big project and not a very big church to do it, you know, and we need all the help that we can get, and you had a brochure that said we could do this." He said, "We don't even have fifty thousand dollars," and I said, "I'm sorry? That's your figure not mine. I took it out of your brochure." He said, "Well, you're right." So he went back to New York, and he returned; he came back from New York. He said, "We have twenty thousand dollars to give you from the ethnic minority priority fund, but we went across the hall and got another fifteen thousand for you," from the, I think it was the Division of the Discipleship or something. And then I found another brochure about handicap, and so I got another five thousand dollars, and we put that chair lift on the stairs, and we put together everything we could. And I want to say even the Buddhists helped us with our building fund. So we were a very inclusive community.

BB: That was a huge project.

CE: Yes, it was. And the figure that shows what it actually was bid for was not the final figure because we kept doing, adding things like this chancel. He said we can't sit it out here in this renewed nave and not a chancel that's renewed too. So I think it was, you know, more like two hundred fifty-three thousand dollars and something that we had to raise. We got a loan. And if I remember, it was either twenty-five or thirty-five thousand dollars from the Metro District, Metropolitan District Church Extension Society. And we paid down on that often, burned the mortgage in four years.

BB: Well, that must have given the church really great sense of accomplishment, ownership. Can you describe that process, people really thought about it and worked hard on it.

CE: There's a group called, in those days called SYMCO, Senior Youth Ministry's Council of the conference with representatives on that youth council from all over the conference. And one time they came here for a meeting, and they did their planning session here, and they stayed overnight sleeping on the basement floor and so forth, and I wasn't involved in it. I had been involved in that youth work years before, but I wasn't involved in it anymore, but I was here to be sure everything was okay and see that they got started all right and so forth. And one of their members wasn't there. He had been there, but he wasn't there. His name was Mike, I won't say anymore than that, and they said well, you know, can't start without Mike. What are we going to do? And I said well, I'll go see if I can find him, see if he's outside anywhere or what he's doing and so forth. I found him in a fetal position in the chancel. And I came in, and I said, "Mike, what are you doing?" And he said, "I'm coveting your chancel." [Laughs] It was wonderful, and it was a beautiful chancel compared to, certainly compared to what it was before.

BB: It allows so much possibility.

CE: It's multiple use space.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.