August 23, 2002

Plains Folk: Ladbury Wedding

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

A red serpentine scar runs from my hand to my elbow. Its angry appearance is incongruous with the event that it reminds me of--a joyous happening in a country place in Barnes County, North Dakota. I'll explain.

There is an expatriate North Dakotan named Dennis Stillings who lives in Hawaii. His fiancé, Cathryn Stewart, is an expatriate South Dakotan who also lives in Hawaii. Stillings wanted to get married in North Dakota, somewhere near his old Valley City home, preferably in a country church. He contacted Preservation North Dakota, an organization active in the preservation of rural churches, and was persuaded that Ladbury (a.k.a. Sunnyside) Church, near Sibley, would be a good place for the wedding.

Now I need to talk about faith. When this deal was struck, it was a matter of faith. The white frame Ladbury Church was sinking into the ground, for one thing, and also was in need of all manner of repairs and refurbishment. PND, working with citizens who cared about the church, had adopted it as a demonstration project to show that a country church, even one that appeared hopeless, could be stabilized and restored by the application of volunteer labor and not much money.

I'll admit that faith was tested. When we took out the basement and were trying to pour footings in wet clay that seemed to lack any solid subsoil, we were wondering. Even after the building was well stabilized, people would come driving in, look at the state of the roof and steeple and interior, and say the cause was hopeless.

So many people worked on the restoration I cannot try to name them, but I have to mention Keith and Lois Muncy and Becky and Daryl Heise as heroic mainstays of the effort. It seemed, too, that when heavy help was most needed, the strong young bodies and front end loaders appeared on site. Dinners on the ground helped in that regard.

I got in on a fair bit of the labor, including some of the more-guts-than-brains work on the roof and steeple, my thanks for owning an extension ladder. I've mentioned this several times in past columns, including a prophecy that I wasn't going to fall off the roof, as there was still too much work to do.

The next day, as I was priming a high gable, the ladder slipped in the mud, and I commenced an untimely descent, digging my arms into shingles in an attempt to stay the fall. Just before dropping off the edge, the ladder mysteriously reached an angle of repose. I left a fair amount of skin and blood on the roof, but lived to climb back up the next day.

Funny, too--when I started this job I was working one-armed, my left hand useless on account of a repetitive stress injury. The more I hammered and scraped and painted on that church, though, the better my hands got, so that now I can play catch with my grandson again.

All right, I'm not asking you to believe in miracles, but I am asking you to believe in grace. As for those of you who drove by and doubted, you're welcome to the church-warming party this fall, because grace only comes if you pass it along.

This little church iridescent in the autumn sun wouldn't mean much to anyone else, except that it symbolizes something in which we all, as people of the plains, may take heart. For a half-century or so, the assumption of inevitable decline has held our country in its cold grip. Our leaders have defined statesmanship according to how efficiently they could dismantle all that their parents had built.

That may have made sense 20 years ago, but it does no longer. Today there are no fatal and irresistible forces determining the future of communities on the plains. It is, rather, a matter of character. Sometimes, as at Ladbury, character shows.

As I push SEND on this column, Big Dale Bentley is ringing the old bell for the wedding at Ladbury. Best wishes to Dennis and Cathryn, and to all of us.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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