By Dave Vrbas

The Wauneta Breeze

It might have been bound to happen eventually anyway, but a dear old lady’s bullet wound in Sunday school class certainly got the ball rolling.

That bullet wound, at the schoolhouse no less, inspired a local man to put up half of the money for a church in Hamlet. Years later, his church building legacy lives on — in an enormous youth-centered project on land he once owned.

To tell the tale of today’s youth center project, the history of Hamlet Union Church (HUC) certainly enriches the story.

The details of HUC’s beginnings were detailed in an October 2004 letter to the church’s current pastor, Marshall Erickson, by Hamlet navite Howard Holverson, who lived in Lincoln until his passing in recent years.

The following is Holverson’s account of the beginnings of the now 200-memberstrong church in one of Nebraska’s smallest towns.

Holverson’s story

Since my parents were charter members of the congregation there and I was baptized in the Frenchman Creek, you may be interested in a bit of the history of the church as I remember it…

When I came with my parents to Hamlet in 1918 it was a rather active little village. There was a post office, two banks, a Ford garage, two grocery stores, a hardware store, a barber shop, a hotel, two lumber yards, two grain elevators, a stock yard and blacksmith shop, to which my parents added a restaurant and another grain business, and of course, the school which added at one time two grades to make it through the tenth grade. But the one thing missing was a church.

The one existing religious entity in town was a Sunday School organized by the postmistress. The Sunday School met in the schoolhouse on the hill.

Since Hamlet was the only town in Hayes County with a railroad handy to the Stinking Water area, cattle were loaded from the stock yards there almost every Saturday afternoon and sometimes into the late night. One Saturday, the loading took most of the night. When the fellows had finished loading, and though it was during prohibition days, they found something that enhanced their usual merrymaking. They decided to have a target shooting contest. The schoolhouse door seemed a good place to nail up a target. They were not aware of the Sunday School going on inside.

The Sunday School attendants tried to get where they would not get hit. When the bullets came, they did not stop at the door. They began to ricochet off the stove in the center of the room. There was only one slight casualty. A dear lady we knew as ‘Grandma’ Rosenberry was nicked by a ricocheting bullet in her leg. But the event moved ‘Grandma’ Rosenberry’s son-in-law, himself an elderly man we called ‘Grandfather’ Rutherford, to offer to pay half of the cost if the others would pay the other half to build a church building. This is how a church came to Hamlet.

Although HUC’s physical church has grown significantly in the past 13 years — with a new sanctuary and classrooms completed in 1996, as well as two houses adjacent to the church itself purchased for additional classroom space — Erickson explained that the new building will be a crucial part of the church’s youth outreach.

The story on the new building though wouldn’t be complete without a small stroke of serendipity.

The building itself, a couple blocks away from the church Rutherford helped build, sits on a piece of land also once owned by Rutherford — until 1916 when it was purchased by F.C. Krotter. Another piece of Rutherford’s former land is now the site of what will soon be a center for youth outreach — 89 years after he helped build Hamlet’s first and only church.

Although the building was built at least a decade after Krotter sold the land to Hamlet Equity Exchange, the land will forever be part of the Rutherford Addition to Hamlet. Rutherford Street also runs directly behind the building.

Facing south toward the railroad tracks directly across Main Street from Frenchman Valley Co-op’s Hamlet location, the building had been used for elevator company storage for 15 years and is getting a much-needed facelift after being sold to HUC by the elevator’s board of directors this summer.

It’s presumptive to say, but Rutherford would likely be quite proud to watch the large group gathered on his former land in Hamlet for several weekends, using their Saturdays for laboring away on the roof, pulling nails out of the floor inside, installing windows, and hanging insulation on the outer walls.

And the work has been all but easy, as is the case with much of God’s work. The youth spent much of their day off from school a couple weekends ago, ripping the roof off the place — no slang intended.

Once completely renovated, the building will be used as a center for ministry to the community with programming for youth, study groups, support programs and the like.

“The importance of and care for youth in a rural community cannot be overstated,” Erickson said. “Our desire is to offer a safe place for youth that meets social needs, while offering instruction and mentorship in their formative years that will help them succeed later in life.”

Erickson said the need for a larger facility was the ‘primary catalyst’ for the purchase of the property, and that while the building will be a center for youth, the use of the facility will likely extend beyond just youth: Bible study groups, instructional seminars, counseling, dinners and more.

The intention, Erickson explained, is not to house a weekly youth meeting, but for the building to be a gathering place throughout the week.

He also explained that one of their main reasons for interest in the building was to strengthen Hamlet itself.

“Rural communities like ours are in decline and in some cases ceasing to exist,” he explained. “The greatest visual evidence of this is deteriorating houses and buildings that were once home to families and businesses.”

Erickson continued: “More than just vacant and empty of life, these structures are collapsing through disuse. We want to reverse this trend, albeit in a small way.”

The building is also an important part of bringing the church’s congregation even closer together, since they all come from at least four different towns in southwest Nebraska. “This building would serve to draw people together who live apart from one another, and offer them a place to build and maintain relationships,” he added.

HUC is affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s MidAmerica District that includes only two churches west of Grand Island in Nebraska: HUC and Stratton’s Christian Union Church. Eastern and central Nebraska have 13 CMA churches.