From Generation to Generation
Highlighting longtime church members and their families
More than ninety years ago, little Susan Daugherty began a Sunday routine of walking from her family home on West Peachtree Street to First Presbyterian Church. She’d be wearing a smocked Sunday dress made by her mother with a big matching bow in her bobbed hair. Her Sunday shoes, polished the night before, would be shiny and clean. The area around the church was residential at the time, and other families would join Susan and her brothers as they walked to and from church.
In her eighty-nine years as a church member, Susan Daugherty has witnessed many changes and served many roles.
Daugherty’s father, who worked for WSB radio, was “usually very busy on Sunday making sure WSB radio was on the air, not only for the church.” Her mother stayed at home in order to cook a big family dinner that would be served after church.
At ninety-eight, Daugherty now lives at Presbyterian Village in Austell. She is no longer able to drive to Midtown, so she relies on the ways that her belief and worship have been strengthened by decades of connection to the church.
She and other members who were raised in the church have marked many individual and family milestones there—baptisms, marriages, and memorial services. Many of them have taught Sunday school classes, led youth groups, headed annual stewardship campaigns, established new ministries, and chaired committees and councils. They’ve supported the church through lean times and flush, through periods of calm and those of controversy. They’ve played a huge role in shaping the church into the community that it is today.
Daugherty can still recall Dr. J. Sprole Lyons, who was pastor from 1914 until 1936. He preached in a cutaway jacket and bow tie behind what was then a large granite lectern. Only a handful of the sanctuary windows were stained glass then, and the lower portion of the others could be opened during hot weather.
Daugherty taught Sunday school, sang in the choir, participated in women’s groups, served on the Session, and chaired the community ministries council. She was working for the state of Georgia in the Division of Aging Services when the church began delivering Meals on Wheels. “That is a valuable and much-needed service,” she said. She is still an enthusiastic member of the archives committee, organizing and preserving the church’s historical records.
Being a part of First Presbyterian Church for so many years has “strengthened my feeling of belonging,” she said. “Now, not being close enough to the church to actually attend services, I fall back on what the church has meant in the past.”
She plans to return to the church for good, eventually, she said, when her ashes are placed in the Memorial Garden.
Paul Cadenhead has been a church member for more than sixty-five years and continues to help shape our community of faith.
Like Daugherty, Paul Cadenhead, ninety-six, plans to have his memorial service at First Presbyterian. He’s already chosen the anthem: “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place,” a favorite that he sang in choir for more than thirty years. Cadenhead, a close friend of the late senior minister Rev. Dr. Harry Fifield and music minister Rev. Herb Archer, said that they all agreed to have that piece of music at their funerals.
“It’s been sung at both of theirs,” he said. “I’m the one who’s left.”
Cadenhead and his late wife, Sara, started attending the church shortly after World War II, while he was a student at Emory University’s School of Law. They didn’t join until 1952, however, when they knew that they would be staying in Atlanta.
He and Sara started a Sunday school class, which met in the basement of a church-owned building called the Powell House. “About where Fifield Hall is now,” he said. He taught the class for fifty years. “We started out as the Young Couples Class,” he said. “Then we weren’t young anymore, so we were just the Couples Class. Then we started dying off and weren’t all couples anymore, so we became the Open Door.” The class dissolved about four years ago.
Cadenhead was a four-time elder on the Session, served the presbytery and synod in various capacities, and was a commissioner to the General Assembly of the old southern denomination. He was also on the Operations Committee of the assembly held in Atlanta when the northern and southern denominations merged to form the PCUSA.
Being a part of First Presbyterian “has been a great experience,” he said. “I still have many friends there. I’ve also lost a lot of really good friends there.”
He now lives at Presbyterian Village and attends services online. He’s there in spirit every Sunday.
Charlie Lockwood has been a church member for more than sixty-five years and continues to help shape our community of faith.
Scattered through the pews on Sunday morning and watching from homes across metro Atlanta are other members who have been with the church since childhood. Several can remember being part of the church kindergarten (now First Presbyterian Preschool) founded by Miss Mamie Heinz, the first school of its kind in the state of Georgia. Charlie Lockwood, a third-generation church member, was in the very first class. His time in Miss Mamie’s class is among his favorite memories, he said.
Lockwood’s family became part of First Presbyterian in the late 1920s, when his grandfather Charles F. Clippinger moved the family to Atlanta from Philadelphia.
Both of his sons—Charles Evans Lockwood and James Conner Lockwood— were baptized in the church, and memorial services for both of his parents—James Wilhite Lockwood and Jane Clippinger Lockwood—were held at First Presbyterian. Their remains are in the Memorial Garden.
Leading the Way in Christian Education
Charlie Lockwood plays with a train in Miss Mamie Heinz’s kindergarten.
The preschool at First Presbyterian Church dates back to 1946, when Miss Mamie Heinz organized the first weekday kindergarten of any Presbyterian church in the country. Today, the preschool is the longest continuously operating program of its kind in the southeastern United States.
Several of the church’s older members can remember sharing time in Miss Mamie’s class. Some families have had two or three generations attend the school.
According to the church history book, Heinz was “well known as an educator, both in Atlanta and in the country.”
“Anybody whose life was touched by her became different,” said Rosalie Parris, a church member who began teaching in the kindergarten in 1947. She stayed for twenty years and eventually succeeded Heinz as director. “She was a wonderful Christian. She lived her Christianity.”
Eleanor Beckman has been a church member for more than sixty-five years and continues to help shape our community of faith.
“First Presbyterian has been a very positive influence on my family for nearly one hundred years,” he said. Eleanor Beckman uses a walker these days, but she fondly remembers running the halls and exploring the church from the basement to the bell tower with Madison Pratt and Blake Young, fellow longtime members. Beckman’s father joined the church in 1925, when he came from his home in Moultrie to play football at Georgia Tech. Her mother began attending with him when they were courting, and Eleanor, their only child, was born into the church. Dr. William Vardamann Gardner, Senior Pastor from 1936 to 1952, baptized her, and she was married in the chapel to Johnny Beckman. They divorced after twenty-six years, but their daughter, Consie, was also baptized in the church.
“The church has always felt like a place of comfort to me,” she said. “I always felt like I belonged.”
Madison Pratt also remembers exploring the church with Eleanor. His family’s membership dates back to when his grandfather moved from Kentucky to Atlanta, but he doesn’t know which year it was. His parents married in the church, he was baptized there, and he remembers riding a tricycle up and down the halls and taking naps on mats after lunch at Miss Heinz‘s kindergarten
“The church has always felt like a place of comfort to me,” she said. “I always felt like I belonged.”
Eleanor Beckman
After college at Davidson and a stint in the army, Pratt returned to Atlanta. He went to work for what was then Trust Company Bank and resumed attending First Presbyterian. He was “not particularly active” at that time, he said, but after he married his wife, Bonnie, and their daughter Julie was born, his involvement increased, and he became a leader in the congregation. Daughter Julie Hawks is a fourth-generation church member.
Henry Grady is also a third-generation member. He joined the church officially with his communicants class in 1971 under Dr. Harry Fifield, but he has been a part of the church since his days in the infants’ nursery.
“I very clearly remember my larger family seated together on a single row at the 11:00 a.m. service, “ he said, “but eventually needing a second row as we welcomed spouses and children.” He was married in the church, and his three children were baptized there.
“FPC is a special and sacred place,” he said. “At Sixteenth and Peachtree, it has gone from the edge of town to the midst of Midtown to the corner of downtown as our city continues to grow and expand. Knowing the history of the church and of the leaders and leadership helps me to feel at home and to feel grounded in our denomination and in the city.”
While many families have been part of the church for generations, some have also passed on leadership roles to children and spouses.
Hartley Jeffries is following in the footsteps of her parents, Hill and Ginger, as an active Community Ministries volunteer. Her father, Hill, was raised in the church by parents Alice and Mac, who joined in 1952. Mac served as Clerk of Session, and Alice worked with Meals on Wheels. Hill vividly remembers napping on a mat in Miss Heinz’s nursery school class. He and his siblings, Helen and Lewis, were baptized in the church, and he and Ginger were married there.
Both Hill and Ginger have been Elders and held a long list of offices. Their children were baptized in the church, volunteered at the Sunday morning breakfasts, and participated in church mission trips. Hartley, who is divorced, remembers traveling to Santa Fe, Scotland, and Honduras. As a high school senior, she preached a sermon on Youth Sunday titled “Be Still and Know That I Am God.”
As an adult, she attended other churches but ultimately returned to First Presbyterian. “I wanted to raise my own kids in a church where they would be surrounded by family and by people who loved them,” she said. “And I missed the organ and the stained glass.” Her son, William, five, knows the Lord’s Prayer and loves saying it with the congregation. Her daughter, Virginia, is three.
“They attend Sunday school in the same rooms that their mother and grandfather did,” said Hartley. “It’s special to me that the sanctuary is the place my grandparents went to church; my parents were married there; I was baptized, confirmed, and married there. Now, both my kids have been baptized there.”
Her mother, Ginger, said that she gets emotional when she sees her grandchildren, William and Virginia, doing the things at church that her children did. “I had tears in my eyes when little William walked down the aisle on Palm Sunday with his palm leaves,” she said. “I remember my children doing that. And I can’t express the joy it gives me to worship in the sanctuary with Hartley beside me. … I can’t imagine my family ever being anywhere else.”
Bill and Eve Earnest preside over three generations of current church members.
Eve and Bill Earnest know how she feels. Neither of them was raised at First Presbyterian, but they’ve begun their own family legacy there in their half century of membership. Eve was already a member when Bill joined in 1971. Now, two of their three sons as well as their families are members of the church. A certain area near the front, on the minister’s far right, has become known as “Earnest corner.”
“It means the world to be there and see our grandchildren there,” said Eve. She and Bill met in Atlanta through Bill’s brother, a medical resident at Grady Hospital, where she was a social worker. She had attended First Presbyterian when she was a student at Agnes Scott College in Decatur and the church sent a bus to the campus. In those days—among other things—the church was a meeting ground for Georgia Tech boys and Agnes Scott girls.
Both Eve and Bill have been leaders on many levels at First Presbyterian. She coordinated the wedding ministry and was on staff for twelve years as head of Christian education. He served as Clerk of Session for eight years under Senior Pastors George Wirth, Joanna Adams, and Tony Sundermeier; was chief promoter of the congregation’s Habitat for Humanity program (which has participated in building forty-six houses); and has taught first-grade Sunday school so long he’s now seeing a second generation. They taught together for a year, but it turned out they had differing philosophies. “Bill’s too wild and wooly for me,” Eve explained.
“A child needs to have fun and needs to learn,” Bill replied. His own grandchildren have been among his students.
Catharina “Cat” Earnest is married to their son, Merrill, and is the mother of Evie, a student at the University of Georgia, and Will, a sophomore at the Westminster Schools. Both Cat and Merrill, like Eve and Bill, are involved in many aspects of church life. Son Andy and his wife, Deena, and their daughters, Audrey and Caroline, are also active members and are most often seen at the earlier service.
Being part of a family that’s part of the church is “very reinforcing,” Cat said. “Three generations of Earnests are there. It’s amazing that we each can find our own place and still be there together.”
Click here to see a list of Longtime FPC Members.
