Epworth United Methodist Church | 5253 N. Kenmore Ave Chicago, IL 60640 | 773-561-6422
History -- Seymore D. Halford
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Pastor Halford graciously wrote this biography to the Epworth Historian in August 2003:
A Life Summary:
We came to Epworth in June 1969, excited about being in Chicago, its center, during a time of some social upheaval; civil rights, economic justice, and dispute about the war. We came from Markham, five years at the Methodist Church. I was 38, Betty 39, Elizabeth 11, and Peter 8. Our experience in Markham consisted of working for racial integration in the church and the community.
We were appointed to Markham from Ashburn Methodist Church, a small but growing church on the southwest side of Chicago. We were there for five years, and Peter was born in Wesley Hospital while we were there. We had moved from Memphis, and Prospect Methodist Church, a new church we had to build, in a neighborhood of whites, which was being sold off to blacks. It was an exciting time. I felt the congregation was being led to integrate the church. But the DS and other conference leaders were all against it. So we moved to Chicago. Elizabeth was born at the Methodist Hospital in Memphis, the very hospital where I was born. Prospect Church now, by the way, is an all black church. It was there, at the airport one Sunday night, where we accidentally met and conversed with Martin Luther King Jr. He had been speaking at First Baptist Church, black, that Sunday night. That was the same church where he gave his last speech, the night before he was murdered in Memphis.
Memphis, my hometown, was where we went after graduation from Garrett in 1957. Our three years in Evanston were formative in many ways, where I learned to love the Bible and became open to seeing and knowing black people as my brothers and sisters. Besides the BD, I received the MA in New Testament from Northwestern.
Betty and I knew one another in High School in Jackson, TN. We were married by my father in his former church, Brown's Chapel. I had attended Lambuth College, a small Methodist school in Jackson, graduating in 1954. I grew up in West Tennessee, Jackson, Middleton, and Memphis. My father had become a pastor when I was ten years old, so I grew up in various parsonages as a PK [pastors kid].
At Epworth my marriage to Betty came apart, partly because of her confusion about the church, and social justice. I lived in that great old three-story parsonage, alone for three years. Epworth and the Methodist Home at reached an agreement that I would serve both as pastor and as chaplain at the Methodist Home. During my "bachelorhood", about 1973 I met a nurse at TMH, and we married, Beverly and I, July 20, 1974. The congregation was very supportive of me, when alone, and of us, with our newly formed family. Our marriage that Saturday afternoon by Bishop Washurn, was a highlight of not only our life, but also the life of the church.
Without question the most important aspect in ministry at Epworth, 1969-1974, was our diverse ministry. At one time we had Sunday services in English, where white, Phillipino, and black people worshipped, in Spanish where Mexican, Middle American, Cuban people came together, a service in Korean, another in Malayalam, Indian, and for a awhile one in Chinese. We called these "Formations", within the one Congregation. It wasn't always easy, but it was always exciting and stimulating.
Epworth was deeply involved in forming many community movements, the Edgewater Clergy/Rabbi Association, the Uptown Mental Health center, Transitional Care for persons recently released from mental hospitals, a neighborhood business organization, a community youth gathering run by Garrett students, a group which included the infamous TJO gang. I remember we refused to allow certain student groups to stay in our building as they carried on demonstrations against the Vietnam War in downtown Chicago. Also we rejected a proposal of the Metropolitan Community Church to use our facilities for worship, on the grounds that we were already a viable congregation and had effective worship ministries. I'm sure that many members remember these things better that I do.
Since our time at Epworth, we served at Grace UMC in Dixon from 1976 to 1986. There our children finished high school and went to college, Whitni to Columbia, Elizbeth to U of I, Lyndon to North Central. Lyndon went on to Perkins at SMU and is now pastor of Grace UMC in Livingston, Montana. Also while in Dixon I went to University of Dubuque School of Theology and received the D. Min. degree in 1984. In 1986 we moved to Batavia's UMC where we lived for nine years and built a new educational and community building adjoined to the 1886 building, a building remarkably like Epworth's, constructed of field granite stones. We retired in 1995, and moved into a house we had bought outside of Dixon, where we now live and garden and play golf--except for the last two and a half years when we served as part time retired pastor of a little church 17 miles away, Chana.
Meanwhile our children have grown up, giving us 11 grandchildren, and one great grandchild. Beverly has worked as a nurse in nursing homes and as a visiting nurse for Delnor Hospital in Geneva. I have been a chaplain in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1990 just before the first Gulf War, never having been called to active duty.
As you can imagine we have had some health problems. Elizabeth had breast cancer six years ago, but is well and living in Arlington Heights where she teaches and cares for this great house with her husband. Kim's five children are grown, and she lives in Dixon in a great old house with her husband, Larry, whom she met and married in Chicago, at Epworth. Kim suffers from schleraderma, a debilitating disease, which has now wasted her away to skin and bones. But she is joyful as a Christian, a Catholic, and now with her first grandbaby. Beverly was diagnosed with epilepsy more that a year ago. Now it is under control with appropriate medicine. I have had a couple of slight strokes, but have completely recovered. We've been privileged to travel, to Egypt and Israel in 1983, to Italy in 1997, to Greece in 1998, and to Great Britain for a whole month in 1999. We consider ourselves blessed so magnificently. And it all began for Beverly and me and our new family at Epworth.
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