Missionaries from the lake bottom

In 2002 the New Era, the church's magazine for teenagers, described a board on the wall of the meetinghouse in Vineyard. It held a picture of every missionary who had left Vineyard since 1893, more than 200 of them. Todd Robins, 15, whose family had lived in Vineyard for five generations, could find his great great great grandfather, Neils Larsen, who served in Denmark from 1902 to 1904. The writer, Caroline H. Benzley, called Vineyard "obviously fertile ground for growing missionaries."

The habit predates the board. The lake bottom's first bishop, the Danish fisherman Peter Madsen, was called back to his native Denmark to preach for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1870, until typhoid fever forced his release the next year. In February 1886, at almost 62, he left for the Hawaiian Islands and stayed until 1889. His counselor Mads Jorgensen, another Dane, served missions to Denmark and to the Northwestern States.

Elders from the dairy farms

Niels Larsen, the man on the Robins family's corner of the board, had been a counselor in Vineyard's first bishopric when the ward was organized in December 1899. He left a few years later for the same Danish mission field Madsen had worked. In January 1903 a younger neighbor, William Varley Jr., was set apart for the Northwestern States Mission, where he labored in the Salem and Portland conferences and for eleven months led the Sunday School of the Portland branch. The Deseret News reported in August 1904 that he had come home early because he had been called to labor at home. In 1913 he became Vineyard's bishop.

That same year Thomas Allen of Vineyard was set apart for the Eastern States Mission. His return was recorded among the church's notices in the Salt Lake Telegram in August 1915. Each departure was marked in the ward's white brick meetinghouse, built in 1906, which a 1939 ward history remembered for its dances, banquets, concerts and political rallies, and for its missionary farewells.

Sixty by 1939

By 1939 the ward was keeping count. A special issue of the Voice of Sharon, published for the dedication of Vineyard's new chapel that December, reported that 60 missionaries from "our little ward" had served in the foreign mission field. With eight home missionaries, they had given a total of 120 years of service at a cost the ward put at about $60,000. A ward missionary committee helped each elder reach his field of labor. One member of the bishopric, E. Carlyle Bunker, himself went on a short term mission to Mexico in 1939 and 1940.

The Second World War interrupted the flow. In February 1942 Lewis F. Wells, son of Mr. and Mrs. George F. Wells of Vineyard, came home from two years in the California Mission, where he had been a district president at Long Beach and Los Angeles and a guide on the temple grounds at Mesa, Arizona. His homecoming testimonial, with Bishop Walter Holdaway speaking, was held in the Vineyard chapel even as the ward was negotiating its sale to the government for the Geneva steel plant. In a letter dated March 23, 1942, the First Presidency limited full time missionary service for the rest of the war emergency to older men.

From a steel town

After the war the young people went out again, now from a ward surrounded by a steel mill. In October 1949 Richard M. Hebertson, son of Thorit C. Hebertson, the bishop who had presided at the 1939 chapel dedication, was honored at a farewell in the Vineyard ward hall before leaving for the Netherlands Mission. The speakers included Patriarch P. W. Madsen and stake president Walter Holdaway. In 1959 Trevor T. Anderson, son of H. M. Anderson of Vineyard, left for the Canadian Mission after two years studying foreign languages at Brigham Young University.

Women were called too. In January 1963 Emily Ann Clegg, daughter of Joy O. Clegg, one of the men who had raised money for the 1939 chapel, accepted a call to Hawaii, which the Orem-Geneva Times called the newest state. She had been voted outstanding girl of her dormitory at BYU that week. Her farewell was held in the Vineyard LDS Ward chapel at 800 South and Lower Geneva Road.

The notices kept coming through the decades the steel mill ran. On a single Sunday in July 1989, weeks after Vineyard incorporated as a town that May, the brothers Mark and Michael Stewart, sons of Evan and Valene Stewart, spoke at one farewell in the Vineyard Ward chapel, Mark bound for the Virginia Roanoke Mission and Michael for the Texas Corpus Christi Mission. In December 1993 Robert and Cumorah Holdaway, a married couple, were called to the England London Mission, and their open house was held in the Vineyard Town Hall. In May 1997 Lane Roper, son of Gail and Linda Roper, spoke in the Vineyard Ward chapel before leaving for the Alabama Birmingham Mission.

When the New Era visited five years later, Lane's younger brother Brett, 14, told the magazine that he planned to serve at 19, and that another brother, Greg, was then serving in the Dominican Republic. Ben Holdaway, 15, whose brother Ryan had served in Jacksonville, Florida, and whose brother Jacob had just been called to Montevideo, Uruguay, said the same. The faces of Scoutmasters, Young Men presidents and bishops hang on the board as well.