Matt: The date is March 18, 2016 at (2:23 pm), my name is Matt Carmichael, Archivist and Historiographer for the Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Oregon. I’m speaking with Arnold Coe, Chair of the Ascension Board (Assistant Treasurer for Financial Committee) at Cove Ascension School Camp and Conference Center. Arnold is part of several large extended families in Umatilla and Walla Walla Counties. He and his family are long-time members of both the Missionary District and later Episcopal Diocese of Eastern Oregon.
First off, thank you Arnold for meeting with me and recording this oral history for the diocese. Your family is originally from Eastern Oregon (Milton-Freewater), but you were born in California, is that correct? Tell us a little bit about your family, how you all came to be here.
Arnold: My family’s history in the Milton Freewater and Walla Walla Valley area goes back to our connections in the 1840s in the Touchet Valley in Walla Walla County, on my mom’s side, and my dad’s side in Milton Freewater. The historical property and museum in Milton Freewater is the Frazier Farmstead. My great grandmother was a Frazier, and so our connection goes back to the Frazier gift of land for the community. In the 1930s, my dad and later, my uncle Bill, economic-wise, went to California. Dad worked for Union Oil in a service station. The three of us, my two sisters, and I were born in San Luis Obispo (Arnold in 1936). Then, shortly after that, my sister was born in 1938. We came back to Milton Freewater when I was three years old, and my dad, granddad, and uncle went into the feed and grain business. All of my schooling at that age was in Milton Freewater. I have no memories of the California period of my life. The route we took was actually California, Portland, then Milton Freewater. Started out mobile, and then have remained that since.
Matt: What faith traditions did your family practice? What churches did they attend?
Arnold: As young kids, and my dad was not very active, but we attended the First Christian Church in Milton Freewater, one of the largest congregations. Mom was head of the Christian Ed. Department. I was baptized there as an eight-year-old. We had a church connection as a tradition in the family. The Frazier side of the family were founders of the Methodist Church. Sometime around seventh or eighth grade, the Rev. Raymond Gale, and wife, and kids, moved to Milton Freewater, and he shared the pulpit half time in Milton Freewater, and half time at St. John’s Church in Hermiston, and lived in an apartment that my uncle had next door. We became very closely acquainted with the Episcopal priest. You stood on the front lawn of my house and looked down the hill, and looked directly in the front door of St. James church, I wasn’t but a block away. That influence, the Lutcher family down the street. I started acolyting for Ray Gayle after I was confirmed. In the summer after my seventh grade, 6 am Sunday services, pea harvest crew were twelve hour shifts, and so we did an early morning, and had a lot of kids in college from the Midwest who were Episcopalians. My connection to the church, actually started, not with Sunday school, none of that, but with acolyting.
Matt: Take us through a typical Sunday when you were at St. James?
Arnold: Church was different in those years. There weren’t the same distractions. I can remember when we watched the first ever football game on a television, you know, so there was a lot in our society and the culture was different. People were general, regular attenders, every church in town, not just St. James. It was a community of a family gathering on a regular basis. Always had, through the years, 8 am Eucharist, and 10 am regular service, so even in those years it was a two service format. A lot of activity at St. James, the parish hall, and office, all built by church members; the house next door, the rectory, a lot of work, not all, but a lot, done by church members. So, the church was our community connection.
Matt: You said that your mom pulled the family into that tradition, how did that happen?
Arnold: Well, she became close friends with the Gayles, I have an older sister, I was confirmed when I was in the eighth grade in the spring, which would have been 1950. I don’t recall if there was any threshold move, it kind of evolved. You know, all of the sudden, my aunt and uncle next door and their kids, and the church was in a period of growth, so we weren’t the only newcomers.
Matt: Right, and this was just after World War II, and so the national church was going through a lot of changes. How did those changes affect church at the local level?
Arnold: Well, we were involved with youth across Eastern Oregon at the time. We had priests in charge of youth at that time. There were deaneries throughout the district, so there was all kind of structure and activity; all of that other stuff just went over our head. I can remember visiting a second grade teacher who was very influential in my younger years in the church, Fannie McGrue was my second grade teacher, active at St. James, and in later years when I was with Pfeizer I visited her in a retirement home in the Portland area. We visited about a lot of things, including the church, and she said, I really think this ecumenical movement that’s going on –this would have been 1969 or 1970 –is the greatest thing to ever happen to the church. I just don’t know how all of those people are going to learn our prayer book (laughs), and that was pretty much the nature of the Episcopal church at that time. We’re in favor of a lot of change, but that means you change; and so we all came up in that mentality.
Matt: Did any of your family go to church in the Diocese of Spokane?
Arnold: Jean and I went to St. Paul’s in Walla Walla, because our first year of marriage, we lived out on her dad’s ranch. We were married at St. Pauls in Walla Walla, while we were still at Whitman. We have had a lot of connection with St. Pauls over the years, but never full time. I had an uncle who was very active in a church in Clarkson, Washington, and other aunts on my mom side active in episcopal churches in Seattle, that was about it, but in the valley, we were mainly St. James Episcopal people.
Matt: What were some of your best memories going to church with your family as a kid?
Arnold: The acolyting was major. I did my first lay reading, my first sermon, when I was fourteen you see, so it was a major part, and then the association we had an active youth group. But my best memories were around that acolyting, and church activities that we participated in whether it was Easter Sunday, or Christmas, or pancake dinner, or whatever, so it was a lot of our social life.
Matt: That is interesting, you mention giving your first sermon at fourteen. Were you active in church groups at school as well?
Arnold: I had several roles through that time, I was very active in dean life. I ran into a lot of priests from Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington, who because of their masonic lodge connections, and so we maintained some church connections. Clarence Kopp, whose name you probably know from our history, was a major influence on my when I was in dean life. I was a youth representative to a couple conventions at that time, we had kind of a structured system. I was chaplain in an organization called HiWy, which was a Christian organization within the school, and you know, it went by the wayside long ago in public schools.
Matt: What inspired you to pursue student chaplaincy? Was it as a result of your time at St. James?
Arnold: I think a continuity and an exchange of what I was at St. James and just became a part of my life automatically. I played football and track and was close enough to school that I didn’t need a ride, and so before the competition, it was not uncommon for me to go into the church for a little prayer time. That just became, you know, what we did.
Matt: Do you remember any special events (like Baptisms, celebrations, confirmations, consecrations, etc.) in the history of the Missionary District of Eastern Oregon from your youth? Do you recall any Bishop elections?
Arnold: No, not specifically, but I remember Bishop Barton being present at St. James, and very little about my own confirmation. I don’t recall any one of those events that stands out. A lot of feasts were celebrations.
Matt: Going back now to the summer of 1946 and 1947 when you first visited Ascension School in Cove, Oregon. What was your first impression of coming here?
Arnold: It was kind of a reflection after a week at camp. Not that I walked in and was overwhelmed with what I saw, but it was just, all new friends, all new people. A number of those are names we have talked about, including the late Larry Rue. Larry Rue and I met here and went on a national boy scout jamboree together in 1950, and went to Whitman together, so there were other connections that continued from here.
Matt: Right, and it seems that your first impression was the sense of connection with the diocese and other kids your age.
Arnold: Absolutely, and we had common interests. It was probably the most influential experience outside of having the bishop and priests here on a regular basis. My first experience with the Jewish community was a rabbi who was brought in here to lecture and staff, this must have been about when I was in the seventh grade. We had experience at St. George Laguna Hills, again with a similar experience, you haven’t had Old Testament church until you have had it directly from the rabbi. That was a long-standing influence on me. I can’t remember which one of those years it was. He was invited here by our bishop to be a teacher, lecturer, whatever.
Matt: Was this your first experience with other denominations and faith traditions?
Arnold: In my childhood, it was the first experience. In my time at Whitman, there were some other denominations represented, but I didn’t really have exposure to them, talking to them in a class or whatever. It was my first experience outside the Christian communion as I knew it.
Matt: What was camp like for you as a kid?
Arnold: Well, after the first year, the highest priority when you got here was to make sure you were in a cabin with people you knew. So, you tried to registration-wise, get all headed in the same direction. It was for continuity from the year before, you came in and found your comfort zone.
Matt: Did you keep up with the other kids throughout the year?
Arnold: Very few, a name I mentioned to you earlier, Chuck Miller and I used to correspond with one another, even after college. I corresponded with one or two other people, including Larry Rue; there were probably others, but they don’t come to mind.
Matt: Take us through a day at camp.
Arnold: The next priority when you got here after you found who you were bunking with, was to get to the swimming pool, it was almost a stampede. I’m a little gray as to which was my first year, because I made trip with the Lutcher family when they brought people over from St. James.
Matt: You know, Bob (Carsner) often talked about the morning bell as well as the activities at Ascension School, do you remember them?
Arnold: There were some posts out on campus, the cabin arrangement was vastly different with those big bell loud speakers, and one summer in that sequence, whoever was camp director would warm up the record player, and with speakers on full volume, and drop that needle in the middle of the William Tell Overture, and this would be heard all over camp at seven in the morning, or something like that. I think just of all the carry-over of that, it was the association of other kids in the church atmosphere, the same kids that I would see in Eastern Oregon through football, baseball, or whatever, we also found out that we had that common ground.
Matt: Was that one of the best lessons you learned here?
Arnold: Oh absolutely. Community, and that fact that those connections have carried on. Every once in a while I would run across a name or someone that I had forgotten about who was here in 1949.
Matt: Did you do a lot of arts and crafts, wood and leather-working, etc.?
Arnold: I didn’t do leather working, I was into models, working with wood. Hazel Perkins directed all of that.
Matt: Do you remember Hazel Morrison Perkins, what was she like?
Arnold: Of yes, definitely. She was, unbeknownst to me till later years, she came to the diocese as a professional Christian Ed. person. She came to this diocese through Klamath Falls and the UTO, I think, on one of those missionary programs. You never got the feeling there was anything professional about her. She did what she did. Some kids thought she was a little harsh, but I don’t recall that.
Matt: Why did they think she was harsh?
Arnold: Oh, just about discipline, you know, if you got it out then put it away; that was somebody’s, so don’t break it, practical things like that; she ran a good ship.
Matt: This was before she met her future husband, Louis Perkins.
Arnold: Yeah, and I don’t know about that connection, but you see Louis was a priest at Baker City for a while, you know, while she was in the diocese.
Matt: She was here much longer that Louis, we have many great photos of her at Ascension during Bishop Remington’s tenure. She married Louis in 1959.
Arnold: That was while I was at college. A fellow by the name of Parrot, who a was a priest at Baker City. He was priest at St. Paul’s Walla Walla and married us, so that again, just some people connection back to the diocese.
Matt: Do you remember ever meeting Rusty Kimsey at camp?
Arnold: Oh yes, I particularly remember meeting Rustin. I was so impressed…he was one or two years ahead of me, I lost track. He was the first kid I was around in this setting that had his own baseball glove, I was just in awe, and we played a lot of baseball and softball on campus. You see, our connection was here, and our connection was also because we were served by the same priest in Hermiston and Milton Freewater, and so we had a lot of connections. A name I mentioned earlier, Larvie, was in Hermiston around the same time. The other name I gave you, Chuck and Doreen Miller. Doreen was a year younger than me. The same period of time and all connected all through Ascension and through our individual parish activities.
Matt: What type of activities were you involved in?
Arnold: There was an active youth structure amongst our diocese with several deaneries; that was a lot of travel and a lot of miles, and so again, there were no distractions on the weekends, you couldn’t stay home and watch baseball on the television, or football, school’s run much less programmatic stuff, so we had time to make decisions. We would go to Heppner or Hermiston within our deanery to do weekend activities, maybe stay overnight at people’s houses, and whether it was acolyte practice or discussion; when you were high school age, it became discussions of current issues. There were priests assigned responsibilities for youth ministries in the diocese, so there were more odds and ends. Youth convention paralleled with the regular convention, and there’s a picture somewhere in the archives of a whole bunch of us on the steps of St. Peter’s Church, Rustin and I, Chuck Miller, and whoever else were officers in that structure. The diocese was divided into deaneries, so when we had convention someone came from Klamath, someone from Bend.
Matt: That is very interesting, when did Canon 9 come into play? Also, you mentioned Rusty, what was it like growing up with him?
Arnold: I believe it was in the early sixties. He (Rusty) came up in a very traditional fashion, decided as a young man to become a priest, went to Oregon got a degree, and then to seminary; Bucky Larvie the same. But, by nature, Rustin and those others from that time, you know, because of the time and who they were, became more ecumenical in their view, became more Canon 9. In fact, Canon 9 wasn’t something that people like Rusty decided to support, it fit with who they were. There were a number of others in the diocese who stepped up to be, which reminds me of another one, have you spent any time with Larry Ferguson? Larry can you give you names in terms of clergy.
Matt: Of course, and Larry and Rusty were ordained at the same time.
Arnold: That’s’ right.
Matt: You know, it’s interesting, going back to this theme of the local, home-grown priests and laypeople returning to Eastern Oregon from somewhere else to make a home, a life here.
Arnold: Well, I think that one of the things that took place at Ascension and across our diocese; the common ground was always Ascension. There was some openness to ecumenical movements, an openness to raising people up, an openness to being flexible, that’s how society survives through the generations in Eastern Oregon, that was part of who we were. Solving problems, wearing so many hats, when you’re so many miles apart, that just becomes who you are.
Matt: Of course, this was a time when communication was drastically different. I could only imagine what it was like growing up at Ascension and having friends that you would see in Cove and sporadically throughout the year.
Arnold: The strength was in the deanery youth thing. You began to participate at the junior high level, seventh or eighth grade through high school. It was an opportunity to reinforce that friendship, and allow for more growth in the relationships that started here at Ascension. It was a springboard for many other things.
Matt: What did Ascension mean to you as you progressed into adulthood, what did it teach you?
Arnold: Well, I think that it what it did for me was add to any momentum I might have had through family, back then church was just what you did. My experiences at Cove just expanded that, supplemented all of that energy and gave me more of a perspective of what church life could be for me. It wasn’t just the people I saw every Sunday at St. James, it became about the greater world. Through the years I would see kids at athletic events in high school, and the connection was Ascension, not the school or athletic events, or debates, or whatever it was. It gave you a connectivity across a lot of miles. I don’t care whether it’s public education or the church, relationships is what it’s all about, and every one you foster reinforces the next one.
That concludes Part One, stay tuned for Part Two of my interview with Arnold Coe.
First off, thank you Arnold for meeting with me and recording this oral history for the diocese. Your family is originally from Eastern Oregon (Milton-Freewater), but you were born in California, is that correct? Tell us a little bit about your family, how you all came to be here.
Arnold: My family’s history in the Milton Freewater and Walla Walla Valley area goes back to our connections in the 1840s in the Touchet Valley in Walla Walla County, on my mom’s side, and my dad’s side in Milton Freewater. The historical property and museum in Milton Freewater is the Frazier Farmstead. My great grandmother was a Frazier, and so our connection goes back to the Frazier gift of land for the community. In the 1930s, my dad and later, my uncle Bill, economic-wise, went to California. Dad worked for Union Oil in a service station. The three of us, my two sisters, and I were born in San Luis Obispo (Arnold in 1936). Then, shortly after that, my sister was born in 1938. We came back to Milton Freewater when I was three years old, and my dad, granddad, and uncle went into the feed and grain business. All of my schooling at that age was in Milton Freewater. I have no memories of the California period of my life. The route we took was actually California, Portland, then Milton Freewater. Started out mobile, and then have remained that since.
Matt: What faith traditions did your family practice? What churches did they attend?
Arnold: As young kids, and my dad was not very active, but we attended the First Christian Church in Milton Freewater, one of the largest congregations. Mom was head of the Christian Ed. Department. I was baptized there as an eight-year-old. We had a church connection as a tradition in the family. The Frazier side of the family were founders of the Methodist Church. Sometime around seventh or eighth grade, the Rev. Raymond Gale, and wife, and kids, moved to Milton Freewater, and he shared the pulpit half time in Milton Freewater, and half time at St. John’s Church in Hermiston, and lived in an apartment that my uncle had next door. We became very closely acquainted with the Episcopal priest. You stood on the front lawn of my house and looked down the hill, and looked directly in the front door of St. James church, I wasn’t but a block away. That influence, the Lutcher family down the street. I started acolyting for Ray Gayle after I was confirmed. In the summer after my seventh grade, 6 am Sunday services, pea harvest crew were twelve hour shifts, and so we did an early morning, and had a lot of kids in college from the Midwest who were Episcopalians. My connection to the church, actually started, not with Sunday school, none of that, but with acolyting.
Matt: Take us through a typical Sunday when you were at St. James?
Arnold: Church was different in those years. There weren’t the same distractions. I can remember when we watched the first ever football game on a television, you know, so there was a lot in our society and the culture was different. People were general, regular attenders, every church in town, not just St. James. It was a community of a family gathering on a regular basis. Always had, through the years, 8 am Eucharist, and 10 am regular service, so even in those years it was a two service format. A lot of activity at St. James, the parish hall, and office, all built by church members; the house next door, the rectory, a lot of work, not all, but a lot, done by church members. So, the church was our community connection.
Matt: You said that your mom pulled the family into that tradition, how did that happen?
Arnold: Well, she became close friends with the Gayles, I have an older sister, I was confirmed when I was in the eighth grade in the spring, which would have been 1950. I don’t recall if there was any threshold move, it kind of evolved. You know, all of the sudden, my aunt and uncle next door and their kids, and the church was in a period of growth, so we weren’t the only newcomers.
Matt: Right, and this was just after World War II, and so the national church was going through a lot of changes. How did those changes affect church at the local level?
Arnold: Well, we were involved with youth across Eastern Oregon at the time. We had priests in charge of youth at that time. There were deaneries throughout the district, so there was all kind of structure and activity; all of that other stuff just went over our head. I can remember visiting a second grade teacher who was very influential in my younger years in the church, Fannie McGrue was my second grade teacher, active at St. James, and in later years when I was with Pfeizer I visited her in a retirement home in the Portland area. We visited about a lot of things, including the church, and she said, I really think this ecumenical movement that’s going on –this would have been 1969 or 1970 –is the greatest thing to ever happen to the church. I just don’t know how all of those people are going to learn our prayer book (laughs), and that was pretty much the nature of the Episcopal church at that time. We’re in favor of a lot of change, but that means you change; and so we all came up in that mentality.
Matt: Did any of your family go to church in the Diocese of Spokane?
Arnold: Jean and I went to St. Paul’s in Walla Walla, because our first year of marriage, we lived out on her dad’s ranch. We were married at St. Pauls in Walla Walla, while we were still at Whitman. We have had a lot of connection with St. Pauls over the years, but never full time. I had an uncle who was very active in a church in Clarkson, Washington, and other aunts on my mom side active in episcopal churches in Seattle, that was about it, but in the valley, we were mainly St. James Episcopal people.
Matt: What were some of your best memories going to church with your family as a kid?
Arnold: The acolyting was major. I did my first lay reading, my first sermon, when I was fourteen you see, so it was a major part, and then the association we had an active youth group. But my best memories were around that acolyting, and church activities that we participated in whether it was Easter Sunday, or Christmas, or pancake dinner, or whatever, so it was a lot of our social life.
Matt: That is interesting, you mention giving your first sermon at fourteen. Were you active in church groups at school as well?
Arnold: I had several roles through that time, I was very active in dean life. I ran into a lot of priests from Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington, who because of their masonic lodge connections, and so we maintained some church connections. Clarence Kopp, whose name you probably know from our history, was a major influence on my when I was in dean life. I was a youth representative to a couple conventions at that time, we had kind of a structured system. I was chaplain in an organization called HiWy, which was a Christian organization within the school, and you know, it went by the wayside long ago in public schools.
Matt: What inspired you to pursue student chaplaincy? Was it as a result of your time at St. James?
Arnold: I think a continuity and an exchange of what I was at St. James and just became a part of my life automatically. I played football and track and was close enough to school that I didn’t need a ride, and so before the competition, it was not uncommon for me to go into the church for a little prayer time. That just became, you know, what we did.
Matt: Do you remember any special events (like Baptisms, celebrations, confirmations, consecrations, etc.) in the history of the Missionary District of Eastern Oregon from your youth? Do you recall any Bishop elections?
Arnold: No, not specifically, but I remember Bishop Barton being present at St. James, and very little about my own confirmation. I don’t recall any one of those events that stands out. A lot of feasts were celebrations.
Matt: Going back now to the summer of 1946 and 1947 when you first visited Ascension School in Cove, Oregon. What was your first impression of coming here?
Arnold: It was kind of a reflection after a week at camp. Not that I walked in and was overwhelmed with what I saw, but it was just, all new friends, all new people. A number of those are names we have talked about, including the late Larry Rue. Larry Rue and I met here and went on a national boy scout jamboree together in 1950, and went to Whitman together, so there were other connections that continued from here.
Matt: Right, and it seems that your first impression was the sense of connection with the diocese and other kids your age.
Arnold: Absolutely, and we had common interests. It was probably the most influential experience outside of having the bishop and priests here on a regular basis. My first experience with the Jewish community was a rabbi who was brought in here to lecture and staff, this must have been about when I was in the seventh grade. We had experience at St. George Laguna Hills, again with a similar experience, you haven’t had Old Testament church until you have had it directly from the rabbi. That was a long-standing influence on me. I can’t remember which one of those years it was. He was invited here by our bishop to be a teacher, lecturer, whatever.
Matt: Was this your first experience with other denominations and faith traditions?
Arnold: In my childhood, it was the first experience. In my time at Whitman, there were some other denominations represented, but I didn’t really have exposure to them, talking to them in a class or whatever. It was my first experience outside the Christian communion as I knew it.
Matt: What was camp like for you as a kid?
Arnold: Well, after the first year, the highest priority when you got here was to make sure you were in a cabin with people you knew. So, you tried to registration-wise, get all headed in the same direction. It was for continuity from the year before, you came in and found your comfort zone.
Matt: Did you keep up with the other kids throughout the year?
Arnold: Very few, a name I mentioned to you earlier, Chuck Miller and I used to correspond with one another, even after college. I corresponded with one or two other people, including Larry Rue; there were probably others, but they don’t come to mind.
Matt: Take us through a day at camp.
Arnold: The next priority when you got here after you found who you were bunking with, was to get to the swimming pool, it was almost a stampede. I’m a little gray as to which was my first year, because I made trip with the Lutcher family when they brought people over from St. James.
Matt: You know, Bob (Carsner) often talked about the morning bell as well as the activities at Ascension School, do you remember them?
Arnold: There were some posts out on campus, the cabin arrangement was vastly different with those big bell loud speakers, and one summer in that sequence, whoever was camp director would warm up the record player, and with speakers on full volume, and drop that needle in the middle of the William Tell Overture, and this would be heard all over camp at seven in the morning, or something like that. I think just of all the carry-over of that, it was the association of other kids in the church atmosphere, the same kids that I would see in Eastern Oregon through football, baseball, or whatever, we also found out that we had that common ground.
Matt: Was that one of the best lessons you learned here?
Arnold: Oh absolutely. Community, and that fact that those connections have carried on. Every once in a while I would run across a name or someone that I had forgotten about who was here in 1949.
Matt: Did you do a lot of arts and crafts, wood and leather-working, etc.?
Arnold: I didn’t do leather working, I was into models, working with wood. Hazel Perkins directed all of that.
Matt: Do you remember Hazel Morrison Perkins, what was she like?
Arnold: Of yes, definitely. She was, unbeknownst to me till later years, she came to the diocese as a professional Christian Ed. person. She came to this diocese through Klamath Falls and the UTO, I think, on one of those missionary programs. You never got the feeling there was anything professional about her. She did what she did. Some kids thought she was a little harsh, but I don’t recall that.
Matt: Why did they think she was harsh?
Arnold: Oh, just about discipline, you know, if you got it out then put it away; that was somebody’s, so don’t break it, practical things like that; she ran a good ship.
Matt: This was before she met her future husband, Louis Perkins.
Arnold: Yeah, and I don’t know about that connection, but you see Louis was a priest at Baker City for a while, you know, while she was in the diocese.
Matt: She was here much longer that Louis, we have many great photos of her at Ascension during Bishop Remington’s tenure. She married Louis in 1959.
Arnold: That was while I was at college. A fellow by the name of Parrot, who a was a priest at Baker City. He was priest at St. Paul’s Walla Walla and married us, so that again, just some people connection back to the diocese.
Matt: Do you remember ever meeting Rusty Kimsey at camp?
Arnold: Oh yes, I particularly remember meeting Rustin. I was so impressed…he was one or two years ahead of me, I lost track. He was the first kid I was around in this setting that had his own baseball glove, I was just in awe, and we played a lot of baseball and softball on campus. You see, our connection was here, and our connection was also because we were served by the same priest in Hermiston and Milton Freewater, and so we had a lot of connections. A name I mentioned earlier, Larvie, was in Hermiston around the same time. The other name I gave you, Chuck and Doreen Miller. Doreen was a year younger than me. The same period of time and all connected all through Ascension and through our individual parish activities.
Matt: What type of activities were you involved in?
Arnold: There was an active youth structure amongst our diocese with several deaneries; that was a lot of travel and a lot of miles, and so again, there were no distractions on the weekends, you couldn’t stay home and watch baseball on the television, or football, school’s run much less programmatic stuff, so we had time to make decisions. We would go to Heppner or Hermiston within our deanery to do weekend activities, maybe stay overnight at people’s houses, and whether it was acolyte practice or discussion; when you were high school age, it became discussions of current issues. There were priests assigned responsibilities for youth ministries in the diocese, so there were more odds and ends. Youth convention paralleled with the regular convention, and there’s a picture somewhere in the archives of a whole bunch of us on the steps of St. Peter’s Church, Rustin and I, Chuck Miller, and whoever else were officers in that structure. The diocese was divided into deaneries, so when we had convention someone came from Klamath, someone from Bend.
Matt: That is very interesting, when did Canon 9 come into play? Also, you mentioned Rusty, what was it like growing up with him?
Arnold: I believe it was in the early sixties. He (Rusty) came up in a very traditional fashion, decided as a young man to become a priest, went to Oregon got a degree, and then to seminary; Bucky Larvie the same. But, by nature, Rustin and those others from that time, you know, because of the time and who they were, became more ecumenical in their view, became more Canon 9. In fact, Canon 9 wasn’t something that people like Rusty decided to support, it fit with who they were. There were a number of others in the diocese who stepped up to be, which reminds me of another one, have you spent any time with Larry Ferguson? Larry can you give you names in terms of clergy.
Matt: Of course, and Larry and Rusty were ordained at the same time.
Arnold: That’s’ right.
Matt: You know, it’s interesting, going back to this theme of the local, home-grown priests and laypeople returning to Eastern Oregon from somewhere else to make a home, a life here.
Arnold: Well, I think that one of the things that took place at Ascension and across our diocese; the common ground was always Ascension. There was some openness to ecumenical movements, an openness to raising people up, an openness to being flexible, that’s how society survives through the generations in Eastern Oregon, that was part of who we were. Solving problems, wearing so many hats, when you’re so many miles apart, that just becomes who you are.
Matt: Of course, this was a time when communication was drastically different. I could only imagine what it was like growing up at Ascension and having friends that you would see in Cove and sporadically throughout the year.
Arnold: The strength was in the deanery youth thing. You began to participate at the junior high level, seventh or eighth grade through high school. It was an opportunity to reinforce that friendship, and allow for more growth in the relationships that started here at Ascension. It was a springboard for many other things.
Matt: What did Ascension mean to you as you progressed into adulthood, what did it teach you?
Arnold: Well, I think that it what it did for me was add to any momentum I might have had through family, back then church was just what you did. My experiences at Cove just expanded that, supplemented all of that energy and gave me more of a perspective of what church life could be for me. It wasn’t just the people I saw every Sunday at St. James, it became about the greater world. Through the years I would see kids at athletic events in high school, and the connection was Ascension, not the school or athletic events, or debates, or whatever it was. It gave you a connectivity across a lot of miles. I don’t care whether it’s public education or the church, relationships is what it’s all about, and every one you foster reinforces the next one.
That concludes Part One, stay tuned for Part Two of my interview with Arnold Coe.