6 thoughts on ““I Take Up My Pen”: Firestone Park Ward, 1943”

1. Remarkable. Wilford Ricks was called as bishop of this ward in 1938 (’39?). Evard Welch, listed on the letterhead, must be the father of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir director.

2. Five bishops in eight years? What was going on? Here’s some additional information on the ward, taken from a relative’s life history:

   The Ward was organized July 25, 1937, with LaVern Wilkinson as Bishop.

   Wilford was made its second bishop June 4, 1939. The meetings were held in the V.F.W. Hall for awhile, then they moved to the Allen-Reed Mortuary building on Firestone Boulevard. It was a small ward but we found wonderful people there and had some good times together.

   Wilford served as Bishop until February 14, 1943, when J. Evard Welch was sustained. On March 21, 1943 the ward moved into the Florence Women’s Club building and June 11, 1944 Harold Slack was sustained as Bishop. On June 3, 1945, Don Montgomery became our fifth Bishop and on June 16, 1945, a building site was purchased at 7616 Miramonte Boulevard. Exactly a year later, June 16, 1946, the groundbreaking ceremony was held.

   The first meeting in the new chapel was September 19, 1948. On January 1, 1949, the Ward name was changed from Firestone Park Ward to Miramonte Ward. November 20, 1949, the Chapel was dedicated by Mark E. Peterson.

   The size of the lot was 135 x 135 feet. The building area was about 8000 sq. ft. and cost $60,000 Donated labor was 90% The construction period was three years, five months, and four days. Ward population: three hundred and ten

3. Reading through that history, what with all the bishop and meetinghouse location changes, i’m nearly staggered just thinking what the cost in letterhead that never got used ’cause it went out of date must have been!

4. I can’t imagine a US-based chapel proposal getting a greenlight from SLC today if the lot footprint were only 135×135. Was this a tall building?

5. I don’t know Chad, but in the correspondence I’ve read from the 1930s-50s (way too much of which deals with building and paying for chapels), this doesn’t seem like an extraordinarily small lot. I think the smallest frontage I’ve seen is 70′ (don’t remember how deep it was), and 90′ seems normal for most places outside of the Intermountain West.

   David B, I can’t know whether they did this in the case of this ward, but I have occasionally seen mission and ward letterhead used with a black bar printed over an outdated address or a former president’s name, with the current information printed above. It must have been cheaper to take excess letterhead back to the printer for this small alteration than to have new letterhead printed, and especially in the case of a ward, I don’t suppose anybody opening a letter on altered stationery would have considered it unbusinesslike.

   As usual, TOClark, you contribute so much to understanding some item of the past with your recognition of related information. Thanks!

6. Come to New York City, Chad Too. We’d think we had died and gone to heaven if we could find property for a church as large as 135′ x 135′. I just checked a few of the Church’s properties in Manhattan–there’s one that 75′ x 100′, another 90′ x 100′, another that’s irregularly shaped, but is 173′ or 139′ on one pair of opposing sides, and 107′ and 118′ on the other pair.

   Even the building that includes the temple is on a property that includes one 150′ x 100′ section and a 100′ by 100′ section. The temple is mostly (entirely?) on the 100′ x 100′ section at the southern end of the property, and the deeper section to the north is covered primarily by an apartment building.

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