A century after her christening, woman celebrates Redeemer Lutheran Church's centennial

The handsome brick and stone structure that is the Redeemer Lutheran Church has stood in its spot on W. Wisconsin Ave. for 100 years, and among those who came Sunday to celebrate the building's centennial was Bessie Bray, who is herself 100 years old.

Bessie sat in her usual spot, which is not in the very back and not in the very front, but in the modestly forward fourth pew from the altar on the west side of the church. She wore a red carnation with a spray of baby's breath and was accompanied, as she is most Sundays, by her sister-in-law, Verna Campbell, and a bench full of family and friends.

Bessie is believed to be the first to be christened in the church's baptismal font, carved from Bedford stone and stamped with Martin Luther's seal — a cross set into a heart that rests in the open petals of a rose.

It was here in this building that Bessie Campbell married Archie Bray. That was March 17, 1945, and the war was going on. Archie wore his Army uniform. Bessie wore a lacy dress with a train that stretched for what seemed like miles.

It was here that Bessie mourned when Archie died in 1980.

When Bessie talks about the church, memories pour out. Her mother's beautiful hair. She remembers her mother ironing it. And her potato salad.

"The most delicious potato salad in the world," she says.

And picnics. Everyone met at the church, put flags on their cars and drove out to a park.

And singing in the choir. She and Robert — her brother, Verna's husband — were tenors. She loved how, at the beginning the service, the choir in its robes would march down the center aisle, she and Robert singing and the organ thundering.

And she remembers taking care of the babies in the nursery with Verna, the service piped in on a speaker.

She remembers the Zeidlers. Carl Zeidler, the singing mayor, who resigned from office to join the Navy Reserve. His ship was attacked by a German U-boat off the coast of South Africa. All hands lost.

And then there was his little brother, Frank. Bessie went to the same school as Frank, Milwaukee's Socialist mayor from 1948 to 1960.

Just the other day, Bessie said to Verna: "You know, we are the only ones still here."

She meant from the very old days. As sturdy and as fixed as the church's building might be, the people that fill its pews, who worship with each other each Sunday, are always mutable. They change individually. They change as a community. They change in their purpose and mission.

The congregation, for example, once all white, is now a mixture of races and ethnicities.

"That's good," Bessie says. "We should all be together."

That was the point the Rev. Lisa Bates-Froiland sought to make Sunday.

During the children's sermon, she displayed a couple of bricks salvaged from Redeemer's first church building, a chapel built in 1890 on N. 16th St.

Churches aren't just the bricks, she said.

Then she brought the children over to where Bessie was sitting — where she always sits, at the edge of a pew four rows from the altar.

"This is Bessie Bray," she said.

Bessie leaned out a little, and the children hugged her.