Glendive Chapel, Church at Home, and Main Street

Sunday I sat by our Stake Relief Society President in Sunday School and found out she has a daughter who lives outside Glendive.  This was fascinating to me so I sent her Mom's talk which she gave on Why the Andersons Settled in Glendive and some pictures of our early Church group.  I mean, who knows anything about Glendive, no one I have ever met!!!

I thought Mom had given the talk in the 60s but it was probably after the new Chapel was built in the late 70s.   They celebrated her 80th Birthday in the new Chapel and that would have been in 1981. Mom had sold her house in Idaho Falls and moved back to Glendive after Dad died.

Curious as I am I called my sisters and sister in law to get more information on the building of the chapel and I heard one interesting story of the roadblocks they were having getting enough members and it appeared to be caused by a member of the ward.  I remember him well from my high school days.  It was her opinion that he had bad feelings toward my brother who was the President at that time and spread rumors about him and caused a lot of contention.  He had this strange death in which his truck or car fell down on him when he was repairing it.  The funeral in the old Lutheran Church where the Glendive Ward was meeting was packed.  He was a colorful and well-known person in the County.  This helped a lot of people to learn about the Church and may have stimulated the missionary work.  The thing that alerted her to the fact it was a strange death is that a friend commented on how strange it was that he would be working on his truck without setting up a second jack as protection.  It was evidently something he was continually preaching about so why in this instance did he not do it.  Anyway, membership grew rapidly after this.  Just an observation but an interesting one.

So as I thought about the fact there were no Mormons in Glendive until 1934 when my family arrived in town and the fact they had enough members to build a Building in 1976 (or so, not sure of exact date) is a pretty amazing feat to me.  42 years!!!  Impressive.

Then when I looked up the building on the internet I find it is located on N. Anderson Ave!!!  Mary and Marilyn did not even realize that but Carole said she thinks the street was named that because of the construction company at that time building in the area was Anderson.  Makes more sense than having been named after my Dad anyway but an interesting coincidence.  Mary says she only knows one person in the ward anymore it has changed so much.  I was amazed it was a Stake Building with so many branches!!!

I was also amazed as I studied the map of Glendive that they have two Dairy Queens when it is hard to find even one out here.  It looked like a second one had been put up on the way out to Makoshika Park.  Probably a great place for business in the summer months.

Anyway, lots of nostalgia when I think about Glendive.  It was a great place to grow up.