Our Story, Part 3: 1966-1982

Back to our history lesson. But first a little review. Our first church, no bigger than a modern three car garage held its first service in 1949. By 1955 we had greatly overwhelmed our little church structure and our ever-expanding congregation went looking for larger space. We first purchased property on Moreland and Hawthorn but within a few years realized this did not offer enough space for or future needs, and then purchased 7.5 acres in the Dopp subdivision where our church currently stands. At this same time (1964-1965) Pastor Henry Ebling accepted a call to Ascension after we had suffered the death of our second Pastor, Theodore Heuser, from cancer in 1962.

On July 31, 1966, ground was broken for our new church on these seven and a half acres. This was to be “the church” — bigger, better with office space, a modern design (modern for 1966, remember) with plenty of room to grow and expand. And we did and have ever since. On April 2, 1967, our new church was dedicated. Our church is what most of us now know as East Hall or where the Spanish Ministry Service is held on Sundays. For the time, it was a grand area with tall ceilings and golden glass windows running down each side. It had a raised alter area, as well, running the length of the south side and a grand entrance back where the coat closets are currently located. This was no longer that three car garage but a whole aircraft hangar and then some.

Our old church, built by hand by our first Pastor Lee Egloff, was sadly (looking at it through current eyes), sold to a nearby resident who remodeled it into a three-room boarding house. At a later time, it was remodeled again into a rental apartment but eventually left to deteriorate. The city eventually condemned the structure and razed the building in 1985. Nothing has stood in its place since.

By 1971, Pastor Ebling accepted a call to a Kenosha church and a year later Pastor Ron Daley accepted our call. With our growth continuing, Pastor Daley experimented with adding services and changing service times. As everyone should realize, trying to find the right proportion of praising our Lord in service and having a Sunday day off, is hard work. He tried a 6:30 Saturday evening service which didn’t last long. He tried a 6:45 am Sunday service that again didn’t last long and even threw in a 11:30 Sunday morning service in September 1973.

As one of our congregation told me, having attended a couple of these services, she could not remember any men being there. “And you were darn surprised when you did see one.” Remembering as a child with a sports-minded father, I will have to assume sports, TV and the male characteristic of watching sports on TV, especially in September, probably doomed this service quickly.

By February of 1976, Pastor Daley had decided to move on from Ascension, but by June that same year Pastor Frank Janzow accepted his call to us. At this time our congregation had 937 baptized members along with 590 communicant members. A wee bit more than those original 24 members in 1949. Pastor Frank’s first years were busy. In 1978, after much thoughtful prayer and deep discernment the Ascension congregation voted to drop membership from the Missouri Synod and reside membership with the ALCA (Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches) — English District. Two years later we also, after much prayer and deep thought, decided to add what was then called the education wing to our church. This wing is what currently constitutes that long hallway from the main church office down to the Prayer Room.

As Ascension’s life, and the life of our congregation, continued to churn, meld, and take ever-changing shapes, Ascension decided an assistant pastor was needed to help fill the gaps Pastor Frank could not fill. Remember one person is still just one person even if Pastor is part of their first name. In July 1982, Pastor James Bickel accepted his call to Ascension as Assistant Pastor.

And here let us reflect a moment. We, Ascension, have come from the planting of God’s will into an Army Colonel (Pastor Egloff was a Colonel during the Second World War) in the jungles of Panama, to this man coming with his family following the war, to Waukesha, a place he was not completely familiar with. To him building a church, by hand, before there was even a congregation. To having our first 24 members expand our church beyond the walls of our first structure in the first decade of our existence. To building a new church four times the size of our first and filling this with near a thousand baptized members and needing to add even more space … to having two pastors to serve our congregational needs. All this in the first 40 years. And we still have 30 more years to relate to you in our next article in September.

Scott Tenwinkel
Council member, Ascension’s 70th anniversary team

(Reprinted from the August 2019 newsletter.)

Our Story: Part Two

In the last segment of our story we learned a little about the city Ascension has called home for the last 70 years. Now, we should figure out how our church home came to be in this beautiful city of Waukesha. If you remember, our first church (we have had three in the last 70 years) was at what is now 803 Madison Street on the corner of Fairview. Our home there, sadly to say, is no longer standing but instead a small park graces the area. What once stood there, however, was a beautiful “chapel”-style church not much bigger than a modern-day three-car garage.
This small church was built from scratch, pretty much, as a do-it-yourself project by our first Pastor, Rev. Lee Egloff. He personally built much of the concrete block building himself, with a $20,000 loan from the Mission Fund of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Most of the construction occurred during the fall of 1948 through the summer of 1949. Although built of concreate block, one of the first construction projects to use this method in Waukesha, the inside has been described as being warm and friendly with a hard wood floor and oak trim throughout. Its foot print measured 24’ by 40’.

We have to assume Pastor Egloff came to Waukesha with a strong vision of the future and with the will of God at hand, as he began constructing his church before he even had a congregation to serve or a name for our future home. Sources such as the Waukesha Freeman and our own previous historical compilations pick the date of the first service at this new church as occurring between April 1949 and November of that same year. Further research is needed to confirm. We do know for sure that by November of 1949 Ascension Lutheran was conceived with a membership of 24. In April of 1950 our founders applied for membership to the Missouri Synod English District. We also purchased property on the corner of Moreland Boulevard and Hawthorne Drive, as already the vision was that this small chapel would not be able to comfortably-support a rapidly-expanding congregation. We offered two services on Sunday mornings, 8 and 11 a.m. The 8 a.m. service was specifically focused for the children of the congregation while the 11 a.m. was directed more for adults. Our first baptism occurred shortly following the first service, in the new church, for baby Marsha Ullsperger (now Marsha James).

In a ten-year span to 1959, this 24 member congregation had grown to 215 with 115 children in Sunday School. Somewhere in these 10 years, church services changed to almost what we have today, 8:15 and 10:45 a.m., with Sunday School between. In that same year, 33 newborns where also added to the swelling numbers of the church. With a strong plan for the future and a growing congregation, Pastor Egloff moved on to accept the challenges of a new congregation by accepting a call to St. Johns Lutheran Church in Oxford, Wisconsin in July of 1962. Theodore Heusar took over the reigns of pastor of Ascension. However, soon after arriving, he became ill and died of cancer in December 1964. During this careworn time, we had several interim pastors with Walter Gauger being the longest serving until the fall of 1965.

Even with the struggles of a suffering pastor and the uncertainty of who would fill the pastoral shoes, our forbearers kept the vision of a strong congregation in sight. In August of 1964, 7.5 acres of land was purchased on Dopp St. with the thought that this land could house not only a church but a fellowship hall along with plenty of parking and the ability to expand further when that time came. The land previously purchased on Moreland was deemed not suitable to fulfill these potential plans and was sold to support the new purchase.

In August 1965 Pastor Henry C. Ebeling accepted the call to Ascension. With no room to expand nor even the ability to park a car nearby for Sunday morning service, ground was broken at the new site on Dopp St., on July 31, 1966. Construction crews began building the new church and fellowship hall in August of that same year. What took $20,000 to build in 1949, took $125,000 to build in 1966, albeit on a much larger scale to accommodate a much larger congregation and expanding community.

As you can see, we have been a church community in fluid motion since our beginnings. We have never been a congregation to just sit on our heels and accept what we are in that place and time. We have always thought of the future, not only of our current members but on future members and the community we occupy, as well. With God as a guide we move forward, remembering our past but not living in our past.

Our next journey in looking back will take us from the ground breaking of our second church to the wonders of expansion into the spaces we now occupy.

The answers to last month’s quiz — 1.Who was the President of the United States back in 1949? (Harry S. Turman) 2. How many Presidents have there been since Ascension came to be? (13) 3. Who was our State Governor? (Oscar Rennebohm) 4. How many church buildings has Ascension been in from 1949 to today? (3) Bonus question for those looking for an A+, how many Pastors have we had in the last 70 years? (7)

Remember this is not a history of a building or things and objects, it is the history of people, of you, of us. If any of you have memories of our time as a congregation in our first church and the ground breaking of our second church we would love to hear from you. You can send an email, leave a written note at the church office or find myself, Roger Norberg or Linda Hansen and tell us. We would love to compile your memories of Ascension and be able to share with all.

Scott Tenwinkel
Council board member, Ascension’s 70th anniversary team

Reprinted from the June 2019 newsletter.

Our Story, Part I

First Ascension, Madison and Fairview

History is one of those subjects either people love or hate. If you’re one that hates history you may want to skim these few paragraphs. But if you have a little interest in the story of Ascension you may want to stick around for a few more words. Trust me there will not be a test at the end of this history lesson, just a surprise quiz.

Ascension will be 70 years old this coming September. Our church was born on the eleventh of that month on the western outskirts of the City of Waukesha. Not where the church stands now but on Madison Street and Fairview Avenue, a few blocks away. We were not large, but we filled a great need at that time. World War II had ended only a scant four years prior to our birth. Service men and women were being wed and beginning to raise families at one of the highest rates the United States has ever seen. And those men and women needed God. Most people do after seeing and feeling war like everyone did. So God filled the need and brought together a small group that gave birth to Ascension Lutheran Church.

Now Waukesha was a lot different back in 1949 than it is today. Just west of Moreland Road stood nothing but open fields and dairy farms as far as Genesee Depot. Dopp subdivision, the homes that surround our wonderful church right now, had just been commissioned but not a home had been raised yet, and you could still catch the trolley in downtown, or take the train into Milwaukee.

Waukesha was just over 21,000 people, mostly to the east of the Fox River or on the cliff side to the west. You had your choice of three movie theaters in town: The Pix, The Park and The Avon, and you still had to go to the butcher for meat, the bakery for your bread, milk was delivered, and your other necessities came from Schultz Brothers, Woolworth or the Metropolitan. You were well off financially if you made over $4,000 a year and a new 5-room ranch home would have cost you $8,900.

If you would have picked up the Sunday Milwaukee Sentinel (The Freeman didn’t publish on Sundays in 1949) on the day Ascension came to be, the three biggest headlines you would have payed attention too in the 201 page paper would have been, “The Future of Heating Will Be Natural Gas,” “The Brewers Have Beat the Saints to Clinch Third Place” (that’s the St. Paul, Minnesota Saints), and “Green Bay to Play an Exhibition Game … Against Their Rivals the New York Bull Dogs, in Rock Island Illinois.”

Yes, life would have been a little different back in 1949 but now that we have set the stage for where we came to be, next month we will explore how our church was formed and by whom and those first years until we broke ground for our second church here on Dopp St.

Quiz Time (and no cheating)! Who was the president of the United States back in 1949? How many presidents have there been since Ascension came to be? Who was our state governor? And last, how many church buildings has Ascension been in from 1949 to today? Bonus Question for those looking for an A+: How many Pastors have we had in the last 70 years? You will get the answers next month.

Scott Tenwinkel
Council board member, Ascension’s 70th anniversary team

Reprinted from the May 2019 newsletter.