Willow Leaves, May 31

Willow Mills Celebrates Decoration Day In solemn ceremonies at dawn today, families will gather at both Willow Mills Cemetery and Summit Hill Cemetery to decorate the graves of those fallen in defense of their country over the centuries. In spite of an early morning threat of rain, town marshall John Townsend expected several hundred people to make the dawn trek to the two cemeteries. Deputies at several main intersections will be on hand to direct traffic. Townsend asks, however, that as in years past, autos be used only for the transport of the elderly or infirm who cannot make the two-mile trek on foot. All car traffic is asked to keep speeds under 10 miles per hour on the routes to the cemeteries. Rev. Wilson of the Holy Waters Baptist Church will lead the prayer at Summit Chapel. Six members of the VFW will lead this year’s procession from Summit Hill Cemetery where they will fire off a salute. Then to the beat of a muffled drum, they will march into town to the Willow Mills Cemetery. After a prayer for the fallen by Rev. Everett of Willow Mills United Methodist Church, a final volley will be fired by the VFW honor guard. Other activities For those wanting to stay around for breakfast, the Unitarians are cooking this year. For $3.00 you get a bowl of biscuits and sausage gravy, coffee, and juice. The church board abandoned the idea of serving creamed chipped beef on toast after community members protested that it mocked the solemnity of honoring the war dead. All garage and yard sales are slated to open at 9:30 a.m. A map of this year’s sale route has been posted at all local businesses. Yellow arrows mark the route which begins and ends at Fountain Square. Feel free to follow the arrows in reverse order if you want. The Fountain Festivities will begin at 11:30 a.m. with the first gush slated for 12:00 noon. The barbecue will follow. Waterball is slated for 3:00 in the afternoon with fire departments from Willow Mills, Laketon, Roann, and Sevastapol participating. The street dance begins at 7:00 p.m. with the Pawns of Injustice playing. The annual fountain plunge will be at 10:00 p.m. Memorial Service Brian Greene delivered the Memorial service at the Unitarian Church (Old Lutheran) on Sunday Morning. He used, as his text, Isaiah 2:4 “And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Brian has used this text for every Memorial Day service since the Unitarians moved into the church in 1970. For a long time it was known as “The Hippie Church.” Different members address the church each week.

That Hippie Candle Shop

Back in the mid- to late-60s, there was a bit of a stir as Willow Mills became a haven for hippie refugees from Manchester College. There were a couple communes that settled in the Willow Mills area and for a while it was in doubt how they would be accepted.

Bearded, long-haired, drug-taking, hippies.

As it turned out, the influx of new blood was just the shot in the arm that Willow Mills needed. And for a while the immigration stemmed the flow of young people out of town.

One of the developments was the founding of several small businesses in and around Willow Mills. That Hippie Candle Shop is one noted success. It’s had several names over the years, but the present one is what the residents always called it. It started out as what the kids called a “head shop.” Some of the things sold there had questionable uses.

Elizabeth Garvey went in there one Christmas to buy her husband Bruce a new pipe. Bruce complained that it was too small, difficult to pack with tobacco, and kept going out on him. But he still pulls it from his pocket and stokes it every evening after dinner.

Brian and Sally Green are the registered owners of the shop now, as other members of the commune have moved away or settled in their own places. They started making candles while they were still in college, taking them to craft fairs to sell. It turned out to be a regular industry for them. That Hippie Candle Shop turns out a big supply of candles, especially during holiday seasons, that are sold in shops all around the midwest.

Well, the “head shop” aspects of That Hippie Candle Shop are long past. Now, they carry one of the finest collections of candles and pottery in the county, and with the Internet, their sales aren’t limited to the residents of Willow Mills or the craft fairs they travel to.

The New Unitarian Church

The Unitarians are sometimes called the “New Church,” “The Hippie Church,” and “Old Lutheran.” Here is the story of why.

Back in the mid-sixties the little Lutheran congregation decided they would disband to attend the Lutheran Church in North Manchester. It was a difficult decision, but the church hadn’t had a fulltime minister in five years and the congregation was waning. They closed their doors and for a couple years it was uncertain what would happen to the old church building, which also had a small graveyard adjacent to the grounds.

That was right at the beginning of the great hippie migration from Manchester College to Willow Mills. Inspired by the Arlo Guthrie song and following movie “Alice’s Restaurant,” the young people saw the old Lutheran church as a “Godsend,” if you will. They negotiated a lease for the building, agreeing in exchange to maintain and keep up the old cemetery. A total of nine kids moved into the building over the next two years. Some moved out and were replaced. They improved the facilities for showers and, having learned something from the Guthrie song, never allowed the trash to build up.

In the basement kitchen of Old Lutheran, they began making candles.

It was a roomy structure and for some reason the kids decided to leave the sanctuary of the church unchanged. They built out the choir loft in the balcony for small apartments, took over the Sunday School rooms, and partitioned off portions of the basement.

As a standard for themselves, they met every Sunday morning to meditate and play music in the sanctuary. They started the meeting at 11:00 or 11:30 because none of them could get up after Saturday night any earlier than that.

They were a pretty isolated group for a while, even after the new agricultural commune settled north of the river. They were well-behaved outside of the building. Even though folks speculated that the church was now subject to language and behavior that the founding fathers had never imagined, as long as the graveyard was maintained and none of their drugs and free-love spilled out of the church, they would live and let live.

Then everything changed.

On Memorial Day 1969, ignited by an overturned barbecue pit, Oppenheimer’s Drugstore caught fire. That was during the time that there was no active volunteer fire department in Willow Mills. The last of the pumper trucks had broken down in the late 50s and the town contracted with Roann and North Manchester for fire protection.

John Townsend, one of the hippies ran down to the fire station to see what equipment was available. All he found were buckets.

He grabbed as many as he could carry and sent others for more. In five minutes he had organized an old fashioned bucket brigade from the fountain to the drugstore. Before the North Manchester Fire Department arrived fifteen minutes later, the fire was out. The firemen went in to mop things up, but credited the town’s fast action with saving much of the town block. And Willow Mills credited John Townsend and the hippies.

As they were all sitting around the fountain, hot, sweaty, and laughing after their exertion, a lot of water got splashed around. We don’t know how it got out of hand, but someone pushed someone and before you know it, half the town was in the fountain, splashing, wading, and laughing. And that was the origin of the annual fountain plunge.

The great candle melt-down.

We had a terribly hot summer in 1969. It was looking like summer would never end by mid-August. That’s when Brian Greene took a load of candles out to the old chickencoop he was renting for a warehouse and had a bad surprise. A puddle of candle wax on the floor alerted him to the problem. As he investigated more thoroughly, he discovered that the entire stock of holiday candles they’d been making and storing was pretty much just one big stuck together candle with a lot of wicks.

The next Sunday morning, the commune met in the sanctuary to meditate and discuss what they could do to rebuild before it was time to ship the holiday supply of candles down to The Christmas Store in Nashville, Indiana. Then George and Martha Oppenheimer walked in. They’d been Lutherans when the church was a Lutheran Church and remembered what it had been like. Even though they now went to the Lutheran Church in North Manchester, that morning they had visited both the Methodist and Baptist churches in Willow Mills.

George spoke to the conclave of hippies that morning about how a town the size of Willow Mills had to stick together and take care of each other. How the group gathered in that church sanctuary had saved his business with their quick thinking on Decoration Day. And how he was happy to offer his help to save their business now. Since hearing of the candle warehouse meltdown, he’d talked to the other businessmen in town, to the area churches, auxilliary, and clubs. They were pleased to offer their services to help the commune remold the candles, and had even arranged cold storage at Hart’s Pure Beef Meat Locker for their stock as long as the heatwave lasted.

The commune was thrilled and surprised to find not only willing, but skilled candle-making help in the community. Their stock was rebuilt quickly and they had what many felt was the turning point year for the commune.

They opened the doors of the Old Lutheran for services later that fall. Two years later they organized as a Unitarian Universalist congregation. The basement is leased to That Hippie Candle Shop and works year-round turning out candles. A good portion of the basement was turned into air-conditioned cold storage.

Carl Miller, one of the original band of hippies, still lives in the converted choir loft. He is the caretaker of the building and graveyard, and he’s the only one still living onsite.

It’s a small congregation that meets in the Old Lutheran/New Unitarian Sanctuary. They’ve no pastor, but each member takes his or her turn speaking on Sunday mornings. Since they still meet at 11:00 after most services are over, folks from the other churches occasionally drop in for the Unitarian service, too.

And folks like it like that.