Baptism, Family Life, & Guns, c.1954

This Easter I will be baptized as an adult, as part of a deepening commitment to my faith journey.  Recently I asked my older brother, Marshall Austin, if he had any memories of me getting baptized as an infant? 

Tonight, as older siblings reminiscing,  Marshall and I had a good conversation about what it must have been like for our parents to move into a new suburban development outside Pittsburgh in the 1950s, while my dad worked briefly at Carnegie Mellon before heading to NYC, when I was just two. My parents would have been in their mid-to late thirties, with three children. Coincidentally, Marshall moved back to Pittsburgh about a decade or so ago and is a pathologist now at Magee Hospital, where I was born in 1954.

Thanks to Marshall's memory and my mother's love of photographs, I discovered that I was baptized on Sunday September 26, 1954 at the Bower Hill Community Church in Mount Lebanon. Marshall had 

clear memories of Mom chuckling over why we joined this particular church:

"We went to a small Presbyterian church just off of Bower Hill Road across from Jefferson Elementary School in Mt. Lebanon. I remember mom saying the very young pastor went door to door in the nearby newly built neighborhoods to solicit new members." My parents asked if they could speak to the Senior Minister, and the young man had to admit that he was the only pastor.

After 60 years, this church's current website describes a progressive history and active tolerant faith community:

"For the past 60 years, the story of Bower Hill Church has been shaped by a "hands-on" kind of faith. We have never shied away from those sometimes-troubled issues where religious conviction and contemporary life intersect. In the 1950s, we housed the first Jewish synagogue in the South Hills. In the 1960s, we were among a very few churches in the Pittsburgh area to support the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1970s, we hired the second female pastor ever to be ordained by Pittsburgh Presbytery. That story of relevant, socially-conscious faith continues still today. Whether we're supplying fresh produce to downtown women's shelter or sending school supplies to orphans in Kenya, we believe that "faith without action is dead." (James 2:20)"

Marshall remembered that the church was located across the street from the elementary school he attended. The church website speaks of a 60 year history, and a photograph my father took that September Day in 1954 when I was baptized suggest the new church was still meeting in the elementary school - most likely while the church was being built. 

I was baptized as an infant on Sept. 26, 1954.
At this time, it appears the Bower Hill Community Church in Mount Lebanon, PA
was still holding services at Jefferson Elementary School, across the street.

The tidy "before church" photo of my mom & I.
(Sept. 26, 1954)

Marshall Austin in 1954, age 4.

Howard Austin in 1954, age 7.

My Dad was the oldest of 8, but we seldom saw his large extended family.
Here is a 1954 reunion with my dad to the left, with Betsy - still thriving in Maryland,
then Emily, Fay, and Robert.
Perhaps a gathering when my Grandmother Austin died at 60 in Nov. 1954?

My paternal Grandfather Jason McVay Austin, Sr. in 1954.

Tonight I did some research and remembered again the crises my parents had lived through: from growing up in the Depression where my mother's father, a lawyer, lost the family house because there were no clients with cash. Then there was the trauma for my Dad of fighting in the South Pacific during most of his twenties. Next, when they had been married 5 years and had two small boys, my Dad was called from Oct 1950 until some point in 1952 to serve as an active duty Marine first at Camp Pendleton and then in Korea. I somehow hadn't understood that the Korean War had lasted until July 1953. So in some sense, our family's life in Pittsburgh played out against the very recent memory of my mother living on a military base alone with two small boys, and the uncertainty that this could happen again at any time during the Cold War. My father remained a reserve officer until 1956. At that time, after 18 years of service, apparently the danger that he might be called away again sent my mother over the edge and he permanently resigned from the reserves. At this point we moved to Westfield, NJ.

One of the things that jumped out at me from the preserved family photos from 1954-5 was the fairly violent energy of the boys and the prevalence of toy guns. Here are some of the photos my mother saved.

Boys at Howard's 7th Birthday Party.

Boys & Toy Guns at Howard's 7th Birthday Party.

My mother wearing my brother's Marshall's toy gun outfit, 1955.

Nancy Austin on Christmas Day 1955. Howard is to the left holding a gun,
and Marshall, dressed as Prince Valiant he tells me, is to the right.
I still have saved the rocking horse, but not the toy guns.

Looking forward to being baptized as an adult in 2014.
I'm bringing this wonderful child along too.