Anniversary Anecdotes
Each month during our 125th anniversary year we’ll share perspectives from our members on Zion’s past, present and future.
Carolyn Wible
Some of my early memories of Zion are of the “old church” on Prestley Road in Bridgeville (near what is now the shopping plaza). I fondly re-member the confirmation classes held at the rear of the church which was once a parsonage. Our classes were on Saturday mornings at 9 am, and there was always the sound of the mimeograph machine shooting out Sunday bulletins in the secretar-y’s office above us. My fellow confirmands in-cluded Laraine Cherpack, Rose Ann Rizak, Ka-ren Hickey (cousin of my future husband, Dick), Peter Zalesky, David Colin, Jack Heaps, and Mary Alice Warneld.
On Sunday afternoons we all piled into the back of Pastor Dietrich’s station wagon and headed out to Avella where Pastor held services for a small mission congregation (we had no excuse for missing parts of the sermon, as we got to hear it twice!).
That summer we attended a week long confirmation retreat at Camp Pioneer on Lake Erie with other local confirmands. What a wonder-ful experience! The part I remember most were the evening vesper services and bonfires on the beach. Each evening the final song was “Abide with Me”. To this day, can’t sing it without thoughts of those evenings on the beach long ago.
Confirmation Day, May 1959
