ESTES CHAPEL: Where It All Began
Dr. David McKenna
Part I: It all began at Estes Chapel.
As a new student in 1951 I joined the construction crew building Estes Chapel. One day while putting in the flashing on the eaves high above the front entrance, I looked down to see President J. C. McPheeters, Dean W.D. Turkington, and Business Manager William Savage peering up at me from the walk below as they inspected the project. Needless to say, I was awed.
At the time, I only knew President McPheeters as the man of miracles who prayed when construction of the campus was stalled for the lack of lumber during World War II. His prayers were answered by the breakdown of a lumber truck on Lexington Avenue with load of wood cut just to the needs of the new building. For me, Dean W.D. Turkington was the dignified and authoritative Professor of New Testament who opened up the Word of God in class each week while keeping a tight hand on the academic quality of the school. Business Manager William Savage was the formidable figure with whom I had to plead for a refund when I wanted to move my lonely wife and baby from the new married student apartments on Morrison Avenue to the buzzing activity around a two-room apartment in the Turner house on Spring Street.
Thirty years later Dr. McPheeters was the first to call and welcome us to the presidency of the Seminary. While president,
I had the privilege of leading the dedicatory service for the W.D. Turkington Memorial Garden just east of the library. Throughout our tenure and into retirement, Bill and Dottie Savage became dearest friends and even counted us as members of their family.
Estes Chapel became the site of our inauguration when Janet and I knelt at the altar while the Board of Trustees laid hands on us and prayed for the anointing of His Spirit. It is also the place where we preached our final sermon at the ceremony when William Conger was granted an honorary doctor’s degree for his role in shepherding the estate gift from Ralph and Orlean Beeson that launched the Seminary into its global identity. In between, we remember scores of chapel services, scholarly lectures, and concerts so often graced by the visitation of the Holy Spirit in pulpit, pew and at the altar of prayer.
I, Donald M. Joy, also arrived to take my first classes in the Fall, as Estes Chapel was under construction. Unlike Dave McKenna, I used a pick axe and a shovel to break through the limestone bed below Estes Chapel, denoting troughs and cross beams below load bearing structures designed for several stories above.
I enrolled for classes for two calendars, taking advantage of the “minimum rate” for each semester, completsing the equivalent of the M. Div. in two calendar years!
Free Methodists were alowed to have a large classroom for worship. Donald and Robbie Joy and young son, John, attended those services. W. Curry Mavis was the Free Methodist professor at Asbury Seminary who was our mentor and guide in those early years.