Lakewood Lore

What goes around, comes around in building the spirit

There is an interesting connection between the early history of Lakewood United Methodist Church at Detroit and Summit, and the new ministerial career of 39-year-old Debra (Debbie) Gibbons.

There is also a link with the church’s present congregation in that Debbie credits it for inspiring and nurturing her ambition to move up from pew to pulpit.

“It was an ancient Irish opening hymn at Lakewood Methodist -- ‘Be Thou My Vision’ -- that so impressed me when I first walked in in 1982. It had been sung at my wedding in Edinboro, Pa., two years before. I felt I was home again.”

It has been that way ever since, what with church scholarship money and the encouragement, warmth and friendliness shown.

Ten years ago, before joining the church, Debbie believed at first that her life choices had already been made -- she had a husband, a child and a teaching job at Lakewood’s Early Intervention Center that she loved.

“But then there was always this underlying desire to give full-time service to the church -- ‘a calling of the spirit’ that kept tugging,” she said.

“I saw so many wounded people that more and more I felt the urge to get at the heart of the problem, which is that most individuals do not accept or believe that they are very much loved by God.”

In May, she finished her seminary work at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO) at Delaware. This month, she was ordained at the United Methodist Annual Conference at Lakeside, Ohio.

On July 1 she will start her ministry duties at the Nottingham United Methodist Church in Collinwood on Cleveland’s East Side.

Debbie was born Debra McCarthy in Pittsburgh. She received a bachelor’s degree from Edinboro State College and a master’s degree in special education from nearby Slippery Rock State College.

She came to Lakewood in 1978 to join the intervention center which serves children, many of whom are emotionally troubled or developmentally delayed.

Debbie’s husband, Robert M. (Gib) Gibbons, with similar academic background, found work in the same field locally. The couple, now the parents of two boys, have moved to the East Side, nearer to her new assignment in Collinwood, a Cleveland neighborhood which, in fact, had a role in the annals of Lakewood United Methodist dating back to 1913.

The Lakewood church history, a story of three separate edifices, began with a modest white frame structure built in 1876 after a small group of inspired Christians bought a lot at the corner of Detroit and Summit, where remains the site of today’s place of worship.

In 1903, the growing congregation purchased more land at the location, and a year later a second, larger wooden building was erected there. It incorporated the first structure, which was moved and attached to the rear of the new building.

Finally, in 1914, the present expansive church edifice of handsome Bedford stone was dedicated. It replaced the second building that, however, was not forsaken as a house of prayer, but instead, sold to the former Collinwood Methodist Church to be dismantled and reconstructed on the East Side.

The move was a difficult one. Lakewood Methodist chronicles recount how parts of the building were loaded on Nickel Plate Railroad flatcars at Summit crossing and taken to the Collinwood Yards.

Collinwood records cite how some large sections were floated on a barge east on Lake Erie and then moved up East 152nd Street on rollers.

In 1973, after 60 years' service at St. Clair Avenue and Waldo Road, Collinwood United Methodist Church was closed. Its property was sold and later its church building from Lakewood was razed.

Monies realized from the transaction were given to other Methodist churches for improvements.

One of the beneficiaries was a nearby sister church at 18316 St. Clair -- today's Nottingham United Methodist -- to which a part of the former Collinwood congregation had transferred and where Debbie will begin her pastorship on July 1.

Artifacts enclosed in a cornerstone laid by Collinwood Methodist 78 years ago -- materials presumably associated with the original Lakewood building -- are now kept in the Sunday school at Nottingham, according to Debbie.

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post June 25, 1992. Reprinted with permission.

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