Faith Works 10-2-21

Faith Works 10-2-21

Jeff Gill

Disney World and the Church

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On October 1, 1971 a new attraction opened in Florida.

It's not as if people didn't already have reasons, fifty years ago, to go to that sunny peninsula. Sandy beaches, Daytona's hard sands and later stock car track; Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach where Tony the astronaut lived with Jeannie, Miami on south and Key West on along US 1 to the very not-so-bitter end.

Travis McGee had been warning us for years about some of the pressures already weighing down the Everglades and the Intracoastal Waterway; retirees had been fleeing south to Fort Lauderdale and beyond for a century, though The Villages were a few more years in the future.

But Walt Disney had a very different vision for central Florida, and a vision that he'd started with a couple decades earlier in southern California, but couldn't quite execute in full with control of the real estate around Disneyland.

So he quietly started buying up orange groves and swampland, and perhaps a few politicians while he was at it, established the Reedy Creek Improvement District which surely deserves a book all its own, and began to lay out his dream for a Walt Disney World.

EPCOT, too. The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow never quite came together as Walt imagined, and today's Epcot is a decade younger and a faint shadow of what its designer had hoped for.

Because Walt Disney died in December of 1966, a date I recall as a child, first worrying that his Wonderful World would no longer be on TV Sunday nights, but my mother assured me that, while it was sad that he had died, his show would continue.

As has often been the case, she was right. Walt died, but his brother Roy made sure that "The Florida Project" continued (he barely outlived the grand opening fifty years ago this week himself), and the Magic Kingdom opened to great fanfare, including special coverage on "The Wonderful World of Disney" which I saw not long after our house made the dramatic shift into color television. It was amazing. 

For those who've been there more recently, I have to note that at opening, Disney World admission was $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for kids under 18, and children under twelve were a buck. Yeah, times have changed.

Why am I talking about this anniversary in a column normally about matters of faith? Or am I trying to suggest that a kingdom rooted in magic has anything to tell us about divine will?

Fair questions, all. But I'm going to leave Tinker Bell and Pinocchio and princesses for another day. What I'm recalling is that first year, and how I had a classmate whose family went to spend Christmas, yes, the Christmas holiday itself, at the Magic Kingdom, staying in the Contemporary Resort (the one the monorail goes right through). All of us in sixth grade were suitably impressed, but I also remember thinking "that would be so weird, to not be at home, with your own tree, and relatives dropping by, and falling asleep in the pile of wrapping paper on your own floor that evening." That was 1971.

Today, I'm not sure a kid, let alone a parent, would be so quick to have those thoughts. And would probably leap at the idea of getting to do Dec. 25th in shorts and sandals roaming around the foot of Cinderella's castle.

Disney World is an institution, with a history, and multiple resorts, with Epcot followed by Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom and who knows what all they've got down there. They are a tradition for families, and people return again and again with rituals and expectations all their own.

Before 1971, it was a swamp, and not a really interesting one (forgive me, wildlife biologists). There was nothing there except some sheds and marginal farmland, now parking lots and access roads to lagoons created by dredging, to pull up soil piled to build the islands atop which the theme parks are built.

Once it was nothing. Now, it's something. A something with deep meaningfulness to many, many people all over the world. Is that just an economic transaction, or is there something more at work there? Is the Reedy Creek Improvement District just a profit center (and it is that, to be sure), or is there something more at work there?

How does a faith community come to be? We've seen long-standing churches torn down recently, with more to come. That's one sort of story, but I'm curious about the opposite narrative. How does a new church come to be where once there was none?

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; as you can tell, he's not done with this subject. Tell him what he should do with it at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 10-7-21

Notes from my Knapsack 10-7-21

Jeff Gill

The last member of the Ghost Army

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Architect Gilbert Seltzer said of his 1960 Utica Memorial Auditorium: "This was the first successful use of cables for a roof structure." The design he worked out with engineer Lev Zeitlin was reused a few years later for what is the current Madison Square Garden, built just a few years after the dedication of the Utica structure, with the same circular layout and unobstructed views thanks to the innovative roof design.

In 1966, Seltzer used this technique in miniature at Denison University to create Herrick Hall, a lecture and performance space just off the Academic Quad. I sat in that space for a program just last week, and thought about the life and legacy of its designer, who died in August at the age of 106.

An obituary of Gil Seltzer said "he put his stamp on college campuses with buildings at West Point, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, CUNY Rutgers, William Paterson College, New Jersey City University and many others." Among the many others was Denison's campus, with some fifteen or more buildings coming off of his drafting table. Most are still in use, the exception being the Ace Morgan Theatre recently brought down to make room for the Eisner Center for the Performing Arts.

His last contribution was Blair Knapp Hall at the heart of today's campus. Seltzer came for the 1966 groundbreaking of this building, and the dedication that same year of Herrick Hall; I can't find any information tying him to campus after that. That final design was named for Blair Knapp after the president who had worked with Seltzer for years unexpectedly died in 1968.

A quarter century earlier, Al Seltzer had taken a leave from Gehron Associates, the architecture firm where he worked, to join the US Army and fight World War II. After looking into joining the Canadian military, he found an opportunity to sign up for Officer Candidate School, and ended up in the United States Ghost Army.

Ghost Army? Exactly so. And it's even cooler than you think.

The U.S. Ghost Army was tasked with creating a fake army's worth of tanks and ships and planes and troops to make the Germans think the invasion of Europe would be somewhere other than it was going to be. Calais, mostly, rather than the Normandy beaches where D-Day ultimately landed.

An army of set designers, costumers, and architects fabricated blow-up tank balloons, like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and other "from a distance" tricks of perspective and contour to create a whole army corps of invaders which literally froze in place an actual army of Nazi troops, while the actual soldiers of the invasion landed further west. Look it up: the U.S. Ghost Army saved thousands of lives, and helped make D-Day and the crossing of the Rhine a success. Bill Blass the fashion designer, Ellsworth Kelly the artist, and a thousand other creative souls made the Ghost Army the success that it was, along with Gil Seltzer.

Then, he came home and kept working another seventy-five years. Including the design of most of the dorms and a hatful of classroom buildings still in use at Denison University, architecture many of us walk past or drive around every day.

His partner, William Gehron, began his career as an associate to Arnold Brunner of Cleveland as he moved to New York City; Brunner designed Swasey Chapel, and so the thread weaves through campus from there to the residential quads to the Academic Quad, to lower campus and beyond, from Brunner to Gehron and triumphantly Seltzer.

The legacy of the Ghost Army, of unobtrusive design and clarity of purpose, is all around us on the Denison campus, thanks to the work of Gil Seltzer. May his memory indeed be a blessing.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher around central Ohio; tell him where you see design helping us live better lives at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Context:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/11/world/europe/gilbert-seltzer-dead.html