by Tim Townsend
By 1941, Gerecke had gained large audiences at his lunchtime Workhouse sermons, “all working on ‘spare-ribs’ and not eating too loud,” he wrote. “The authorities have been most kind. The prisoners have never disturbed the speaker.”
Gerecke’s heart was with these men, many of whom were on their way back out into society with little chance of getting a job. “What can be done for the ex-prisoner?” he wrote in 1941. “When out he needs work to support the family. Nobody seems to care.”
Gerecke believed the work of City Mission was not just about comforting the sick and forgotten. It was about evangelization. He was an evangelical Christian a half century before that term gained political currency. Evangelicals take a verse in Matthew as the bedrock of their faith. In the Gospel’s final scene, a resurrected Christ appears to his followers on a Galilee mountain and instructs them to make new disciples by baptizing them in the name of a new faith and by “teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Remember, Christ says, in case his instructions are a little daunting, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Evangelicals take this directive, often called the Great Commission, very seriously, seeing it as responsibility to save souls that have been damned to an eternity separated from God. They see the world as a “mission field,” filled with non-Christians who must be rescued. The Gospel is the life raft that can buoy these souls; the “good news” is that Jesus loves them, and to avoid hell all they need to do is to accept his message of love.
For Gerecke, those who had not taken Christ’s message to heart urgently needed to. He looked among the wretched of St. Louis and saw what he often called “fields white for the harvest”—a phrase borrowed from the Gospel of John. He wrote in a newsletter about Koch Hospital, where one hundred and eighty of these souls “receive some form of personal instruction in God’s word. We enjoy a splendid spirit of cooperation on the part of the doctors and nurses. Dr. Kettlekamp, head of the Hospital, is our friend. The field is white unto harvest. Pray for your laborers.”
City Mission, he often said, was “a soul-winning agency.” “Remember,” he wrote, “we are after souls, lost, strayed souls. Some will miss Hell because you have sent us with the Gospel.”
City Mission’s “big job” was “to find souls for Christ,” he wrote in another newsletter.
Quite often we find former members of the Lutheran Church in the neighborhoods of our settlement missions and in our city institutions. These we try to re-establish with the Church. The pastor is generally notified and every effort is made to encourage the individual to renew his confirmation vow. Then there are those who have never given a thought to God until affliction struck them down flat upon their backs in the hospital. Sometimes we never quite succeed in winning such discouraged people for Christ, but we keep on trying and consistently bring them the meaning of the cross.
Gerecke was a serious evangelical, but his little chapel was called Good Shepherd. He was not a sheep stealer. His respect for faith in general gave him a healthy respect for all faiths, and his years living in a Catholic neighborhood gave him real-world experience with other Christians. In 1941, he wrote in the City Mission newsletter that the missioners were passing out new devotional booklets at Koch and City hospitals.
“Every new patient, if not Catholic, receives a booklet by the missioner upon his arrival,” Gerecke wrote. “That’s the opening wedge for spiritual healing. If he is a bona fide member of a protestant church, he is urged to call his pastor. Our missioner backs out of the picture.”
During his nine years preaching at Christ Lutheran, Gerecke had honed his preaching skills and learned the power of a good story. His sermons, both at Christ Lutheran and Good Shepherd, kept people coming back each Sunday. Regulars knew Gerecke was wrapping up when he began a short story—usually about an average person—to illustrate the point of his sermon. Gerecke also realized he could use his monthly newsletters to harness the same storytelling power in writing as he did in his sermons. He believed pastors and delegates who read these newsletters could use the City Mission stories as fund-raising mechanisms as they asked for money from the pews on Sundays, or in their own church bulletins. Often he would end his stories with the phrase, “Tell it and print it.”
He used only first names. Cathleen, he wrote one month, “was found in the TB Division of City Hospital #1. She had spent a number of years in institutions for TB patients and she became an arrested case . . . During the many moments of prayer and meditation spent at her bedside, we found her staunch and true to her Savior . . . Cathleen begged to be with her Lord. Last Tuesday morning we laid her to rest in Our Redeemer Cemetery.”
He often used all capital letters for emphasis, in an effort to goad others to action: Lutherans owed it to themselves to see the City Mission work in person, he wrote: “Come and see for yourself. Then tell it to the congregation with a lot of enthusiasm. DO SOMETHING . . . Brother, if you feel we are wasting our time, tell us so and show us a way out. Become interested in a program for City Mission soul-winning. WELL?”
Sometimes, Gerecke just liked to turn a good phrase in the service of his never-ending, desperate search for financial support. “The summer is on, but there must be no letdown in City Mission work. The old devil is terribly busy during the hot weather,” he wrote in 1941. “Men and women are dying every day and the hospitals are crowded to the doors. Again, we say, the harvest is white. We need your help.”
Another way Gerecke reached the city was through radio station KFUO-AM, founded by his mentor, Pastor Richard Kretzschmar, in 1924, just after the advent of commercial radio. Gerecke’s Moments of Comfort was originally popular mostly in hospitals, but it soon caught on across KFUO’s listening area, bringing him fan mail and even calls to his house. The show was a combination of scripture recitation and soothing sermonizing by Gerecke, whose voice had the depth and clarity of film stars of the decades that followed—Burt Lancaster and Robert Mitchum. Gerecke brought his favorite musicians and singers with him each week to provide background music and sing hymns.
The program also promoted the work of City Mission, allowing Gerecke to use the huge reach of radio to scare up more funding or to ask for old clothing and furniture for Lutheran Mission Industries. In turn, he promoted the show through the City Mission newsletter.
At the end of each Moment, Gerecke recited what he called a “mission prayer.” But the words were really the lyrics of a nineteenth-century hymn: “Lord, lay some soul upon my heart and love that soul through me. And may I nobly do my part to win that soul for thee.” The program and its host became so successful that a rival station, KMOX, approached Gerecke about a full-time broadcasting job. But he realized it would mean leaving the ministry and turned it down.
At City Mission, Gerecke had clearly found his life’s calling. He enjoyed the frenetic pace, and he thrived on the energy it took to keep up with his schedule. Mostly, though, he loved the challenge of harvesting a mission field he believed so hungry for God’s grace. All of that personal, professional, and sacred satisfaction, however, came at the expense of an easy home life. When Gerecke left Christ Lutheran, he had to give up the vicarage, and the family moved to an apartment with creaky hardwood floors, three bedrooms, and one bathroom. It was about the same size the Gereckes were used to, but it was more cramped because Gerecke didn’t have an attached office and the kids were now older.
Alma had a rule against children in the dining room except during meals, or in the family room—it was reserved for company—leaving the boys to make do in their small bedroom, the kitchen, or in the neighborhood outside. Life as a pastor’s kid is never easy, but the boys’ clothes and shoes frequently came off the Lutheran Mission Industries trucks, and this became well known at their school, leading to taunts of: “Hey, Gerecke got dressed on the charity trucks again.” Naturally that led to fights.
Hank and Corky earned fifty cents a day sorting donated materials at the City Mission warehouse. They were so clo
se in age they fought from the time they woke up until they went to sleep at night. Alma often had to use a “Wait until your father gets home” threat to settle them down. When Henry did get home, Alma would tell him what happened and demand that he discipline the boys.
He did as instructed, calling each of his sons into the bedroom, where he took off his belt and then issued his own instructions: “Make it sound like this hurts.” And then he’d slap the bed hard with his belt, while his sons would smile gratefully and howl in fake pain.
“Okay, Henry. Stop it. You’re hurting them,” Alma would call from the kitchen.
As the wife of a pastor, Alma attended church and was part of the Ladies’ Aid Society, but once her husband was no longer leading a regular congregation, some of those social responsibilities disappeared. The trade-off was financial. This was the Depression, and the Gerecke family’s existence was hand to mouth. Henry was satisfied that they, as he liked to say, had a roof over their heads and food on the table. God would take care of the rest. But Alma liked cars and clothes. She liked money, and the absence of it became a major point of contention in their marriage.
Henry believed Thanksgiving was an important American holiday, writing in the City Mission newsletter: “This is Thanksgiving month. We are thankful. We have some very poor families who will be thankful, too. Understand?” One year when a destitute member of his Good Shepherd congregation invited the Gereckes to his hovel for Thanksgiving dinner, Henry accepted. Alma was furious, and at first she refused to go. But by Thanksgiving day she relented, and they all hopped in the car and made their way to a desperately poor section of the city to give thanks.
Gerecke’s schedule made family outings like that rare. His children didn’t see much of him during the week, so the boys looked forward to Saturday afternoons, which were often spent around the kitchen table, where they listened to a broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera on the radio. Gerecke told his sons stories about his childhood on the farm, or about working the Kansas oil fields. Gerecke hated to drive, so when Hank and Corky were old enough, they became his Sunday chauffeurs. Hank drove his father around for his marathon preaching circuit of hospitals, jails, convalescent homes, and churches. After a while, Gerecke let his son stay in the car.
“You’ve heard the sermon four times already,” he’d say. “You can sit here and wait.” But Hank always chose to go with his dad to the 9:00 A.M. services in the City Jail. Going inside a jail was too exciting for a teenager to miss.
Just before Christmas in 1940, Hank enlisted in the army. He was nineteen years old and five feet, six inches—short, like his father. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor a year later, he was sent to the Aleutian Islands to defend them from Japanese forces. In the spring of 1942, five months after the United States declared war on Japan and Germany, the message of Lutheran Mission Industries became patriotic: “Mission Industries Trucks are busy collecting old clothing, furniture, rags, newspapers, magazines and iron,” Gerecke wrote. “Save your old papers for Defense. We want to do our bit toward victory for our Country and every pound of paper you save will help to that end. At this moment we need your old overcoats for homeless men in the settlement missions.” But gas rationing finally felled Gerecke’s efforts, and he was forced to shutter the Industries arm of City Mission.
Corky followed Hank into the army in September 1942, when he was twenty years old (and five foot five). Suddenly, a house once crammed with people felt spacious—even Roy had his own room.
With two of his sons in the fight, Gerecke thought more and more about the war and less about City Mission. Readers of his April 1943 newsletter could tell that his heart was elsewhere: “Oliver Grosse assists at the piano,” he wrote, listlessly. “Noonday talks on Wednesdays in dining hall. . . . Warden and guards cooperate to the last detail. . . . Every one is questioned about spiritual matters. Some are so young. All need Jesus.”
By the time Gerecke wrote that newsletter, he had already asked for the synod’s endorsement for him to volunteer for the army’s Chaplain Corps. The Army and Navy Commission of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States had received his application for ecclesiastical endorsement on February 8, 1943, and then the recommendation letters began to pour in.
Pastor O. Rothe of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in St. Louis said he believed Gerecke’s “experience in hospitals, jails and other institutions qualify [sic] him, in my estimation, in a remarkable way, for the position of chaplain.”
P. E. Kretzmann, director of Concordia’s library, wrote the commission that if Gerecke “was not beyond the age limit, I feel that you will have a real acquisition.”
The Reverend George Wittmer, who was the chairman of the City Mission board, said Gerecke had “proven himself to be a psychologist in his dealings with all types and classes of people from every stratum of society.”
And Rev. Louis Wickham, whom Gerecke had replaced as head of City Mission in 1935 and was now a first lieutenant at Fort Hayes in Ohio, said his ten months in the chaplaincy had given him a perspective on the type of person it required.
“When I review in my mind the type of work required in the many situations that arise, I am confident that Brother Gerecke could efficiently and with distinction serve as a Chaplain,” Wickham wrote. “He is very personal in his presentation and can inspire men. He can be emotional as well as stern. . . . I know of no reason why he will not make a GOOD chaplain, and the army knows there are too many of the other kind.”
Wickham’s letter to the synod’s Army and Navy Commission was dated June 2, 1943, the day before Gerecke told Alma he planned to volunteer. At least a dozen men, and probably many more, knew Gerecke was joining the army before he told the mother of his children.
A week after the tense moment in the kitchen with Alma, Gerecke received word that the synod’s Army and Navy Commission had approved his application and forwarded it to the army’s Chief of Chaplain branch.
On July 15, the U.S. Army named Gerecke a chaplain (1st Lt.) and ordered him to report to Chaplain School at Harvard University a month later. In his last City Mission newsletter, written in August 1943, Gerecke told the delegates that he’d be replaced by an able pastor to lead the agency, but that Moments of Comfort would be “suspended for a time.” He thanked people for listening.
“My dear Friends, I ask your blessings upon my new assignment,” he wrote. “You and many others have sent good wishes for great spiritual blessings as a chaplain in the Army. . . . Keep your eyes fixed upon Jesus. If I have blundered, forgive me, please. If I have done normally well, thank God for it.”
Then he quoted two verses from the Old Testament. From Genesis: “The Lord watch between me and you when we are absent one from another.” And from Deuteronomy: “The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
As Gerecke left the safety of St. Louis for the heart of the most violent, destructive war man had ever fought, he might have added a proverb he penned himself in the November 1941 City Mission newsletter. “God give us strength, to carry on through the shadows.”
CHAPTER 3
God of War
Before you join battle, the priest shall come forward and address the troops. He shall say to them, “Hear, O Israel! you are about to join battle with your enemy. Let not your courage falter. Do not be in fear, or in panic, or in dread of them. For it is the Lord your God who marches with you to do battle for you against your enemy, to bring you victory.”
—DEUTERONOMY 20:2–4
HENRY GERECKE RECEIVED A letter on June 23, 1943, from the army’s Chief of Chaplains office informing him that he’d been provisionally recommended for the Chaplain Corps. Three days later, he sent a letter back to Washington. “Kind Sir!” Gerecke wrote. “The day I receive the official assignment shall be the happiest day of my life. My family, including two fine boys in the Army, are agreeable and praying blessings on me. There is no intention of backing down.” On August 17, 1943, he said good-bye to Alm
a and fifteen-year-old Roy and reported for duty at Harvard the next day.
When he arrived on campus, Gerecke was given a welcome letter written by the army chief of chaplains, General William R. Arnold, the first Catholic priest to become chief of chaplains and the first chaplain to rise to the rank of major general, a tradition the army has maintained ever since. Arnold called himself “a priest in khaki,” but before entering the priesthood, he had held a number of jobs. He’d worked at his father’s cigar-making operation in Worcester, Ohio; at a steel mill in Muncie, Indiana, where he was a bar straightener; and at the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus in Peru, Indiana, where he worked—and sometimes bunked—with the performers. Arnold was ordained in 1908 and sent to the Philippines as a chaplain in the First World War.
In December 1937, Roosevelt appointed Arnold to head the Chaplain Corps, and at the end of the war—just before Gerecke was tapped for the job in Nuremberg—Pope Pius XII made him a bishop. Arnold later served nearly two decades as an aide to New York Cardinal Francis Spellman and as the Catholic Church’s delegate to the military.
In his last days leading the Chaplain Corps, in 1945, Arnold wrote about his love for his fellow military priests, ministers, and rabbis in his book, Soldiers of God. For many soldiers, he wrote,
Chaplains of all faiths have been their sole link between the battlefield and home. These Chaplains volunteered to be with your men, to share the dangers of battle so they might help to keep alive the spiritual values for which we went to war—spiritual values without which lasting peace cannot be attained. In the performance of their duties, some of them have been wounded; others have died. The War Department has given to many of these clergymen the highest honors. These are your Chaplains. These are clergymen from your community. You have good cause to be proud of them.
