Glenwood Union Church

This is the first church that I attended. My mom brought me here when I was little and it is located on the road where I grew up, about a quarter-mile from the house I was born in. I remember going to Vacation Bible School here, and it used to be shaded by two large red maple trees, but they did away with them so more cars could be parked. Only a very few people worship here now, due to no one being able to get along.

The land for the church and the adjoining cemetery was deeded to the community in about 1910-1911. It was to be used for-and-by the community only. If it ceased to be used by the community, it was to revert to the folks that ceded it.

The people of the community allowed a Johnson City preacher and his small flock to start services here in the 1970s, and many of the locals began attending. Wasn't long before the locals were put on notice that the church was now the property of the preacher and his wife. They had become de facto squatters. These foreigners even took over the cemetery and ruled on who could and who could not be interred here. They decided it would be used for the people from Johnson City only.

The locals fought back, and at least got the cemetery away from the citified children of God. The citizens are allowing the preacher's family and his three or four followers to keep the church open, as long as they take care of maintenance on the cemetery. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

I've helped carry the bodies of several of my family members beneath the old bell. That was back when families brought their loved ones home for a wake and on to the church for funeral service and the ensuing burial. I carried my grandmother—the woman that was a second mother to me—through the old door.

She, my granddad, my dad, and my mom are buried in the cemetery, along with many more members of the extended family.

The part that is now attached to the front of the church house wasn't there until 1970s. It houses the restrooms. The exterior is in disrepair.The tip of the steeple has gone missing, and someone replaced it with a wooden one. The siding nearest the ground is rotting away. The guttering has fallen away, and much of the soffit and fascia has deteriorated.

I have no idea what is to become of the building, or even the cemetery when my generation has passed. I will not be buried here, as I wish to be cremated and my ashes dumped into a rotting stump on the forested western-facing side of one of my mountains, overlookng the hills and valleys below.