Church honors United Methodist architect who gave it room to grow
09-24-2009Heather Hahn
Editor
Two things Edgar “Eddie” Allen Branton loved: building construction and the United Methodist Church.
So when Volunteers in Mission sought people to help build a church sanctuary, the retired general contractor and architect immediately offered his services.
From mid-2004 until the end of 2005, he was on site nearly every day directing the construction of the new sanctuary he had designed for First United Methodist Church in Sweet Home. Branton, a member of Highland Valley UMC in Little Rock, celebrated with the congregation when the new worship space was dedicated on Jan. 1, 2006. But a little more than a year later he died while out fishing on Lake Maumelle.
To honor the late architect’s memory, members of First United Methodist Church in Sweet Home have decided to establish scholarship in Branton’s name for architectural students.
Barbara Douglas, the church’s pastor, presented a giant check for $10,000 to Branton’s four adult children, Allen, Andy, Chris and Susan and their families at the end of the church’s 135th anniversary service on June 28.
“He had given us so much,” Douglas said. “We wanted to give back to him, and this will be a good legacy for him.”
The congregation raised half of the scholarship funds, and the Brantons donated the other half. The United Methodist Foundation of Arkansas is the scholarship endowment’s trustee and is in the process of determining how the money will be distributed.
Douglas said that what the late Branton did was desperately needed. When she arrived at the Sweet Home congregation in 1999, the tiny congregation had just one room in which to worship and attend Sunday School. Only eight people regularly attended the church, Douglas said.
“People want to attend an up-to-date church that has space for fellowship,” Douglas said. “We needed space for Sunday School and our outreach programs.”
With the new sanctuary, the church was able to convert the old building into a fellowship hall and Sunday School classrooms.
Today, the church attracts between 50 and 60 worshippers each week. That’s largely because of the ministries the church now has space to provide, Douglas said. These ministries include an after-school tutoring program, a summer camp, a food pantry and a van ministry that regularly brings children in the neighborhood to the church.
Roberta Douglas, the senior pastor’s daughter, said when her mother first came to the Sweet Home congregation from west Little Rock, many in the rural Pulaski County community saw her as an outsider.
But that changed when the pastor joined in the building project.
“A group of guys used to sit around drinking outside the church,” Roberta Douglas recalled. “My mom told them ‘no,’ they couldn’t do that while she was pastor. Now those very same guys are helping to organize the food pantry and helping elderly ladies carry their food.”
Andy Branton, the late architect’s second son who lives in Little Rock, said the project was equally beneficial for his father.
“He and that project were made for each other,” the younger Branton said. “It was really a very good thing for him in his retirement to have something where he could serve.”
As he was building of the sanctuary, Eddie Branton was also building relationships with church members, volunteers and the larger Sweet Home community.
Andy Branton recalled that his father once left his tools on site overnight and they were stolen. But a member of the community tracked down the thief and made sure the architect got his tools back.
Branton said his family was very touched when Barbara Douglas suggested the scholarship.
“Eddie was a lovable old character,” Andy Branton said. “And she obviously appreciated what he did.”
