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RECALL HENDRY HISTORY; DURING ITS 108 YEARS, BETHANY BAPTIST HAS HAD 43
PASTORS; FIVE OF THEM HAVE HAD THE SURNAME HENDRY Once again, at least temporarily, Myakka City's Bethany Baptist Church is in the hands of a Pastor Hendry. The Southern Baptist congregation, five miles east of the DeSoto Speedway on State Road 64, has been shepherded by five members of the Rev. A.O. Hendry's family during its 108 years. He served there for 21 years himself, until his retirement in 1994. Now that the Manatee County church is between pastors, he's back on an interim basis. "To me, the church is Hendries," says Jackie Wingate, a longtime member who lives next door to Bethany Baptist and serves on its cemetery committee. Bethany Baptist is a little country church on an oak-sheltered property that has been its home for more than a century. It has two sanctuaries: the main one, built in 1974, and a smaller sanctuary built in 1904 that has been restored and is used for weddings, funerals and other special events. A wall in the old building displays portraits of the 43 past preachers - among them, Hendry, his father and grandfather, and two uncles. The congregation organized in 1888 under the name Manatee Baptist Church of Christ. After what a church history describes as "hard, lean years," the discouraged membership dissolved in 1890. But the next year, the life of the congregation became intertwined with the branches of Hendry's family tree. Services resumed under A.O. Hendry's grandfather, the Rev. James Madison "Boss" Hendry, who served the church for a year. He was a Georgia native who had been a Union soldier. "He was opposed to slavery, so he went North and fought up there," his grandson says. He says Boss Hendry started 129 Florida churches as a circuit-riding preacher. In those days, a preacher might serve several congregations, and each church would only have services every month or six weeks. When the preacher came around, though, the meetings would last for three days. Boss Hendry also is said to have given the town of Arcadia its name in 1886, after Arcadia Albritton, a little girl. "There are other stories, but that's the most predominant one and the most likely," says Arcadia historian Howard Melton. Boss Hendry supposedly met the child while staying with her family. Boss Hendry had 17 children - 11 by his first wife, the rest by his second. Two sons succeeded him as preachers at Bethany Baptist, the name the church took in 1894. The Rev. Euliff Lardner Hendry served from 1910 to 1913. His younger brother, the Rev. Andrew Alexander "Alex" Hendry, was the father of the current pastor. Alex Hendry served at Bethany Baptist from 1949 to 1951 and from 1958 to 1964. For the last 13 years of his life, he was blind and continued to preach. In between the Hendry brothers, in 1939, the Rev. Linton Wesley "Bud" Mills was called for a year to Bethany Baptist Church. He was the brother-in-law of the current pastor's mother. A.O. Hendry became pastor at Bethany Baptist in 1973. During his 21 years there, the congregation built $390,000 worth of new structures - a parsonage across the road and, on the church property, a caretaker's home, auditorium, dining hall and two educational buildings. "And didn't owe a dime," Hendry says. He and his wife, Trudy, have five daughters and 18 grandchildren. Two sons-in-law are Southern Baptist preachers. A third, Gary Helton, is chairman of Bethany Baptist's deacons. A granddaughter, Angie Smith, teaches Sunday school there. Pastor Hendry's sister, Alice Moye, has been the church's pianist for 22 years. In fact, Jackie Wingate says, many of the congregation members are related to Hendry and to one another in some way. And Hendry County is named for a cousin of the pastor. Hendry retired from Bethany Baptist in 1994, but later served as interim preacher at Oneco Baptist, Sarasota's Kensington Park Baptist, and Arcadia's Oak Hill Baptist. On July 2, he had quintuple-bypass heart surgery. He was told by his doctor to take it easy for six months. But Bethany Baptist needed Hendry to come back, while a committee searches for a new preacher to replace one who recently resigned. The second week after his operation, Hendry conducted two weddings and preached two services. "But that's nothing to brag about. That's just the Lord did that," Hendry says. This week, he'll serve as principal of the Vacation Bible School. Bethany Baptist members say whispers have gone around that the church may be closing but that's not true. "We'll be around for 108 more years," Wingate says. Contributed by Norita Moss |