Our Church Grounds ..
Article # 1.
Have you ever given much thought to the way our church grounds and surrounding areas have changed in the thirty-seven years since the ground was broken for these facilities? Let’s spend a few minutes thinking about our location and its history. Our 8.9 acres was farmland, surrounded by farmland in 1966. Just a few homes were situated between our church and “Joe Hodges Hill”. (Joe Hodges Hill got its name from a store and gas station owned by Joe Hodges that stood on top of the hill on the north side of Highway 67, before you got to the Fair Grounds.) Mr. John Morris had a store and gas station just across the highway from Joe Hodges on the opposite corner. (In 1966 both of these gas stations sold gasoline for about 28 cents a gallon.)
Between our church and Joe Hodges Hill, there was no Greenbriar, no Hawthorne, no Somerset, no Southern Manor, no Bermuda Run, no Hospital, no Main Street Shopping center, no fire station, no Lutheran Church, no Gold’s Gym, no Church of Latter Day Saints, no Cotton Ridge, no Veteran’s Memorial Parkway, just fields and farmland and empty space. We were on the “edge of town”. We saw a lot of corn, soy beans, peanuts and other crops when we looked around us. Many people thought that the Presbyterians had “moved to the country” for sure. However, our Elders and members were far-seeing and envisioned that Statesboro would be “spreading out” and that the area around GSC would grow by leaps and bounds. Now we are no longer “on the edge”, but right “smack-dab” in the middle of one of the fastest growing areas of the state.
Here is an interesting note: Did you know that Georgia Avenue came right across our property before we built, and that that street was turned to come out on Fair Road where it does today? We had a tough job training folks, especially students, to use the new road and not drive across the church yard. Planting shrubs across the old road helped, once folks stopped driving over them and gave them a chance to grow. Francis Allen was instrumental in getting the city to deed to us the old right of way for that piece of Georgia Avenue that came across our property.
The city purchased one little piece out front when Georgia Avenue was finalized and also that small portion where our sign was located for the widening of Fair Road. The money that the city paid for this small piece of property paid for our new sign. And, since the city closed one of our driveways, they provided us with a new entrance giving us access to Bermuda Run and the Hospital. Martha Benson gave a piece of property to complete our lot next to Georgia Ave. So with the giving and the selling, we still have right about 8.9 acres.
So, from our vantage point at 1215 Fair Road, we have seen neighborhoods grow and develop; have seen the corn fields disappear and become a beautiful modern hospital; have seen the traffic change from a mere trickle to the thundering roar that it is today. We have changed from the “small town” church we were on Savannah Avenue from the 40’s to the 60’s to a “Big City” church trying hard to fit into the 21st century and become the church that God intends for us to be to serve Him and bring His Message to our city and our University.
Dot Odom,
FPC Historian