I Come To The Garden Alone and Chief Lone Eagle

 

My thanks to Phil Gambrel who brought back this memory.

According to an article in the NW Indiana Times, quoting his Native American historian nephew and namesake Lone Eagle, Chief Lone Eagle, of Hammond, was a popular wrestler who was world heavyweight champion from 1948 to 1952.http://www.nwitimes.com/…/article_d1d01342-db9a-5fa4-bccf-1…

In the early 60's he worked with my uncle Art Cummings in the steel mills. Uncle Art was a construction welder. Chief Lone took advantage of his great physical condition to work as a laborer. Uncle Art invited him to Gary Aetna Church of the Nazarene, where the Bill and Carol Dittmer family also attended . Uncle Art had lived Hammond, Indiana when Chief Lone Eagle could be seen wrestling on Chicago TV, and Uncle Art was an avid wrestling fan. He was very excited about Chief Lone Eagle attending our church.

In 1964 or so, I was there when Chief Lone Eagle prayed to receive Jesus. He called my Dad Bill Dittmer to come by his home and pray because Chief recently learned that his wife had cancer. I got to go with Dad on this call, and Dad prayed with him to receive Jesus, then helped Chief pour all his liquor down the sink. It took a while. Chief had a large collection of liquor. Soon after, Chief Lone Eagle's wife was healed of cancer. Pretty cool, huh?

Chief Lone Eagle loved to sing about Jesus, and I was his accompanist on the piano. I Come to the Garden Alone was his favorite song. He was asked to sing at several churches, and when we went out, Chief Lone Eagle went out in full regalia, just like the picture. That full sized head dress is real eagle feathers, and Chief Lone Eagle was an authentic Chief. He would have a kid from the audience come up and punch him in the stomach, Chief let me hit him in the stomach once. It was like hitting a cement block.

Chief later drifted from God. He was working on the dike as a laborer that went out a mile into Lake Michigan, the end of which was a huge water inlet for city water.

I worked next to that dike as an electricians apprentice and saw how the cement trucks would unload cement onto the fork lifts, and the drivers would hurry to end of the dike. The drivers couldn't see out the front because that's where the load was. They drove like mad men.

A fork lift loaded with wet cement hit Chief Lone Eagle, went over the edge of the dike and into the lake with him and pinned him to the bottom of the lake in 60 feet of water. A crane operator dropped a hook to where they guessed he was. The water was too murky to see. They pulled up the hook, and had fortunately snagged the fork lift, with Chief Lone Eagle clinging to it. Chief asked God to save him while on the bottom. He stayed true after that.

I saw Chief Lone Eagle after that, in the early 80s, at a week long Zone Rally and Youth Revival at Hammond 1st Church of the Nazarene. I had just taken the role of pastor at Griffith Church of the Nazarene a few weeks earlier. At the Zone Rally I was helping on the piano. There were several hundred people from multiple Churches of the Nazarene in the area attending the services.

I loved playing Nazarene hymns. I played the evangelistic style with octave melody and octave bass notes that alternated with chords in a strong rhythmic style, similar to honky tonk. I added in double octaves, triplet runs, Floyd Cramer. The more stuff I put in, the louder the crowd sang. The louder they sang, the more stuff I would put in. At the Cross, Power In the Blood, When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, they hit all my favorites that week.

Rev. Crawford Howell, pastor of the !st Hammond Church of the Nazarene host church, led the singing every night and told jokes. He said one time he and I were at a revival when somebody hollered THE PIANO PLAYER IS A JERK! A moment later a drunk stood up and "I don't know who said THE PIANO PLAYER IS A JERK, but what I want to know is WHO CALLED THAT JERK A PIANO PLAYER?!

Chief Lone Eagle was there every night. When I'd pass him walking down to the piano, he'd say HI MIKE!, loud enough for everyone to hear, then announce to everybody "He played the piano for me!!"

Unbeknownst to me, the zone was taking up a love offering for Lynne and me and daughters Rebecca and Wendelyn. Becky was in first grade. Wendy was still in a stroller. We had not told anybody we had just run out of food. The week before, Denny and Jeanie Middleton, fellow Nazarene Bible College students and pastor at nearby Gary Aetna Church of the Nazarene had invited themselves over for the evening.

We made sure there was food for the girls, but we had just run out of everything else that night, except for the ingredients for a cake. I had been promised a good job, but it hadn't come through yet. Lynne and I determined not to tell anyone.

After we had cake and coffee with the Middleton's, Jeanie started asking a lot of personal questions about how we were doing financially, then got up and went through all our cabinets and refrigerator. The next day groceries were dropped off at our house.

Jeanie also passed the word on to the zone. On Saturday, after the Zone Rally, they presented us with a pickup truck load of groceries and a $600 love offering. Chief Lone Eagle was there in the front row. He was beaming.

The groceries filled all the cabinets. We arranged the surplus on the floors.

Chief Lone Eagle died in 1988.