Temple Terrace Community Church Celebrates 70 Years

will celebrate its 70th anniversary Sunday. The public is welcome to attend the festivities:

• communion in the historic chapel, 9:45 to 10:15 a.m.
• fellowship and coffee, 10:15 a.m.
• a worship service  in the sanctuary, 10:45 a.m.
• chapel re-dedication and picnic-style luncheon in the parish hall and outdoor patios, 12:10 p.m.

In honor of the church’s 70th anniversary, Temple Terrace Patch has summarized TTCC’s history. Information for this article came from interviews with: Bonnie Wagner, wife of the Rev. Paul Wagner and former TTCC member, secretary and clerk; TTCC Pastor Ted T. Fielland; and the book “Temple Terrace: The first 50 Years” by Cleo N. Burney.

Five pioneer families founded what became Temple Terrace Community Church in 1941: Ethel and Tom Cureton; Eloise and Marcus Peterson; Clifford (Skipper) and Bass Richardson; Ruth and Harry Roller; and Corrine and Frank Smith.

The then-Sunday Church School first met in homes of the founders, then in Club Morocco, which is now a dormitory at . When the late-night parties overflowed into Sunday, it was time to find another location. Classes moved to a frame school building on Woodmont Avenue (now ).

Sixty-four people attended the first meeting of the Sunday Church School in fall 1941. Boy and girl scouts formed the first choir.

“Gas was rationed and a round trip drive to a Tampa church was about 30 miles,” said Wagner. Residents of all age groups and all religions gathered at the non-denominational church school.

New Temple Terrace residents purchased land with a traditional down payment. In addition to the home site, they also received a Temple orange grove. The thought was that the fruit from the crop would more than pay for grove maintenance and their mortgage payment.

The depression hit Temple Terrace before 1929. The Florida real estate market collapsed in late 1926. Buyers defaulted on payments and building stopped. The final blow came in 1927 when a winter freeze destroyed the local orange crop. A second freeze in winter 1928-29 destroyed the tree stock. There were 17 homes in the community. Properties without homes went back to the bank. The orange groves and the tractors in the fields were abandoned.

The Temple Terrace Estates administration building, a domed building at the corner of Inverness Avenue and Belle Terre Avenue, was in poor condition before the depression. It sat empty and boarded up through the 1930s. In 1941, the city offered use of the building to the Sunday Church School. The church had to repair it and use it exclusively for religious services.

The building was cleaned, windows replaced and doors repaired.

“The congregation brought wood to the site using mules hitched to a buckboard and built 12 pews,” said Fielland. Two of those original pews remain in the chapel and four others are on church property.

The first session of the Community Church School took place in October 1941. By fall 1943, the Sunday Church School had grown into the TTCC.

Temple Terrace enjoyed a housing growth spurt in the 1950s. The church added a worship service. The broke ground in 1958, which brought many families and new churches to the area.

Omar K. and Louise Lightfoot moved from Miami in 1953 to Temple Terrace to build homes.

“They donated property north of the original site for a church sanctuary,” said Wagner.

Frank Valenti, a Temple Terrace resident, architect and church member designed the sanctuary that was dedicated in 1964. Karl J. Mueller of Mueller Studios in Zephyrhills created and installed the sanctuary’s European-style stained glass windows.

The Rev. Orva Lee Ice became ill in the late 1960s, and the Rev. Paul J. Wagner, founder of the Palma Ceia United Methodist Church, was called to serve on a part-time basis in 1968.

TTCC originated the city’s Art Festival along their sidewalks in 1974. After three years, the event grew too big for church grounds so the city took it over. The Temple Terrace Woman’s Club, Temple Terrace Junior Woman’s Club and the Temple Terrace Chamber of Commerce formed the Temple Terrace Arts Council in 1977 to promote and support growth of the arts in Temple Terrace. The takes place annually in Riverhills Park.

The parish hall was refurbished and a church school addition was built during the 1980s, as well as a suite of church offices that adjoined the parish hall. The John Ames parlor (narthex) was added to the sanctuary in 1982.

Fielland was called to pastor the church in spring of 1997. Fielland, an ordained Methodist minister, was then serving in Plant City. It wasn’t until June when the family moved to Temple Terrace that he realized that his wife’s family was among the original pioneer families that founded the Sunday Church School in 1941. Marsha Fielland’s maternal grandmother was Eloise Petersen.

The church was founded to serve all religions of the community. The tradition of serving the whole community, regardless of previous church affiliations and denominations continues today.

The chapel dome was repaired in 2005 and Fielland saw a cross section of the original roof. He said he thinks the dome was a tribute to the city’s status as an early residential golf course community.

“There was no orange paint among the original layers,” said Fielland. “I believe the dome was not designed in the image of an orange but a golf ball instead.”