When lighting strikes (and it has!)
With Ben Longbottom
It took a while for Spring to come to our church
this year but it did around Mother’s Day with the
flowering trees in beautiful bloom! With blooming
trees and beautiful flowers, spring also brings
thunderstorms and lightening...even to Montana.
In fact, on a spring afternoon around 1940,
lightening struck this very church. Ben and his
mother Ruby were just coming out of the back
door of their house next door and they both saw it.
Ben says the lightening split the weather vane on top of the church right in half. Ben was about 8 years old at the time and remembers it to this day.
But that’s not the only thing that happened when lightening struck. It also caused a fire in he church. When the bolt hit the weather vane, the electricity traveled through the church attic and into the balcony, going around the metal pipe railing still there today. Howard Longbottom immediately went to the church to check for damage. As he went up into the attic, he smelled smoke. The lightening had caused a small fire in the wiring which then caught the rope that rings the church bell on fire. Howard quickly put the fire out before any real damage was done. Not long after the strike, lightening rods were installed...just in case lightening should strike twice!
Oh, one more thing... Did you know that our weather vane is shaped like a Quill instead of a cross? It’s to honor the building’s heritage when it was built in 1885 as the Stevensville Grade School. It served as a school for 37 years prior to becoming our church.
With Ben Longbottom
It took a while for Spring to come to our church
this year but it did around Mother’s Day with the
flowering trees in beautiful bloom! With blooming
trees and beautiful flowers, spring also brings
thunderstorms and lightening...even to Montana.
In fact, on a spring afternoon around 1940,
lightening struck this very church. Ben and his
mother Ruby were just coming out of the back
door of their house next door and they both saw it.
Ben says the lightening split the weather vane on top of the church right in half. Ben was about 8 years old at the time and remembers it to this day.
But that’s not the only thing that happened when lightening struck. It also caused a fire in he church. When the bolt hit the weather vane, the electricity traveled through the church attic and into the balcony, going around the metal pipe railing still there today. Howard Longbottom immediately went to the church to check for damage. As he went up into the attic, he smelled smoke. The lightening had caused a small fire in the wiring which then caught the rope that rings the church bell on fire. Howard quickly put the fire out before any real damage was done. Not long after the strike, lightening rods were installed...just in case lightening should strike twice!
Oh, one more thing... Did you know that our weather vane is shaped like a Quill instead of a cross? It’s to honor the building’s heritage when it was built in 1885 as the Stevensville Grade School. It served as a school for 37 years prior to becoming our church.