33◦ 47’ 13” N, 117◦ 54’ 12” W.

AKA The Crystal Cathedral

(Crystal Cathedral Ministries
12141 Lewis Street
Garden Grove, CA 92840)

http://www.crystalcathedral.org/

On the South side of Chapman Ave., just West of Lewis St. in Garden Grove…way back in ….oh, I think it was 1969, there was a street called Jetty Circle. On that street, in a second story apartment, lived an 11 year-old named Tracie Douglas who attended 6^th grade at Lampson elementary. But this isn’t so much an introduction to the girl (yours truly), as it is to where she lived.

Today, you can find Jetty Drive on the East side of Chapman---and I really can’t tell you if that was there when I was, because I had no reason to explore neighborhoods across Chapman. It probably was there. At any rate, it is now, and since it appears to be placed just across from where my old street had been—it’s probably safe to say my street was the continuation and end of that street. At any rate, Jetty Drive has no real significance here, accept as a means to pinpoint the street upon which, for my 6^th grade year, I lived.

In that year, (the year after Los Angeles and before San Clemente), the prominent features were the apartment complex’s pool, the winding paths through the complex that I roller-skated on, and the concrete ravine right behind our apartment, that had to be the reason for the seasonal multitude of baby toads that were a challenge not to step on.

A very short walk or bicycle ride from my apartment on Jetty Cr., East, could get you to the Garden Grove Community Drive-in Church without having to cross any streets---in fact, cutting through the walnut orchard was the fastest route. But on bike, it was preferred to take the sidewalks around to the driveway off Lewis (it’s only driveway then). It was the oddest church I’d ever seen; a tall square skyscraper of dark glass topped by a cross (called the “Tower of Hope”) with speakers on posts in the parking lot and the surface of the parking lot being a series of troughs and crests designed to aim cars up at a non-existent movie screen. I found it fun to cut through the lot on my way to see friends near my school (on Lampson), especially if they were with me and had not practiced riding with no hands over the troughs and crests as I had. Yes, I confess, there’s always been a bit of a competitive show-off in me.

Reverend Robert Schuler was a recognizable name even then, because one of my friend’s Mom’s watched him weekly on television’s “The Hour of Power”. I always worried if I rode through the parking lot on a Sunday that I’d get caught by a television camera playing in my non-churchy clothes, looking all sacrilegious, so I never did.

My other connection at that time was that my Dad’s good friend, John Plumer Ludlum, a local Tustin artist, had painted a large magnificent (from what I hear, and what I’ve seen of his other pieces [http://www.harborgallery.com/home.cfm?dir_cat=7086 ]) painting with fluorescent paints, valued at thousands of dollars, which he’d called “The Nativity”, and had donated to the church. It had to live in storage for lack of any place to display it. Unfortunately I never saw the painting before it succumbed to water damage.

About 10 or 11 years later I brushed up with the Garden Grove Community Church again when the lady who entered my life as my supervisor when I became a switchboard operator at Santa Ana Tustin Community Hospital soon became a friend. The first time I went to visit her at her home I was surprised to discover she lived across the street from where I had, in that neighborhood on the East side of Chapman that I’d never explored, and was a devoted member of the church’s congregation. And then again, too, shortly before I departed the employ of Huntington Beach Public Library, an Administrator retired to go work for a fund raising division of the Crystal Cathedral. There are a few buildings I have multiple links to like this. Considering the stature of this building and it’s founder I suppose it’s no surprise I’d know many Orange Countians who attend or are involved with it. I probably know more than I realize.

OK, all of that just to say that a couple of weeks ago my friend, Tanya, and I visited the Garden Grove Community church (--turned “Crystal Cathedral” in 1980 when Philip Johnson and John Burgee erected the “crystal” structure). Although I’d driven by the church many many times since living there, and had even visited it for a service once or twice and to see “The Glory of Christmas”, I was still a little surprised at the number of buildings there, the memorial grounds, statuary, memorial wall, fountains, and just it’s over-all gradual transformation from drive-in, to Crystal Cathedral grounds. The church’s many structures having multiplied like so many Monopoly pieces, take up a much larger footprint, and I believe my old apartment was right about where the Robert Schuler Center now stands—a much better, and more attractive use of the land.

Below are the photos I took while Tanya and I were there. For more photos, try the Crystal Cathedral’s own photo gallery at http://www.crystalcathedral.org/visitors/gallery/index.htm.