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Salvation Army Seattle Temple Corps Our 15 Passenger Van is a page about a 15 passenger band my wife, Bonna, and I bought to use with our work in The Salvation Army Seattle Temple Corps.
| We are pretty sociable people and we were planning on doing a lot of work with kids, so we bought a 15 passenger van. Our Young People would not take anything away from the Seattle Temple Corps if we went on any trips. That van was dedicated to the Lord and was used to bring people to Him through the Seattle Temple Corps and it had many other uses. |
| We were on the way to the corps one day for the Sunday morning festivities when Bonna spotted a woman walking along the sidewalk towards the corps pushing a baby in a stroller. Bonna said, "Hey, isn't that the woman that the corps hired to take care of the nursery?" How on earth would I know? I can't remember my own name from one day to the next. We were only a few blocks from the corps so we went on ahead and parked the van. Bonna kept a lookout for the woman and when she found her, she went to her and asked her why she was walking to the corps. She had been walking, pushing her baby in the stroller, four miles to the corps each Sunday morning and four miles home because she didn't have enough money to ride the bus. We began stopping by her home each Sunday to give her a ride to the corps and then we would take her home again. |
| Bonna is a shopper. Her favorite channels are QVC and HSN. To the North of Seattle is a discount shopping mall. To the East of Seattle is a discount shopping mall. To the South of Seattle is a discount shopping mall. To the West of Seattle, through Tacoma, is a discount shopping mall. The Seattle area is shopping mall heaven. Bonna decided one day that she wanted to go to one of the discount shopping malls and she didn't want me with her. Apparently, I'm not good enough to go to a discount mall with her. The first thing we do at a shopping mall is split up. We pick a spot in the mall, set a time for meeting and don't see each other again until the appointed time. Bonna decided she wanted to go shopping with a bunch of women. It turned out that every two months or so, Bonna would load 14 other women from the Seattle Temple Corps into our van and head out for a discount mall. No ladies were ever left out. Anybody who wanted to go to a discount mall was invited. It wasn't just the soldiers of the corps who went with Bonna. She attended the Home League meetings every week and a lot of those women weren't soldiers of the corps. They were included as well. |
| When we first got to Seattle, our Divisional Commander was George Church. When a married male is appointed Divisional Commander, his wife is appointed to oversee women's activities in the Division. I would venture to say that nobody knew how much Mrs. Church cared for the ladies in her flock. She was a good shepherd, but I'll bet nobody knew what she did for the ladies in the Northwest Division. One day, Mrs. Church came to Bonna and asked for her help. She gave Bonna a list of some ladies in the Seattle Temple Corps. Some were in the Home League and some were soldiers in the corps. She told Bonna that she wanted to make sure that every woman on the list was invited to the Home League Rally in Spokane. She thought maybe some of them had not been informed of the rally. This list was not of the "important" ladies in the Seattle Temple Corps Home League. Some of them were the "wallflowers" who were just there. Bonna talked to them about the Home League Rally and sure enough, nobody had bothered to tell them about it or to invite them to go. Bonna filled up our 15 passenger van with these ladies and two van loads of ladies from the Seattle Temple Corps went to Spokane for the Divisional Home League Rally all because the Divisional Commander's wife cared enough for them to go out of her way to make sure they were invited and had transportation. |
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One day, Dotti got married. Dotti had been an officer in the Eastern Territory. The guy she married was an older man who was a little heavy set. Both Dotti and her husband had medical conditions which weren't too great. The guy she married was pretty much known as "Dotti's Husband." He didn't move too fast and he didn't talk too much. However, I would sit and talk with him frequently. I found out he was a fisherman and one day he told me he had caught a bunch of perch. I told him I hadn't had any perch since I left Wyoming. He invited me and Bonna to his home so he could cook us some perch. He was a pretty good cook and the perch tasted great. One night around 10 o'clock, Dotti called me and asked if we could take her husband to the hospital in our van. I asked if she needed an ambulance and she said it wasn't that kind of problem so I took him in the hospital in our van. I did this on several occasions and people would ask, "Why on earth are you taking this guy to the hospital in your van? Why can't they take the bus or get a cab?" Well for one thing, they didn't have a lot of money. For another thing, I knew something about Dotti's husband nobody else knew. When Dotti's husband was a teen ager, he enlisted in the Navy. He went to sea. One day he found himself on a ship that was being hammered by the Japanese Navy. As his ship took a pounding, it began to come apart. There were explosions and fire was everywhere. His ship was shot up pretty badly and men were trapped below burning decks screaming for help. Dotti's husband crawled through the smoke and flames with explosions going off and shrapnel flying everywhere. He grabbed one of the other sailors and dragged him to the top deck. He went back into the smoke and flames and grabbed another wounded sailor and dragged him topside. Six times, Dotti's future husband got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the smoke and flames to drag a wounded sailor to safety. He saved six sailors in one action on one day when he was a teen ager. Dotti's husband received the Silver Star for his courage under fire. It was a privilege for me to drive him anywhere he wanted to go. |
| One day Bonna got a phone call from George Gray. George Gray was a Canadian who had been imported to be the Seattle Citadel Bandmaster and Songster Leader. By the time Bonna and I moved back to Seattle from Texas the second time, he was neither. He was the leader of the Seattle Temple Corps Seniors' program. He had planned a field trip to take our senior citizens to the Whitecenter Corps to meet with their group for lunch and a program of some kind. When George got to the Seattle Temple Corps, he was told there was no transportation for the group. George called Bonna and asked if they could use our van. Bonna said, "Sure." Then she took the van to the corps. There were two empty 15 passenger vans in the Corps parking lot but they weren't available to the seniors. Bonna not only loaned them our van, but drove them to the Whitecenter Corps and spent the day with them then drove them back to their homes. Our van was available to anybody who needed it and it was used quite a bit, especially for the Young People's Band. |
| Visit Salvationist.org. Register to find old Salvation Army friends. Tell which Salvation Army corps you have attended in the past and now. Your friends will be able to find you. We've found friends we hadn't seen in thirty years within minutes after registering. |
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| Tell your Salvation Army friends about this website. Chapter Ten about our Seattle Temple Corps Experience is going to be very interesting, but you have to read every chapter in order to understand Chapter 10. You won't be disappointed. |
Dan
Ross Bonna Ross Jordana Ross Dan & Bonna Ross Dan and Bonna Ross
drdan71, drdan71@aol.com cornucopiagenealogica 09/30/03
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