The short, saucy version is this: on November 20, 2012, an 81-year-old widow named Bette Wilson died in Birmingham, Ala. She had worked all her life, lived in a modest house and her chief known extravagance was a penchant for wearing hats to Sunday morning worship at her small Presbyterian congregation — small meaning just 16 to 18 faithful senior citizens.
A year to the day after she died, Wilson’s estate released to the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley an unforeseen windfall: $2.5 million, to be used to help establish a camp along the banks of the Cahaba River, a thread of water known both for its beauty and the diversity of its species.
Wilson attended Avondale Presbyterian Church, across the street from her house, until the tiny church shut its doors in 2010.
She was not known to be wealthy. She did not, as far as anyone knows, go camping.
Sometimes the way forward comes in plans that didn’t go quite as one expected.
More than a dozen years ago, the Presbytery of Shepphards and Lapsley came up with an idea for ministry: create a new summer camp along the Cahaba River. Using money from the sale of two previous camps that were no longer viable, the presbytery bought nearly 440 acres along the river southwest of Birmingham, and began raising money.
Getting the funds needed for new construction took, not surprisingly, considerably longer than anticipated. This all transpired during a time when some other presbyteries were selling their camps or conference centers — sometimes after years of debate and financial losses. Sheppards and Lapsley had sold the old Covenant Mountain property northwest of Birmingham — a rustic camp that had fallen into disrepair and without heating or air conditioning — for just over $1 million, using that money to purchase the land for Living River, the new Cahaba River camp.
That’s when things got tough.
“It seems like every time we got started with Living River and fundraising, something hit,” said Robert S. Hay, the presbytery’s associate executive for nurture and staff to Living River. “Literally, we kicked off the Living River campaign when Katrina hit. Here in the South in particular, nobody was going to give money for something like a camp when half the people on the Gulf Coast were homeless.”
Not long after the fundraising drives started back up, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) came to Birmingham in 2006. “That takes a lot of volunteer hours, so when General Assembly was over, many of our volunteers said ‘Hey, give us a break.’ So we laid back a little bit,” Hay said.
In 2007, fundraising picked up a bit. In 2008, the economy crashed.
Then came tornadoes in 2011.
Over time, bit by bit, the presbytery had raised $7.5 million for Living River — and had already spent more than $4.5 million to purchase and develop the land, running in electricity, water and sewer lines, building a canoe launch, paying engineers, architects and fundraisers. “It’s a beautiful piece of property,” said development director Benga Harrison. “It’s in the middle of nowhere,” so “we’ve literally had to build a small city.”
Why do all this? This presbytery had a vision for what could be — inspired both by practicality (the need for a camp to stay solvent) and a sense of what camping ministry has meant in the faith lives of many Christians. Sheppards and Lapsley “has had a real strong history of camping programs, and our identity is strongly rooted in that camping program,” Hay said.
Presbytery leaders knew they couldn’t financially start a new camp that depended solely on usage by Presbyterians. And they were inspired by the model of Camp McDowell, a camp and conference center operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, which has been successful in part by operating an environmental education program during the school year for local schoolchildren (and which will work in partnership to do the same at Living River).
“We knew we had to have something else other than weekend retreats and summer camps to be sustainable,” Hay said. “In the beginning, we looked at the environmental piece just as something to pay the bills. Because it’s taken so long (to raise the money), we talk about it being on God’s time rather than our time. It seems like every time we’re slowed down, it’s gotten better.”
With time, those involved have realized that Living River camp has two distinct missions.
Faith Flows: For some Christians, camping and retreats have been important places for spiritual development. “Every day you read Scripture,” Hay said. “Every day you’re in prayer. Every day you’re telling Jesus stories … Every day you’re in nature. You learn about God through what God has created. Every day we experience the transformation of the Holy Spirit. Every day you’re in worship — where two or more are gathered, God is there. Every day you’re in relationship.”
Creation Flows: At Living River, environmental education has grown into a significant part of the ministry — not just a financial boost. “What is the first job God gave us?” Hay asked. “That is to be good stewards of this world … We think that’s just as important as transforming people’s lives.”
In March 2013, the Living River board met and decided to push to raise funds from the nearby community. By moving ahead to build the Living River infrastructure, “we were sort of bleeding money and not bringing money in,” Harrison said. The board determined that if it could raise an additional $2 million, construction could start on six buildings — enough to get the camp up and running.
The Cahaba River “is an incredible learning laboratory,” one of the most ecologically diverse rivers in North America, Hay said. In recent studies, “they found a snail they thought had been extinct since 1870,” he said. “There are a lot of people locally who are watching us very carefully to see how we take care of the river and the property,” Harrison said. “We knew the community was really interested in possibly backing us up.”
In the preceding years, the fundraisers had already done significant outreach to Presbyterian congregations — starting with the larger ones, building relationships church by church. In time, they reached out to smaller congregations as well — starting with Avondale around 2007. After the Living River team spent about a month getting to know the Avondale congregation, the session offered to give $25,000 — a generous surprise. “We were ecstatic,” Harrison said.
By 2010, the Avondale congregation, aging and growing smaller, had decided to close the church. “They were older and they just couldn’t see any alternative,” Harrison said. When the session told the presbytery it wanted to sell the building and give the proceeds to Living River, the presbytery agreed.
The sale of the property netted about $275,000 for Living River. A few months later, after closing out all their bills, Avondale gave another $34,000 to Living River — all the money it had left. “Once again, this little church was just blowing us away,” Harrison said. “We were shocked and amazed and grateful. There aren’t enough adjectives.”
The first inklings. Around that time, Bette Wilson came to the presbytery office to say she intended to list Living River as a beneficiary in her will. The staff was grateful, but expected Wilson might leave them her modest house — they had asked around, and were told that “she’s a sweet, kind, lovely little petite lady,” but didn’t own much beyond her home.
In November 2012, Wilson died.
In January 2013, the presbytery got a call from her estate lawyer, saying that under the terms of her will, the presbytery was being given her house and her car, and that he would be back in touch.
In March 2013, the presbytery got a call from a different lawyer now in charge of the estate. The presbytery also heard from a former Avondale member who said she was interested in buying Wilson’s house and could pay cash. So the presbytery tried to set up a meeting with the new lawyer to see if it might be possible to arrange that sale.
In June 2013, Harrison and Hay landed a meeting with Wilson’s estate attorney. She asked them a lot of questions; they inquired whether it might be possible to sell the house. Finally she said: “You really don’t know what’s in this will, do you?”
The lawyer pushed across the desk a piece of paper showing that Wilson owned $1.5 million in accounts with Morgan Stanley. Another piece of paper summarized about a dozen other accounts valued collectively at more than $1 million.
“We walked out of that meeting realizing that more than likely, we would get more than $2 million” — the amount the board had been trying to raise, Hay said. “The $2 million was in Bette Wilson’s account and God knew that all along. We didn’t. But God knew.”
On Nov. 20, 2013, exactly a year after Wilson died, the presbytery received the funds. They had learned in the meantime more about the Wilsons from the Avondale congregants — who still gather together for lunch once a month.
Bette Wilson and her husband, Ross, both were only children and had no children of their own. She worked as a credit manager for an oil company for 40 years, and Ross was a mechanic for Delta Airlines. They built their 850-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath home in 1953 and stayed in it. “They never added on and they never moved,” Harrison said. “They were just extremely good stewards of their money and lived very frugally.”
Bette Wilson attended Avondale every Sunday, but her husband did not — and she never formally joined the congregation, although she did support the church financially.
With the money Wilson gave, Living River plans to construct six buildings — three youth cabins; a multipurpose building with a kitchen; a staff cabin; and a caretakers’ house — to get the camp in operation. The Living Rivers team is trying to raise additional funds for an adult lodge with meeting space.
Estimated time for completion of the new building: mid-summer 2014. Unless, of course, there are more surprises ahead.
