When Bruce Merritt, a longtime member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, volunteered to research the church’s history in preparation for its 125th anniversary, he didn’t realize that it would turn into a multiyear project.
“I’ve always loved history and when Father Mark (the Very Rev. Canon Mark Weitzel) asked if somebody would do a little exhibit on the church’s history, I volunteered,” Merritt said. “When I discovered that the church had detailed handwritten records all the way back to the 1880s, I got really interested.”
Merritt realized that — beyond the bare facts of the church’s founding and its transition into a large suburban church — was a greater story.
He set out to write not just the story of a small church in a small town, but the greater story of a congregation making its way through the flood of events shaping Southern California since the 1880s.
“The great events — the wars, the migrations, the booms and busts, the cultural and social upheavals — that changed the face of America affected the evolving St. Mark’s community,” he wrote in the preface of his just published book, “St. Mark’s Journey, the Story of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1888 – 1989” chronicling its first 100 years.
