Religion: Christ in Yucca Valley

All last week the men of Yucca Valley, Calif. (pop. 1,200) strained and sweated in the sunshine to haul the three-ton statue up the hill to its pedestal above the highway. The women brought pails of grape juice and coffee; the town’s one-man chamber of commerce provided hamburgers. And each evening they gathered to pray and give thanks for the big concrete statue of Christ that had come in answer to the work and prayers of Eddie Garver.

Los Angeles-born Eddie Garver says he “grew up a mean kid.” His parents were itinerant Baptist preachers, but when Eddie went to church it was only to “get into fights and aggravate Father. Once I tried to knife a guy in front of the church. And I meant to kill him, too.” When he was 14 a truck ran over Eddie, and he spent the next eleven years in & out of hospitals. One night during this ordeal he was “converted to Christ.”

First-Name Praying. In 1944, when he was 28, Eddie was ordained a minister of the small California-based United Fundamentalist Church. Two years later he felt “the call of the Lord” to trek out 135 miles east of Los Angeles to the hot dusty, desert village of Yucca Valley. With a war-surplus tent, a little furniture and an ancient automobile, Eddie Garver and his wife and baby daughter homesteaded five parched, cactus-stippled acres of Government land. It was a full year before his neighbors knew that the odd-job man who was so interested in getting a Church started was really an ordained minister.

He built his church himself, almost without help—a tiny (1,400 sq. ft.) building of frame and stucco, on which he owed less than $500 when he was through. Surprised and delighted, Yucca Valley flocked in, set up a community church and voted to pay Eddie Garver the offerings of the first Sunday in each month (about $70).

Today, 35-year-old Eddie Carver is the pastor and friend of almost every one of Yucca Valley’s citizens. More than half of them are in the desert town for the sake of their health, like the Cadillacquered swarms that come to sun themselves in luxury at nearby Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs. But Yucca Valley’s residents are likely to drive beat-up 1939 Chevrolets or Fords, when they drive at all. For them, Pastor Eddie’s church is the center of the community; there are woodworking and leatherworking classes for the children, community picnics, full-moon hayrides, Christmas carolings. The services are warm and informal, with a minimum of doctrine, and plenty of hymn-singing and first-name praying for people in the valley.

When Pastor Eddie Garver wants something for his people, he prays and it happens. With no money, a church bell seemed out of the question, but Eddie prayed hard and “God delivered eleven bells from which the community could choose one.” God’s agent in this case was the religion editor of the Los Angeles Times, whose story on the “desert parson” moved Times readers to offer eleven bells for Yucca Valley.

Easter Sunrise. Last year Pastor Eddie decided the church should have an outdoor shrine with a big figure of Christ to dominate the valley. He made one himself out of plywood and propped it up on the mountainside. But he wanted something better, and it wasn’t long in coming. A motorist, who had seen his wooden Christ, sent the local gas station a newspaper clipping which told about the Christ of Antone Martin.

Antone Martin, a worker in Los Angeles’ Douglas Aircraft factory, had built a 10-ft. Christ out of concrete. There was plenty of demand for it from the churches—even super-mortuary Forest Lawn had put in a bid—but 63-year-old Antone insisted that his statue be identified with no denominational or “pecuniary” interest and that it be put up where it could be seen for miles around. For a year Sculptor Martin’s Christ waited in his backyard, looming with arms outstretched.

When he read about it, Eddie Garver knew at once that the statue had been waiting for him and Yucca Valley. Last fortnight he trundled it out into the desert in his dilapidated blue truck, which seems to run by faith almost as much as he does.

On Easter morning, Eddie Garver and his parishioners gathered by the statue before dawn. By the time the first light broke over the hills, more than 200 cars were lined up near by. Eddie Garver gave thanks to the resurrected Christ and asked God’s blessing for Yucca Valley. As he finished, the Easter sun bathed the valley, the worshipers and the new statue in bright yellow light.