There is a grainy old photograph which pictures the very first assembly at Eagle Eyrie, the Virginia Baptist assembly and conference center near Lynchburg. The photograph shows a stark contrast between architecture and people. It was taken inside English Hall, the large dining facility. The spaceship-looking modernistic hanging lights are in sharp contrast to the crowd of elderly ladies and gentlemen — old Virginia Baptist gentlefolk — seated at the front. The folks are dressed in their Sunday best for the mid-50s: silk dresses, hats and white gloves for the women and suits and ties for men. Not exactly the clothes one might expect for a summer camp meeting! The flying saucers are still there; but for the most part, the people wear dressy casual attire for the events.
For 50 years, whether in Sunday best or blue jeans, Virginia Baptists have been climbing the mountain to seek solace, inspiration and fellowship. Eagle Eyrie is a second home for all Virginia Baptists. On June 17, hundreds of Virginia Baptists will come home again for the 50th anniversary celebration. They will be dining in English Hall where the first meals were served on July 17, 1956. The first conference lasted for 10 days; and by the time the pilgrims left the mountain, the staff was ready to collapse after serving 2,900 meals. Approximately 5,000 Virginia Baptists registered for that first conference and 7,500 journeyed up the mountain across the summer and fall just to see what had come to pass.
The genesis of Eagle Eyrie goes back long before the 1950s. In the 19th century, Virginia Baptists and others enjoyed summertime camp meetings, which usually were held after the crops had been laid by. As early as the 1830s, there are reports of camp meetings in Halifax, Culpeper and the Northern Neck. Sometimes they were held in little more than brush arbors. The people would meet in a thickly wooded area. The lower branches would be cut, leaving the upper branches to form a canopy as beautiful as any cathedral ceiling. A platform would be built for the preachers and rough benches fashioned from planks. Sometimes an open-air tabernacle would be constructed. And often there were tents pitched to house the worshippers. In time, some of the “tents” became crude wooden houses used by the same families year after year.
In the 1920s and '30s, Virginia Baptists gathered at Virginia Beach, where summer encampments and assemblies were held in a large wooden building which had louvered windows that looked out upon the sea. Sunday school, Training Union and young people's missionary organizations came to Virginia Beach for conferences planned by the State Mission Board and Woman's Missionary Union. Joseph T. Watts, the imaginative and resourceful leader of the Virginia Baptist Sunday School Department, was the genius behind the encampments. The people stayed in simple little wooden buildings or in any of the several old boarding houses and hotels that lined the beach front. Virginia Baptists of today might wish that they had retained the Virginia Beach real estate!
When the Virginia Beach site closed, it first was suggested that “the Baptist school,” the University of Richmond, with its beautiful new campus, become the host. Although the idea did not prove practical, UR did become an annual summer conference site for a “Pastors' School” which began in 1929 and continued until recent years. There were occasions when Virginia Baptists used “their school” in Bristol — Virginia Intermont College — for encampments. In 1933, by invitation, the Baptists borrowed the Presbyterian assembly grounds, Massenetta Springs near Harrisonburg. There also were conferences held at Natural Bridge.
There was a growing concern that Virginia Baptists should own and operate their own facility. The Virginia Baptist Mission Board (officially known then as the Board of Missions and Education) appointed a study committee. The study was conducted while Jim Bryant was executive secretary. In November 1950, at the BGAV's annual meeting held in the First Baptist Church of Roanoke, Joseph H. Cosby reported on behalf of the committee. At the time, Cosby was pastor of Branch's Baptist Church just south of Richmond. The committee had caught a vision of purchasing a mountaintop estate known as “Eagle's Eyrie.” Cosby presented the committee's first recommendation: “That Virginia Baptists own and operate a central assembly grounds.” In good Baptist fashion, E.H. Puryear, then pastor of Lee Street Baptist Church, Danville, amended the motion to read “their own assembly grounds” so as to proudly emphasize that it would belong exclusively to Virginia Baptists. The recommendation passed.
Next came the recommendation regarding “Eagle's Eyrie,” which was to be developed as the site. It was suggested that water and sewage would not cost the denomination more than $50,000, that money from the leasing of lots for church-owned cottages would provide funds for a hotel, and that the State Mission Offering for 1951 would be dedicated to the project “to prepare the grounds, the erection of the auditorium, classrooms and other immediately needed facilities.”
As can happen in a Baptist business meeting, all of the sudden a messenger — Walter Scott, pastor of Mt. Hermon Baptist Church near Danville — offered a substitute motion, stating “that Virginia Baptists consider the facilities of Hargrave Military Academy as a summer assembly.” In February 1950, Hargrave had suffered “a terrible upheaval” with a fire which destroyed three buildings. The Baptist-affiliated school in Chatham had recovered and was rebuilding. President A.H. Camden credited the revival to the school's “type of Christian education and stamina that has stood the test and proved its worth.” Puryear jumped to the floor again and moved “that the whole matter be postponed” and another study committee be appointed. For a moment, it appeared that “Eagle's Eyrie” might not become the site.
Puryear's motion lost. Scott's motion lost. The original motion prevailed and the mountaintop won. It now was left for Virginia Baptists to fulfill the vision. Could they do it? Would they be found worthy of the vision? Next time, the rest of the story!
Fred Anderson may be contacted at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.