By Christopher Rutty, SJWT-100th Team Lead

After last week’s service, I brought home two boxes from the church balcony that contained a variety of files, including some that had suffered some water damage. I had noticed the boxes before and thought it would be a good time to have a closer look at what they contained. Of particular interest, one of the boxes contained files of St. John's newsletters.

I proceeded to sort through the files and discovered newsletters from three periods, the earliest of which dated from October 1976 to July-Aug. 1978 when the newsletter was titled “The Carillon.” The second dated from February 1983 to January 1987 and most had “The Parish Newsletter” masthead that included a drawing of the church. The third set dated from Spring-Summer 1987 to Lent-Easter 1991 and it was simply titled, “St. John’s Church Newsletter.” Each set of newsletters reflected the work of a specific editor or editors and had a distinctive style that evolved somewhat over time.

I’ve scanned each newsletter issue from this collection and they are uploaded to a folder where they can be browsed, along with the others from 2001-04 that I’ve featured in previous articles,

http://healthheritageresearch.com/clients/SJWT-History/SJWT-Newsletters/

This collection of SJWT newsletters provide a wealth of information essential to documenting the history of the church over much of the last half century, although there are some notable gaps. I’ve yet to see newsletters dating from before 1976 and from late 1978 through the end of 1982, nor for mid-1991 through mid-2001 when Andrea Rutty edited the “St. John's Journal.” Whether or not newsletters were prepared during those periods, or I’ve not yet found them, I’m not sure. For parishioners who’ve been part of SJWT, particularly since 1991, it would be great if you could search through your files for any newsletters you can find. When researching the history of St. John’s for the 100th of our current building, there is no doubt that old news matters.