PARISHIONER REMEMBERS VALLEY CHURCH ON THE GO.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

It was billed as the biggest religious movement in the San Fernando Valley 42 years ago this month -- the two-day mission of faith that Lila Schepler and her friends embarked on to save the old Pioneer Church.

The acre of land on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth where the old wooden church had stood since 1903 -- the first house of worship in the Northwest Valley -- had been sold to a developer.

Condos, not churches, were the future in 1965. Either the Chatsworth Methodist Episcopalian Church, as it was originally named, moved or it would get knocked down.

What happened next is what makes the Valley such a unique place to live if you get off the crowded main thoroughfares, thanks in large part to groups like the Chatsworth Historical Society.

The old Pioneer Church, with its wooden pews for 100 parishioners, didn't get knocked down. It got its religious movement and became the city's 14th designated historical landmark back in 1965.

For two days, dozens of parishioners helped tow trucks guide the old church across tomato fields to an empty hillside half a mile away in Oakwood Memorial Park -- rolling it all the way on telephone pole logs.

``We moved it as far as the wash the first day, then had to wait for a man with a tractor to come and fill up that part of the wash with dirt so we could roll the church across it,'' Lila said Friday, visiting her old church at the north end of the cemetery at 22601 Lassen St. in Chatsworth.

She was just 14 when she first knelt in these pews in 1931. Last week, she turned 90.

``The cemetery was a lot smaller, and there wasn't anything up here but dirt and weeds when we moved it,'' she recalled as she walked slowly around the church with the help of a cane.

Today, the old Pioneer Church is surrounded by gravesites and still serves as an Episcopalian house of worship every Sunday.

After the church was moved here in 1965, its own parishioners began worshipping at their new church, the Chatsworth First Methodist Church, built only a few blocks from the old church.

If it hadn't been for Lila and her friends -- including cowboy movie and TV stars Roy Rogers and his wife, Dale Evans -- fighting to keep their old house of worship from the wrecking ball, the Pioneer Church would have been just another memory of what used to be in the San Fernando Valley.

Instead, it lives on.

``All the kids used to meet at night for our young people's group after we went to Sunday school and services,'' Lila said.

``We'd have weiner roasts and just talk. It was so much fun. You could walk for a mile in almost any direction and not see a house.''

She's standing at a cement marker designating the church as a historical landmark. Someone stole the marker back in the '80s but it turned up at a garage sale a few years later.

``This nice young man bought it and returned it to us,'' said Virginia Watson, Lila's good friend and curator of the Chatsworth Historical Society.

Virginia takes her friend's arm as they continue to walk slowly around the old church. Lila's eyesight may be almost gone, but there's nothing wrong with her memory.

From a 14-year-old girl in 1931, she became one of the church's most active members with her husband, Bill, who died in 2003.

It surprised no one who knew her that she would take a leading role in getting the city to designate her old church as a historical landmark and save it from the wrecking ball.

``We formed a group to raise the $2,500 it was going to cost to move the church,'' Lila said. ``Dale and Roy started it with the last $1,000 in their daughter, Debbie's, savings account.

``She had been killed a few months earlier in a bus accident. She was coming back with a group of kids from visiting an orphanage in Mexico.

``Debbie was sitting up front talking to the bus driver when one of the tires blew out and the bus crashed. Her death absolutely devastated Roy and Dale.''

It was getting chilly on this late Friday afternoon, and Lila was tired. It was time to go home and get some rest.

All the 90th birthday celebrations her friends had been throwing were finally catching up to her.

Before getting into Virginia's car, she stopped. ``You know, it's important,'' Lila said. ``Saving the past.

``How can we know where we're headed in the future unless we know where we've been? We should be proud of our past and protect it, not throw it away.''

With that, one of the last remaining leaders of the Valley's biggest religious movement 42 years ago took a long, fond look at her old Pioneer Church as Virginia drove her home.

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

[phone]

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Lila Schepler, former president of the Chatsworth Historical Society, stands in front of the Pioneer Church on the grounds of Oakwood Memorial Park on Friday afternoon.

Tom Mendoza/Staff Photographer

(2) Hallie Abel, from left, Lila Schepler, Councilman John C. Cassidy and Carl Dentzel in a January 1965 photo when the church building was moved.

Chatsworth Historical Society