Hayward Roots Trip to Visit an Old Church

A slice of Hayward then and now, plus the Jang family. And Cape Cod!

From a wedding at First Methodist Church, Hayward, early 1970s. From left, Tom Coopman, Bob Kulis, the groom Gordy Kulis, and the author.

In the little town where I live, an Episcopal Church is the prettiest building there is. This is often the case in cities and towns large and small. Churches are buildings crafted with art, care, and love.

Not long ago I went to Hayward, California, the city where I grew up. In the part of the city I visited, the nicest building by far was All Saints Church on Second Street.

Not far away from All Saints is the First Methodist Church on B Street. First Methodist was the church our family went to when I was a boy. Decades have come and gone since then, and the world is much different. So is our old church.

First I went online to see what I could find out about it—what time Sunday services were being held, that sort of thing. But it didn’t have a website. That struck me as odd, so I reached out to a friend who lives in Hayward and operates a business in its distressed downtown area.

“I’m not really a church person,” he texted back. “I don’t know anything about it. But I can check if you want me to.”

I decided to investigate for myself. The church was still there all right, but it was Sunday morning and it didn’t look like there was even going to be a service. The front door was locked. Doors were boarded up. It resembled a failed business that had closed up shop.

Next door was a fitness studio, a Mexican restaurant, and a massage parlor and spa. They were all closed, although the massage parlor had little multi-colored neon bulbs in its front window that were lit up. Every now and then a vehicle passed by on the street.

There was one source of activity, however, outside a modest little white building down from the massage parlor. It was a storefront church. Its services had finished for the morning and Mexican families were out on the sidewalk chatting. Little girls wore pretty dresses and everyone was speaking Spanish.

I was standing in the parking lot of what used to be Sorensen Brothers Mortuary. The mortuary was a longtime Hayward institution, operated by the Sorensen family for more than a century. It is now a Catholic funeral and cremation center.

Sorensen’s held memories, too. It was where they prepared my dad’s body after his death. First Methodist hosted his funeral services on a dreary, rain-soaked afternoon.

My mother was a Methodist; that was how it became our church. I don’t know about my dad. I’m not sure if he was “a church person.” He liked to sleep in on Sundays. Then he got sick and had to stop work, and going to church was out of the question for him even if he had wanted to.

My mother said that the parent who is willing to get up on Sunday morning and take the kids to church—that is the parent who gets to choose what religion they belong to. Under that definition, I guess my brother and I were Methodists growing up.

To be honest, though, I could not tell you today what the difference is between a Methodist or a Lutheran or a Baptist or a Presbyterian. We did not go to church very often, even when my dad was well. And then after he died lots of things changed for our family and some of the stuff you might associate with traditional families of that era—like going to church—fell apart. My mom did her best to hold things together for us.

Finally, movement! A college-age young man in a sport coat appeared at the front door of First Methodist. He carried keys and unlocked the door, disappearing inside. After him came a fellow with long gray hair shooting out the back of his ball cap.

Then, two more people: a tall, dignified Black man named Dan (I learned later) and his twenty-something son Kyzer. They were holding church after all!

I followed them in and took a seat in the empty pews.

It turned out that we were the entire congregation, all five of us: Dan, Kyzer, the guy in the ball cap, the college kid, and me.

Dan was filling in for the pastor who was out sick that day. He delivered the sermon, on David fleeing for his life from the villainous King Saul. It was strong too, very heartfelt despite the scanty attendance.

Kyzer read the opening prayer from his phone. The college kid, a kind of jack of all trades, turned on the lights, operated the sound system, and lit the candles at the start of service and snuffed them out at the end. The fellow in the ball cap was a regular who often volunteered at church activities.

The church, from the inside, surprised me. After all these years, it actually looked pretty nice. Its lovely white column on the back wall did indeed lift your sights upward to the light beyond.

Occasionally, while Dan was talking, it was impossible for my mind not to drift back to old times and think, for instance, about my mother singing the hymns.

Man, was that embarrassing! With me standing next to her, her loud, strong, high voice soared above everybody else’s in the congregation. It felt like everyone in church had turned their heads to stare straight at me.

Later on, in my twenties, a good friend I grew up with was married in that church. He asked me to be the best man. I was honored. It has been my honor and pleasure to be the best man for three weddings in my life. Pretty darned cool, every one of them.

When I was very young, still young enough to believe in Santa Claus, our family went to a night-time Christmas Eve service at First Methodist. That was when my dad was still alive. Every seat in the house was filled. The ceremonies began at nine o’clock and featured lots of songs in which my mother’s voice rose high above the crowd.

I could not sit still. It was like I had ants in my pants. “Mom,” I kept saying to her. “We gotta go. We gotta go.”

I was in a panic. Absolutely convinced that if we did not leave that church—NOW! RIGHT NOW!—we would get home, walk through the door and… SANTA WOULD HAVE ALREADY BEEN THERE!

All my loot from Santa would already be under the tree and the thrill of opening gifts on Christmas morning would be flat-out ruined. Or, what was possibly worse, we’d walk in and catch Santa coming down the chimney.

MOM, WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME? WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!

Somehow my mother was able to resist my whining and we made it home before Santa’s appearance. Whew, what a relief!

I enjoyed my roots trip to First Methodist. Everyone was very nice. I explained that I was from out of the area and thanked them for their hospitality. It brought back some good memories.

DON’T GO YET! MORE HAYWARD STUFF…

I have written in the past about Alan Jang’s family and their landmark Hayward neighborhood grocery store, East Hills Market. The other day he sent me this April 19, 1940 clipping about his family during their farming and cherry-picking days. His sister Patty, who is the family historian, found it.

Alan and Patty are the children of Joe Jang, who ran East Hills with his brother Eddie for many years until they retired in the late 1980s. Recalls Alan: “I remember how Dad used to tell us they shipped the first cherries of every season to New York City.” This clipping is a reference to that. The farmer Jang Guy Sun was Al and Patty’s grandfather on their father’s side.

…And Cape Cod too!

Okay, that’s it for today. Nope, not quite. Mark Chester of Woods Hole, Massachusetts—who, possibly, has never even been to Hayward, can you imagine that?—continues to express admiration for the work ethic shown by yours truly. “You’re amazingly disciplined,” he writes. “A column every week! You probably recite the story aloud in your sleep by a tape recorder and let A.I. punctuate it.”

Talk about discipline! Chester, a prolific and highly regarded photographer who has been profiled on this site, has opened a new exhibition of his work at the Cape Cod Museum of Art. More to come on that in coming days, assuming my AI system continues to operate.