The 1930 census lists the population of San Rafael at 8,023, and the 1950 at 13,848 - an increase of about 72 percent. In the next decade, it increased 48 percent to 20,460. In the thirty years from 1930 to 1960, San Rafael grew at a rate of nearly 150 percent. From 1960 to the present (1988), it doubled again.
St. Paul's was already growing when the war ended in 1945. During that winter, as reconstruction began in Europe and Asia, and American servicemen and women returned from the theaters of war, St. Paul's welcomed a new rector, The Reverend Noble Owings. The United Nations was formed in San Francisco that fall, and the people of St. Paul's, with the rest of the world, were filled with hope of turning swords into plowshares. Many returning servicemen once stationed in the Bay Area returned to Marin to establish homes and find jobs. The parish welcomed them, but also remembered those not so fortunate. The church records and scrapbooks describe drives to collect clothes to send overseas. This was the continued work of the women's guilds, which, though always active in the parish, flourished even more during the decades of the 1950's and 1960's. In addition to the groups that met in the afternoon, a new group for professional women and mothers of small children - the Service League - was formed with meetings in the evenings.
The FTNers continued and recorded the beginning of the baby boom. Birth announcements fill the pages of their scrapbooks in the 1950's, and the rector and his wife, Ruth, joined in the boom with the addition of three little ones during their stay in San Rafael.
By 1948, two sessions of Sunday School were needed to accommodate the number of children attending. The number increased by 45 percent to 150. Grades one through eight met from 9:30 to 10:30, and the kindergarten and nursery children from 11:00 to noon, while their parents were in church. Mr. Owings and the choir began broadcasting on KTIM on Sunday afternoons. The choir rotated with other choirs in the County.
California was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Gold Rush in 1949, and the Diocese of California - including St. Paul's - was preparing to host the Triennial Convention of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco. They also celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer. From the convention came a new canon that limited the term of vestrymen to three years, followed by at least one year off the vestry before standing for election again. This would allow new men to take part in the decision making of the parish. Women were still excluded. The police action in Korea continued and the Cold War accelerated and the fear of communism spread throughout the country. The State of California and Marin County decided to require public employees to sign a loyalty oath to the United States. The argument that ensued divided the parish, causing wounds that required some time to heal.
In the fall of 1951, when Mr. Owings accepted a call to a church in the Diocese of Los Angeles, The Reverend Henry Getz accepted a call to St. Paul's. The major problems facing the new rector in 1952 were more space and more ecclesiastical assistance.
The rector and the vestry solved the problem of help by hiring seminarians from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley. Among the list of seminarians serving in the early 1950's were Jack McFerran, William E. Campbell, and the Reverend W. Francis B. McGuire, a priest from the church in Ireland attending the seminary in preparation to transfer to the Episcopal Church in the United States. In addition to his ecclesiastic duties, he taught the parish the Irish jig. Seminarians helped with the Sunday School and youth groups, but as the parish grew, full time help was needed. St. Paul's first curate, Henry King, was hired in May, 1957, and ordained at St. Paul's to the Diaconate and then to the Priesthood later that year.
The problem of space was more difficult to solve. The Guild Hall was extremely overcrowded for the Sunday School. At one time, classes for the small children were held in a house in San Anselmo. Even two sessions of Sunday School did not relieve the situation. In 1955 the present building with parish hall on the main floor and offices above was erected. The total cost was $48,900, raised by an every-member canvass requiring forty-five callers, chaired by Norman B. Livermore, Jr. They called on over three hundred members of the parish. The old Guild Hall was moved to Albert Park, where it became the Louise A. Boyd Science Museum, and is still occupied as the Marin Wildlife Center [now WildCare Terwilliger Nature Education and Willife Rehabilitation].
During the next few years, additional space was provided on the premises by the purchase, for $35,000, of the lot next to the church on the south side. The house occupying the property was demolished, and the lot made into a much needed parking lot. More space was acquired when a new rectory was purchased in Villa Real. The old rectory was then used for additional Sunday School space and a home for the curate, Mr. King.
At times in the 1950's and 1960's as the old church became more and more crowded, some members of the parish considered tearing it down and replacing it with a more modern and larger structure. Also considered was the possibility of selling the property and moving from downtown. One site selected was in Fairhills. Present and future generations who love the old Victorian Gothic building can be thankful for the stout hearts who held out for keeping the old church. The wisdom and grace of God revealed.
As the city of San Rafael grew to the north and to the east, new developments such as Marinwood, Terra Linda, Lucas Valley, Loch Lomond, Glenwood and Peacock Gap provided the American dream of owning a home for all the new families. St. Paul's solved the space problem for years to come when the vestry decided to sponsor two new missions in the fast growing areas: The Church of the Nativity in Marinwood, and The Church of the Redeemer in the McNear ranch house in Glenwood. A year later St. John's and St. Paul's together sponsored St. Augustine's in Fairfax.
Growth was not the only change in the 1950's. Women were accepted in the decision making positions in the parish. Since the very beginnings of the church nearly one hundred years before, they had filled many roles--Sunday School teachers and superintendents, Altar Guild workers, and dedicated fundraisers with their beautifully organized teas, festivals and fetes. At last they were admitted to the vestry. Mrs. Thomas Scott Brooks, long term Superintendent of the Sunday School, was the first, and Mrs. Harry Johnson the second.
The most artistic addition to the church in the 1950's was the completion of the stained glass windows on the north side of the church, and of the rear one on the south side. The north windows were in memory of Elizabeth Jadwin Anderson and Frank Barton Anderson, and of Emilie Chapman Rathbun and Robert Packer Rathbun. The addition on the south side memorialized DeWitt Clinton Deringer and Nona Caroline Deringer. Robert Coman gave windows in the narthex in memory of his father, Edwin Coman, a long-time vestryman at St. Paul's. Other memorials included a plaque to the memory of Mr. Bradley, and Philippine mahogany doors between the narthex and the nave in memory of William Babcock, another long time vestryman and Senior Warden. Donations were made for pews in memory of various former members of the parish, and the rose window was completely restored.
The women's guilds provided clothes and entertainment items for needy and ill children in Sitka, Alaska. Other outreach of the parish was performed when a refugee family from Indonesia arrived in San Rafael. They were invited to stay in the old rectory until they could find employment and a permanent home.
Mr. Getz, as previous rectors, served in civic positions in addition to his work in the parish. He was a member of the board of directors of the San Rafael Military Academy, the Rotary Club Executive Board, and the Red Cross. He was also Dean of the Marin Convocation. As the decade ended, he resigned as rector of St. Paul's to accept a call to a parish in Scottsdale, Arizona.
St. Paul's New Parish Hall, 1958
