When the church acquired a building (now the Wilford Woodruff Building ) on the Yale Campus in the 1990s, it sold the building in Hamden to Korean Presbyterians. The chapel has not changed much, except for the cross attached to the front wall. I couldn’t post the interior photo.

The New Haven Branch > Ward has its own roster of prominent “alumni.” off the top of my head: Former bishops/branch presidents include Elder Jeff Holland, Terry Warner, the BYU philosophy professor and honors program chief, and Byron Hunter, a very lively and warm Ph.D. chemist with a number of patents, including “white rubber,” to his credit.

However, the New Haven branch was in a district that included all the congregations in Connecticut (except Fairfield County) and Western Massachusetts. I think District Presidents then (and now) reported to Mission Presidents, not to stake presidents.

The architecturally ill-suited Boston Stake Center in Weston, MA. was completed in 1966ish. At that time, the wonderful building in Longfellow Park ceased to serve as the de facto stake center.

New Haven was my first assignment as a missionary in February 1965 and it was a memorable way to begin, the stay there way too brief. Several months after I had completed my mission, I returned to New Haven for the summer (1967); three years later, I became a permanent Connecticut (Westport) resident, permanent until I moved to Boston in 1985.

New England fits nicely and wears well.

I hope you know I was kidding around about the women’s college naming thing. Actually, I am partial to Wellesley, but that’s because my daughter is a student there.

Thanks for the links to the funeral website.

Many are “special witnesses.” Your father qualifies. However, his arrousing, arresting, precise and persuasive witness distinguished him from all the others.

I wasn’t named after the women’s college. I was named after my mother’s father (Barnard Johnson Nicholls) who died two months before I was born. Not sure who _he_ was named after. His dad was a missionary in _Old_ England.

I think your journal entry was right — I think my dad was a “special witness” — though not as an Apostle, and not as a member of the Twelve.

We’ve felt an outpouring in the past months, and especially the past two days. The faith and prayers of so many have made a tangible difference.

We look forward to sharing in a wonderful service honoring our dad on Tuesday. It should be viewable live on the Web at http://thefuneralview.com/funeralservices/2009/6/2/trumangmadsen.html beginning at noon (Provo time). It should be available later at the same website as a podcast. Please pass the word for those who would like to attend but can’t make the trip.

Best,

Barney

We stumbled into each other again a few months later at a mission-wide conference in Cambridge – after we’d bequeathed those rusting, collapsing, bubblegum-and-a-prayer Romney Rockets to Back Bay Rambler. The day ended with an impromptu “after conference” in the mission home for those of us compelled to stay overnight, privileged, as it turned out. Into the wee small hours, your father held forth on various gospel principles, then painted lucid visions of the role parents will play in the resurrection.

An excerpt from my journal dated 3/30/1965 reads: “President Madsen is going to become an apostle someday soon. Not only is he brilliant, but he is humble. The Spirit of God is with him always…because he commands it so. We left Cambridge filled with the Spirit. These were truly great days in my life.”

In short, Barnard, many of us – even those you do not remember — mourn with you, your mother and the rest of the family.

I received my name and blessing from my dad in the chapel. When he was mission president (62-65), he baptized me in the font (I still have a Polaroid photo my mom took of my dad and me standing in white in the water just before he baptized me).

It was a kind of extension of the mission home (a three-story yellow clapboard), just around the corner on Hawthorne. I walked past it every day on the way to and from school.

I remember playing hide-and-seek in the hedges with Bobby Bowden. I learned to ride a bike (my older sister’s light blue girl’s bike!) going around the oval (Longfellow Park). I still remember the nursing/cry room off the chapel, the smell in the gym, the time “The 3Ds” performed there, and a fireside with President Hugh B. Brown in the Relief Society Room.

The Y is having a symposium on “Sacred Space” next week. The Cambridge Chapel was that (and will be that again after rising from the ashes) for all the reasons people have mentioned here.

Barnard N. Madsen
Provo, UT
(The “littlest missionary”, 1962-65)

I suppose there is a sad irony to be found in the fact that fire preceded Truman Madsen’s death by a few days. He was such an integral part of the meetinghouse, the congregation and practically everything that is Mormon in New England (first as a missionary, then a graduate student, then mission president, later as a visiting scholar).

It is a shame President Madsen won’t be around to see the building rise from the ashes.

Ron Scott
Dover, MA.
(New England missionary 1965-1967)