Chat with Cat: Good Times at Left Bank

Over the years, the Left Bank building has been many things. It has housed a sewing room, some of the Conference Center offices, and the summer staff lounge and ministry team housing, among other things. For decades, visitors and staff of Montreat have created memories in this historic building and on its picturesque porch.

In celebration of the soon-to-be-opened Belk Center at Left Bank, we welcome Margaret Peery as today's guest blogger. Margaret and her husband, Pete (our president, the tall bearded fellow in the right photo) moved into Left Bank just days after their wedding.

Left Bank was our first home. Pete and I had just gotten married on May 29, 1971. The first place we moved our new belongings and ourselves as a married couple was Left Bank. We were employed by the Board of National Ministries of the Presbyterian Church U.S. to work as a ministry team with the collegiate summer staff at Montreat.

What a beautiful first home! We lived upstairs. Living room with dining at one end, small kitchen, one bathroom, one bedroom with fireplace, overlooking Lake Susan, and a huge front porch. It was a fun place to begin “nesting” and a wondrous place to begin a ministry together as a new “seminary couple” who had just finished our first year in seminary at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia.

So many new things! Downstairs of Left Bank was where the collegiate staff “hung out.” It was our responsibility to get to know them, hang out with them, and engage in a ministry with them. Often our upstairs living room was used for Bible study and theological reflection.The downstairs of Left Bank which was the place for hanging out, social gatherings, music listening (and sometimes music blasting), also became a place for “food and fellowship” and introducing the collegiates to some of the new Simulation Games of the 60s and 70s we had used in seminary. One of the Simulation Games we played (pictured above right) was “Quarter Country.” The summer college staff engaged in some pretty “cutting edge” kind of thoughtful reflections and challenges. We all worked at putting our faith into practice.

Pete and I were especially challenged at putting our faith into practice when we had to listen to the music of Black Sabbath being blasted from the downstairs late nighters or when we were awakened at 6:00 AM on many Saturday mornings by children fishing in Lake Susan. What we came to appreciate was that the Left Bank ministry and living were all a part of the wondrous Montreat experience. What a fabulous “first home” for this seminary couple!

Some of the summer college staff that summer of 1971 included folks who we still see around Montreat to this day: William Brown (pictured above right, to the left of the fireplace, with plaid shirt and beard), Bill Christian, Melinda Loftis, Betsy Hester, Ray Swetenburg, and Bill Waterstradt.

For more exciting memories of Left Bank, check out what people said on our Facebook page. Have any other good memories? We would love to hear them!