Lost in History

I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks because most of my time has been spent trying to remember events of the past forty-five years. In 2019, Community Presbyterian Church of San Juan Capistrano will celebrate its 100^th birthday. I was asked to help put together a book to chronicle the events of the church during its lifetime. No small task!

When we let people know we were doing this project, supporting material appeared from closets and file cabinets and shelves. Those who knew where items were stored in the church unearthed them. And several people began to research and amass data from the internet and the historical societies of San Juan and Dana Point.

Original church building

Then began the process of sorting through all the material and deciding what to include and what to leave out. (Much of the historical material was about the cities of San Juan Capistrano and Dana Point but wasn’t directly related to the church.)

Then, several of us began to compose the articles. As they were completed, I received them. We also began to post pictures on the church group on Facebook and invited others to do the same. We asked the members of the group to identify the people shown in the photos.

We have contacted those who participated in the events for their input, memories, and corrections.

If everything had been left as originally received, the book would end up at over 1000 pages! So, ruthless editing has been required. This will still be a large volume (or two, maybe).

Since we were present from 1972, I have many first-hand memories of events from this point to the present. We have also gone through our own photo albums (probably at least three dozen) to find photos. We have also gone through at least another three dozen of the church’s. Each dig through the archives uncovers another event we need to write about.

Fortunately, the unofficial historian of San Juan (she has written several books about the city) is not only a descendent of one of the founding families, she was also a member of the church for many years. She is beta reading the oldest material—the historical stuff—to validate the facts. (Sometimes these are in conflict. Local legends clash with the recorded data.)

We keep receiving more photos. Although they are delightful to see, many are too old and faded to use. Others are too far away or blurred to identify anyone. Still others are interesting but don’t really tell the story we are trying to convey. We have had to limit ourselves to not more than two photos per article—a difficult task!

Each photo we decide to use has to be adjusted in PhotoShop. Since they will appear fairly small, I need to crop them to show only the critical parts. Then I have to make sure they are at least 300 dpi. Photos can’t be dragged and dropped into the text, so they have to be inserted in a specific spot.

All the articles have to be formatted for publication, and the styles have to be consistent from article to article so we can combine them in the final manuscript.

I have probably spent forty and sixty hours a week for the past couple of months on this project, and there is still quite a bit to do.

We have targeted the end of the summer for receipt of all the material and responses. Then I’ll combine everything into one cohesive book. Once all the final material is combined, I will start at the beginning and do a complete edit of the entire manuscript—including more deletions.

We hope to have the book ready for publication by the beginning of next year. Our intention is to have it available for Kindle and in print on Amazon. We also expect to have copies available at the church. This will be an expensive book to produce and purchase because many of the photos are in color, but it will be a valued keepsake for those who shared in the experiences.

So, if you don’t hear from me for the next couple of months, you know what I’ll be doing!

The church today in its new location (as of 1968)