O’Farrell’s Community Center

O’Farrell once held the prettiest of community centers. A white building with red trim, clean and well cared for. The building had been a Methodist Church before being given to the community.

The community treated the center like a church. Men met for weekly breakfasts. Homecomings and wedding receptions were usual.

And then, at about 6:30 a.m. on Feb. 16, 2016, the ground shook from a boom. A nearby resident heard it clearly. What seems to have happened is that lightning struck a nearby tree, throwing limbs all around and onto the building. The Benny Moores looked out their window and saw flames in the dark skies. A Bowie-Cass Electrical Co-Op employee Frankie Clayton, on his way to an early morning distress call, saw the flames and people coming to the scene. He turned around, got out and turned off the surrounding electrical service, so the fire could be fought safely.

The flames were put out but returned two more times during the windy days of the next week. The building, built as a Methodist church in 1890 and given to the community as a center in 1994, was a heap.

Today, the O’Farrell Center site is vacant, forlorn, needing mowing. The concrete identifying stone marker sits atop a rusty picnic table. The ball-shaped propane tank is still on the grounds. Something once was here. Its stately cemetery is still next door. To know is folklore about the community’s heart.

Before the church was given to the community, it stood for years abandoned, even beginning to lean. Windows were broken out. The Methodists wanted to sell the building, couldn’t, and finally gave it to the O’Farrell Cemetery Association.

One day in the 1990s, community men began having coffee in the morning under the trees on the outside. Someone suggested the building might be renovated or torn down and re-built for a place to meet.

Working on weekends, the men soon leveled the building, patched up the holes in the walls, and put in new windows and a porch and electrical wiring, especially for the air-conditioning. Then they added a kitchen. Over 200 gallons of white paint were put on walls and ceilings. When the complementary red metal roof went on top, the building’s attractiveness was assured.

Through the years, chairs and tables for maybe 100 people were added, artwork of local scenes graced the walls and those weekly community breakfasts sometimes drew 25 men.

Outside, the three picnic tables in the shade of trees made for noon rest spots for road crews with sack lunches.

One memory is that within a short walking distance — just some 100 yards apart on this grassy site — were once the community center, the cemetery, the Baptist church and the school. The school building is long gone, but the elegant church and the quiet, well-kept cemetery are here.

“On summer Sundays at our Methodist Church, the windows would be open, and we could hear the Baptists singing their hymns. They were better than we were,” said the late Ross Griffin of O’Farrell. He remembers, too, his grandmother Lula Griffin playing the piano.

The cemetery/center association is now down to about four people Its officers are Wanda Hilliard, Sharon Autrey, Dan Hill and Tildon Griffin. They still meet annually the first Sunday in June. Not much is being done, Tildon said. There was a modest bit of insurance but not enough to rebuild and few builders are available.

“Some in the community wanted a building, a meeting place to come back,” said Tildon. ‘It could be, but many of those who helped build and remodel that church aren’t as young as they used to be. I don’t know.”

Without a center of some kind, O’Farrell hardly exists. The community hasn’t been large recently. Its population was 43 in 1980, 20 in 2000 and 20 again in 2010.

O’Farrell’s Methodist church dated to 1884. Five acres of that land for the church had been donated by Fannie Cole Crawford in 1890. Drew Bruce built the building and then held his wedding there with Willie O’Rear. It was the first wedding with a public ceremony in the community, it was said, for in those days weddings were held in homes.

The church closed in 1968 due to poor attendance. At its final worship service, just three attended.

Katy Pate summarized the restoration work done in 1994. “The septic tank and water lines were installed, the foundation restored, building steam cleaned, cabinets installed, the public address system added, sign in front, the flag pole moved, outside lights and shrubs placed, stove, refrigerator, butane tank, air-conditioning, blinds, windows and curtains.”

The unusual circular propane tank placed out back was a gift by the family of Mrs. O. H. Rood who had died recently but had done much for the center and community.

The cemetery association met here at one time presided over by the late Givens Wilson along with Faye Livingston, granddaughter of Fannie Cole Crawford, donator of the land.

One of O’Farrell’s many claims to fame had been a helicopter visit to the grounds by Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1948, then campaigning for the national senate seat in competition with Coke Stevenson.

One can still visit the O’Farrell Center site today, sit and imagine the closeness of the center that once was. Here’s one remaining highlight that Tildon recalls.

“Some inmates from the county jail would come out to the community to do the service of working off their fines. They did some of the biggest jobs for us,” he said. “The air-conditioning, the plumbing, the electrical. We never noticed or made a distinction between them and us. And they did good work. They took pride in what they were doing and in our building.”