BILLY SUNDAY, CITY BENEFITED FROM HIS VITITS

When Billy Sunday came to Cape Girardeau in 1926, he brought with him the hope and promise of salvation for his followers and a revitalization of the economy for a struggling city in Southeast Missouri.

"Billy Sunday's visits to this city were of mutual advantage to both sides," said John P. Coleman, a professor of history at Southeast Missouri State University who has researched the life of Sunday and his effect on Cape Girardeau.

He spoke Wednesday night at Crisp Hall on the university campus. The speech was part of the Bicentennial Lecture Series.

"Cape Girardeau wanted their position as a leading community in the area strengthened," Coleman told the audience. "Billy Sunday needed a reaffirmation of his evangelical strength among the people of the Midwest.

"So the paths of a rising Cape Girardeau and a waning Billy Sunday crossed to the benefit of both," Coleman continued. "And over a half-century later, Sunday is still fondly remembered by the citizens of this city."

As evidence of this, of the audience of about 90 people, about 20 raised their hands when Coleman asked if anyone had seen or met Sunday when he was in Cape Girardeau in 1926 and 1933.

Sunday was born during the Civil War. His father a corporal in the Union Army, stationed in Missouri died before ever seeing his son.

In the 1870s, the second man Sunday's mother married abandoned the family, never to be seen or heard from again.

In 1883, Sunday played professional baseball with the Chicago Whitestockings. It was while on a trip with the ball club in 1886 that Sunday heard his calling.

"He was out with the boys drinking when Sunday heard a band and a chorus standing around a gospel wagon parked across the street," Coleman said. "Forty years later, he told people that on that fateful night, he bowed his face in his hands and God painted on the canvas of his mind recollections and memories of the past."

From that day, Sunday continued to play baseball though not on Sunday and began studying under such evangelical leaders of the day as John Chapman and Sam Jones.

In Garner, Iowa, in 1886, Sunday converted 100 people and collected an offering of $68. Twenty years later, he converted 98,000 New Yorkers and collected more than $128,000 during a revival.

As America became weary of crusaders, Sunday's popularity began to wane after his New York revival and he turned to the Midwest to recapture an old fire.

Sayings like "going to church doesn't make anyone a Christian anymore than taking a wheelbarrow into a garage makes it an automobile" captured the hearts and attention of people all over, converting thousands to Sunday's version of Christianity.

In the five weeks Sunday was in Cape Girardeau in 1926, he attracted more than 250,000 people to the city and raised more than $7,000 in contributions. Of those who came to see Sunday speak, there were 1,300 first-time converters and 1,500 who left their faith to follow Sunday's preaching.

"Billy Sunday drew thousands of people to the city," Coleman said. "Cape Girardeau profited financially as well as spiritually from his presence."

After his visit, Sunday conferred with President Calvin Coolidge about building a bridge across the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau. Editors of the Southeast Missourian at the time lauded Sunday's efforts, calling him a "true friend of Cape Girardeau," Coleman said.

Sunday visited Cape Girardeau again in 1933, but this time as an older man who had faced many hardships in the years since his last stop in the city.

After his final visit, the city tore down the Cape Girardeau Tabernacle, built to hold the thousands of people who journeyed to the city to see Sunday. Some of the wood from the building was used to build the first Houck Fieldhouse.