Hiildebrand story
“The world is not our home, brother” – Jake and Anna Hildebrand
The year was 1933. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as our 32nd president, ground was broken for the Golden Gate Bridge, and Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany. The U.S. was in the deepest part of the Great Depression, and Prohibition ended that year. Coincidentally, with no fanfare, a former alcoholic began a crusade, indeed a Mission, to help those whose lives were shattered by the effects of alcohol and a devastated economy.
His name was Jacob Hildebrand. A former alcoholic and gambler, Jake had lived a tough life until he became a born-again Christian in 1927 at the age of 29. Jake began holding fervent tent revival meetings in the Portage/Vine neighborhood during the summer months, inviting old friends and traveling evangelists to the meetings.
As a result of Jake’s Christian zeal, he met his wife, Anna Hazelhof. They both were part of a group that came to the County Jail to sing for the inmates, met, and were married for thirty years until Jake’s death in 1968. As a child, Anna’s heart had been set on becoming a foreign missionary, but she faced opposition from parents who believed that a young lady should not be “gallivanting around”. Instead, Anna spent 48 years of her life serving as a missionary, as she put it, “in a simple way”: helping to prepare and serve meals at the Mission, attending board meetings (where she recorded and typed up minutes), playing the piano at nightly chapel services, making rag rugs and baby quilts for other local agencies, as well as driving herself and elderly volunteers to and from the Mission.
In 1933, Jake felt a need to preach the gospel, and opened the first Mission at 140 Portage Street. In 1935, the Mission moved to 304 N. Burdick Street (at the corner of Kalamazoo Avenue and Burdick Street), where meals were first served. Jake financed the Mission with the earnings from a small grocery store that he ran.
During those hard Depression years, the Hildebrands and a few friends were feeding as many as 100-150 men, women, and children each night. Anna worked days at a local mill supply store, and would rush in each night to fire up a coal furnace in order to heat the building for that evening. She would also make huge batches of soup in her mother’s copper wash boiler, cooking it over a two-burner gas plate. They served as many as 150 bowls of soup each evening, along with coffee and left-over bread donated from a local bakery. They laughingly claimed to have made more cups of coffee out of a pound than anyone else in history.
In 1955, they recalled the early years of the Mission in an interview with the Kalamazoo Gazette: “Whole families would come to the Burdick street mission in those days,” (Hildebrand) says. “I don’t know how we were ever able to do it, but we never turned anyone away. They always got a cup of hot soup, a sandwich and coffee. We know it was the only meal for many of them.”
Lodging was not originally available at the Mission, which functioned solely as a soup kitchen. The kind-hearted Hildebrands, though, would use their limited income to rent out inexpensive hotel rooms for those in need of a roof over the heads.
Jake held a chapel service each evening, and attendance was required in order to receive a free meal. Almost from the beginning, various local church groups would take charge of the service and the meal each night, and were asked to provide the meat for the sandwiches. Everyone, including the Hildebrands, volunteered their time. Clothing was handed out as it was available. “It goes pretty fast in this weather”, a volunteer was quoted as saying in a Thanksgiving, 1941 Gazette article.
Then as now, the Mission operated completely by faith. Non-denominational and unassociated with any specific church or underwriter, from the early days on the Mission has depended upon the compassion of the generous Kalamazoo community. A list of companies that contributed in the early days reads like a history of Kalamazoo businesses: Dutch Treat Bakery, Hybels Produce, Sytsma’s Bakery, and the East Side Garbage Company were but a few of the businesses that donated their goods to care for the down and out members of Kalamazoo’s society. Jake’s words in 1955 still hold true today for the Mission: “We get by mostly on faith. That’s what we’ve got lots of.”
Their faith was hard tested by the impermanency of using rented facilities. The Burdick Street location was sold in 1947, and the Mission closed for three years while another location was sought. It reopened in 1950 at 117 N. Church Street, and the present 448 N. Burdick Street facility, site of a former hotel, was purchased in 1957. This site was ideally suited for the Mission due to its location directly across from the bus and train station.
The facility was expanded in 1971 with the purchase of the McKerring Building (450-458 N. Burdick), site of a saloon. The former Superior Inn at 439 N. Burdick was purchased and remodeled in 1991. The Mission then added the Hildebrand Building, a facility for women, children, the Family Hope discipleship program, as well as the dining facility, in 1998. The most recent addition was the Men’s Division and home to the New Life discipleship program, added in 2004.
Jake and Anna both faithfully served at the Mission until their deaths, Jake as superintendent, Anna as his faithful assistant to the end. Jake was quoted as saying the day before he died, “I’d rather burn out for the Lord than rust out for the devil.” He also made a comment once that summed up his eternal perspective on his life’s work: “The world is not our home, brother. We are just passing through.”
Information for this article was compiled with the assistance of Sharon Carlson, WMU Archives and Regional History Collections, and Tom Dietz, Kalamazoo Valley Museum.
