ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION—Pastor
General Joseph Tkach (left) and Vance Gilless,
facilities director (right), present Gene Michel
with a card signed by headquarters employees.
[Photo by Thomas C. Hanson]
PASADENA—Church employees honored Gene Michel, 72, WCG property manager, Sept. 4, for working 50 years for the Worldwide Church of God and Ambassador College.
Current duties
Mr. Michel serves as property manager for the WCG, a position he has served in since the 1960s. He has complete files of all WCG properties and how the church came to own them, which is of great benefit as the church sells the Pasadena property.
Bernie Schnippert, church treasurer, said: “Gene is the best living source of information regarding the history of the campus in all its iterations that we have. He is an invaluable resource and a fine person. There are reasons we haven’t let him go in more than 50 years of service, and these are only a few of them.”
Vance Gilless, facilities director, said: “I’ve worked closely with Gene over the past five years, and my respect for him as a person of honesty and integrity continues to grow. Gene is a walking, talking encyclopedia of the history of the Pasadena campus and has provided answers to many questions that have arisen as we prepare the property for sale.”
Mr. Michel remembers the purchase of the different parcels that make up the headquarters property and the buildings that once occupied the property: a gas station, mortuary, lumber yard, furniture store and houses.
Growing up in Missouri
Gene was born in Hermann, Missouri, and then moved to Rosebud, Gerald and then to St. Louis. He graduated from Southwest High School mid-year in 1947 and received an associate of arts degree in accounting from Harris Teachers College in 1950.
When Gene boarded a train in St. Louis in 1951 to come to Ambassador College as a student, his favorite Cardinal baseball players were Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst and Enos Slaughter. In Washington, Harry Truman was serving as the nation’s 33rd president. Across the Pacific, the Korean War was raging, and in Chicago, Illinois, it would be another three months before Pastor General Joseph Tkach was born.
Gene’s parents, Arthur and Linda Michel, had been listening to Herbert W. Armstrong on the radio, and became church members after Gene came to college. Arthur Michel later served as a deacon. Dean Blackwell baptized four generations of the Michel family, including Gene’s parents; grandmother, Anna Scheidegger; and Gene’s brother, Bernell.
When Gene arrived in Pasadena the people he asked were unable to tell him where Ambassador College was located. Gene called the campus and he was picked up by student Norman Smith and Bill Homberger, superintendent of buildings.
Hired full-time
Gene graduated two years later in 1953 and was hired full-time in the business office in September that year by Vern Mattson, business manager. Gene married Betty Bates, Ambassador’s first student and first graduate, in August 1952. They now live in Castaic, 43 miles from Pasadena, and have one daughter, Elizabeth.
His brother Bernell came to college in 1953 and graduated in 1957. He served as head of the physical education and recreation departments in Pasadena and in the same position on the former Ambassador campus in Bricket Wood, England. He retired in Pasadena in 2001.
ANNIVERSARY
CELEBRATION—Pastor
General Joseph Tkach (left) and
Vance Gilless,
facilities director (right), present Gene Michel
with a card
signed by headquarters employees.
[Photo by Thomas C. Hanson]
Copyright © Grace Communion International, 2003