"I will tell you a story, now age-old and hoary,
Engraved on the pages of time,
And one that is known not around us alone,
But in many a country and clime."
*
Even today most observers are transfixed by Aimee Semple McPherson. She was the shinny bauble dancing in the light, that drew all attention. But it was her mother, Mrs. Mildred “Sister Minnie” Kennedy, who created Sister Aimee. Mildred Ona Peace was born in Lindsay, Ontario, of English immigrants in 1871. Orphaned as a child, she was taken in by members of the newly formed Salvation Army, which became her family. When she was 12 Mildred was “farmed out” as a servant to successful dairyman James Kennedy and his wife, who lived just west of the tiny crossroads of Salford, Ontario. James already had adult children, but his wife needed help dealing with a mentally challenged son. And six months after his wife died in May of 1886, the fifty year old James married the fifteen year old Mildred.
“Oh, God! give me strength to condemn at full length
That person whose soul is so iced
That unblushing she’d dare her warped life to compare
To the life of the crucified Christ!”
*
It was by all evidence a passionless existence, but the marriage provided Mildred with a modicum of financial security, and the pious Methodist James Kennedy did not exercise his rights as a husband until Mildred was 18. Their daughter Aimee (above) was born in October of 1890. Once the child was old enough, and only after the crops were in, Mildred was allowed to spend the winter working at Salvation army soup kitchens in New York City. It should have come as no surprise when at 17 , the bright and energetic Aimee (below, right) eloped with Robert Semple (below, left), a visiting Irish pentecostal minister.
*
“While the battle still is raging, which big liars are all staging,
To determine who the biggest liar is,
Aimee tells us, on the level, she's decided that the Devil
Wins the trophy in the biggest liar quiz.”
*
Semple's pentecostal faith practiced faith healing, called out during services, sometimes even in “tongues”, a religious gibberish which Aimee became adept at interpreting Seeing personal religious passion as a path to salvation directly conflicted with Salvation Army vision that saw salvation only through disciplined service to others. Two years after leaving New York, the young couple arrived in Hong Kong, to begin a ministry to China. Shortly after arrival they both contracted malaria, and Robert Semple died. A month later Aimee gave birth to a daughter she named Roberta. From her Salvation Army family, Mildred was able to wire her daughter enough money to get her home, where Sister Minnie immediately put her daughter (above) to work in the soup kitchens, paying back the debt.
*
“But I rise to challenge Aimee, to prove she can't gainsay me
When I nominate a liar of reknown
For I claim to know a liar whose a bigger falsefier
Then the Devil Aimee seeks to hand the crown”
*
While Mildred continued to commute each spring back to Ontario, Aimee (above, left) remained in New York, where she met Harold Stewart McPherson (above, right), an accountant. They were married on May 5, 1912, and moved to Rhode Island, thus escaping Mildred's judgmental eye. The next year the McPherson's had a son, they named Rolph. About this same time Mildred moved to New York City permanently. However, there would never be a divorce from James Kennedy. Then in 1915 Aimee left her own husband, and after dropping the new baby off with her mother, took Roberta and hit the revival circuit.
*
“Knowing quite a bunch of liars, I have picked one who aspires
To out lie all the liars in the game.
Aimee's Devil isn't in it with my entry for a minute
As a liar she's achieved a world wide fame.”
*
By 1916 Aimee (above) had become successful enough to ask her mother to join her, and turning her back on her Salvation Army family, the 41 year old Mildred spent the next six years traveling with her daughter and two grandchildren, crisscrossing the nation in their “Gospel-mobile”. Mildred handled what little money there was, because, as she would say later, “My daughter is like a fish on the beach when it comes to handling money. I don't believe if you put an add in the newspapers you could find anybody dumber when it comes to business.”
*
“When my entry starts to lying, Aimee's Devil starts to sighing
And confesses he's no longer in the race.
She's the queen of all the liars, and as a liar never tires,
When she lies the Devil drops to second place.”
*
Any critic attempting to describe Aimee Semple McPherson's (above sexual appeal, and in part her success at the pulpit, had to begin by assuring readers it was not physical. “Aimee's mouth is very large indeed, her nose long and bumpy, her eyes small and ever shifting. She is generous breasted, and broad hipped... Her legs belong to the school known as “piano”.” The “Miracle Woman's” appearance was not improved by her fundamentalist faith, which denounced as a sinner any woman who wore make up or cut her hair. And yet there was an undeniable sexuality that touched her listeners.
*
“Admiration she engendered, but she's never yet been tendered,
Recognition of her powers as a liar.
So I write this little jingle for the purpose sole and single
Of extolling my prize winning falsifier”
*
The 1920 boom times led Sister Aimee (above, center) and Mildred (above, left, in hat) to Los Angeles, where they began to raise money to build a “Temple” of their own. Mildred bought the land, and a business convert drew up papers incorporating the Angelus Temple. Control over the new building and entity was divided equally between mother and daughter, 50/50. The Echo Park structure opened in 1924. Shortly there after, Aimee (below, fore) hired the experienced radio engineer Kenneth Ormiston (below, rear) to set up her new station, KFSC, its twin broadcast towers rising from the temple roof Mildred grew concerned about the intensity growing between Sister Aimee and Ormiston, and in January of 1926 she saw Ormiston released from his contract, while mother and daughter took a three month tour of Europe and the holy lands.
*
“There's been too much hesitation, naming liars of the nation
So I'm going to prove that I have got the gall
Even though it may defame her, to come right out square and name her,
For she's sure the biggest liar of them all.”
*
Still, Mildred's (above, left) spies reported to her that Ormiston's (above, right) wife had filed a missing person's report back in Los Angeles. And she must have suspected the engineer had accompanied them, staying just out of her sight. Shortly after their return in early April, Mrs. Ormiston contacted Mildred threatening to name Aimee in the divorce proceedings. Evidently a financial arraignment was made, providing Mrs. Ormiston with passage for herself and her child safely to her native Australia. It was less than a month later, on 18, May 1926, that Aimee took her now infamous swim. Did Mildred ever believe her daughter had drown? Did she hope that was the true, and not what she suspected? In either case, Mildred must have been near panic. The only thing that could have destroyed the first financial independence Mildred Kennedy had known in her entire life, was now threatened by the rumors circulating about her daughter's “miraculous” disappearance in the sea and rebirth, in the Arizona desert.
*
I am going to name a lady with a record long and shady
One who in this world has caused a lot of strife
Now I know your laughing hearty - but I do not mean that party,
For the one I have in mind is the Devil's wife!
Charles H. Magee "The Antics of Aimee"
First Published in “Bob Shuler's Magazine” 1926
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