WPSU has a new digital story that tells the story of Fred and Lee Metzger and their unconventional childhood in Baileyville in Centre County. As kids, they lived in a Presbyterian church that had been turned into a house. They lived there with their father, Fred Sr., who was something of a character.
WPSU's Emily Reddy interviewed fellow WPSU employee Jessie Beers-Altman, who was the producer on the video "Stories from St. Metz: Two brothers, an eccentric dad and a mountain lion." She felt some personal connection to the Metzgers, as she also had an eccentric father who owned a repurposed church. Her father, Harold Altman, used a church in Lemont as an art studio.
Here's that interview:
Emily Reddy
Jessie, thanks for talking with us.
Jessie Beers-Altman
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Emily Reddy
So Fred, and Lee Metzger, ended up living at the St. Metz Church with their dad when their parents got divorced in 1968. This church was not set up to be a house, right?
Jessie Beers-Altman
Right. So Fred Sr. had acquired the church from his parents, who had bought the church from the congregation after the congregation shut down. And so the church was kind of in rough shape when Fred Sr. acquired it. It was... all the pews had been taken out, there were carpets that needed to be pulled up. It needed a makeover. So Fred Sr. enlisted the help of his two sons, Fred, Jr. and Lee. And together, they kind of went through this whole renovation and rehabilitation process, you know, making this place a home for the three of them to live in.
Emily Reddy
Okay, so unconventional childhood. What, what, what made it unconventional?
Jessie Beers-Altman
Yeah, so the brothers shared a lot of stories with me that, you know, they reflect saying that at the time, they thought that their childhood was sort of the only childhood they knew. So you know, nothing unconventional about it. But then as adults, they looked back and realized that there were a lot of things happening in their house, the church, that most most kids didn't experience growing up. So I think one of the things that made their childhood really unconventional was that they were given a lot of independence and freedom from an early age, but also had high expectations placed on them as far as how they would contribute to the house. So, it's kind of during an era where a lot of households would have a mother in the house cooking, cleaning, taking care of the house. And they didn't have that. So the responsibilities really fell on these two boys who were kind of in early adolescence when they first moved in. So the brothers described that a lot of their upbringing had to do with, you know, they were kind of all responsible for different parts of keeping house. Whether it was doing laundry, or cooking meals and whatnot. And then their father, Fred Sr., had a lot of sort of unconventional ideas. And he was very eccentric. And he had a lot of parties at the house. One of the stories that the brothers shared with me is that, they had a pool put it next to the church. And rather than use the pool for swimming, every spring they stocked the pool with trout from the local hatchery, Spruce Creek hatchery. And so they would put trout in the swimming pool and then fish for the trout. Neighborhood kids would come over and everybody would go fishing for the trout in the pool. And then they would actually end up eating the trout. So that was something that was unusual. Another story that the brothers shared with me was how they ended up having a pet mountain lion living in the church, in the house, a mountain lion that they named Metz. And the mountain lion lived with them for I think two or three years. And this was their pet, and they had it in the house. It would roam the rafters of the church, and they would ring a bell to summon it down for dinner. And they even took it around town. The brothers have a picture of the mountain lion sitting on the famous Nittany Lion statue on campus.
Emily Reddy
And the brothers seem really close. And they say that they were close with their father, too. And it seems like it was in living in and renovating this church that really brought them together. One of them says "we literally rebuilt all of our lives right in this building."
Jessie Beers-Altman
Yeah. It's a unique story that has a universal theme. Which is these two brothers really bonding with their father and really solidifying this very close father-son dynamic through something. And we've seen this in movies and books and in different mediums. But for this family, it was through the renovation and then the the time spent in this church.
Emily Reddy
So your dad also owned a repurposed church. For many years, he used a little blue church in Lemont as an art studio. Your dad, Harold Altman, was a well-known artist, and one of his subjects was even that church. I don't think you've ever lived in the church, but did that connection give you a kinship with Fred and Lee Metzger as you were interviewing them? Did anything they said resonate for you?
Jessie Beers-Altman
Yes. I mean, absolutely. The more that I learned about their father, the more that I felt like my own father had a lot in common with him. They were born in the early 1920s and had a lot of adventures as an unorthodox sort of eccentric person in this relatively small community. And so I definitely felt a connection, the more we talked and shared stories. But the sort of impetus for the story came about from doing some research related to my family's church. So my father, like you said, he had the he had the church, at the corner of Berry Street and Mt. Nittany Road in Lemont for many years. It served as his studio. And then, in recent years -- since his death, really -- our family has struggled to figure out what the next life for that church will be. And so I started researching churches in the central Pennsylvania area that had closed and kind of how families or how communities had figured out a way for these buildings to have a second life, whatever that may be. And through that research, I learned of the Metzger brothers and their church and Baileyville.
Emily Reddy
So in researching for this [interview], I read an article from a few years ago, where you said that you're working on a documentary film called "Inherited" about your father and how his legacy influenced you. Is that right? Tell us a little more about that.
Jessie Beers-Altman
Yeah, it's a project that I started many years ago. Basically, my siblings, and I have, since our father's passing, inherited this building, this church, in Lemont, which is not only this unique structure, but it also holds the the legacy of our father's life work, which is the hundreds of 1,000s of pieces of artwork that he left behind. And so it's a film project that I hope will examine, again, a universal... I know, not everybody inherits a massive art collection from their deceased parent, but it is sort of a universal theme. I found that when when there's loss, that people inherit things. And there's not always a clear path about what to do with them, or what those objects, those possessions, mean, and how they represent the loved ones that are lost. And so this film project that I'm working on is really something that aims to look at that, to look at what kind of legacy a loved one leaves behind. And that word "legacy" can really mean many different things. It can mean physical possessions, but it can also mean memories and traits. And in the case of the Metzger brothers, I think that the legacy that they inherited from their father is not just the building of the church, but also these life lessons that they talk about in the short film having to do with being there for your family and rolling through life with a sense of humor and trying to kind of live in a way that is unique to who you are and not necessarily caring about what other people think.
Emily Reddy
Jessie Beers-Altman, thanks for talking with us. Thank you so much. WPSU's Jessie Beers-Altman produced the WPSU digital piece called "Stories from St. Metz: Two brothers, an eccentric dad and a mountain lion." You can see that video on WPSU's social media or at WPSU.org/digital. I'm Emily Reddy, WPSU.
