Celebrating a marker of the town
Published 1:30 am Monday, April 20, 2026
On Sunday afternoon, McCleary residents and those with ties to the city gathered in the McCleary Museum and Event Center to celebrate its centennial. The singing of Happy Birthday was accompanied by Ruth Kivi, a board member of the McCleary Historical Society, on piano and a ringing of the bell.
Before becoming the home of the McCleary Historical Society, the building served as a church for the McCleary United Methodist congregation. Ada McCleary, wife of Henry McCleary, spearheaded the construction of the building because there was no place to worship in town. Though she died even before the building was fully designed, following its construction in 1926 her legacy has connected generations of parishoners and visitors who have sat in the pews. It’s why the stained glass window bears the inscription: “To the glory of God and the blood of the memory of Mrs. Ada L. McCleary.”
Attendees were invited to relay memories, with Susan Stoney sharing that she often visited the church. Pointing to a section of the wall that the pews were pushed against, she said, “The furnace grates are right over there, and I was in my little white dress, red hat and leather shoes, and I would sit over there. And I think that warm feeling is what’s in most of our hearts here today about this building.”
The church hosted harvest dinners and other community meals. Sherry [Soller] Huff said that her mom belonged to the Women’s Society. “She loved to cook, she loved to bake at the church, so if there were those things going on, you probably ate something that mom made,” Huff said.
Along with her sister, Huff helped her grandmother and mom with monthly cleaning the church and remembered cleaning flies off the pews and windowsills. “Those are some of the things I can think of that happened in the church and it was lots of good fun times that we had here,” she added.
Linda Thompson, past president of the McCleary Historical Society, gave an abridged history of the stained glass window: Henry McCleary commissioned the Povey Brothers Studio to recreate the 1851 William Holman Hunt painting The Light of the World and in 2011, the wall and the window were repaired because of damage sustained during the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. “I actually love the window so much I can talk for hours on it,” Thompson said.
At 10 years old, Kathy Elofson began attending the church when her family moved to McCleary. “The church is just everything. I’ve always worked so hard for it,” she said. “And when they ask me to be part of the museum, I really like this stuff.”
The building now serving as an event center is a continuation of how the building served the community even when it was a church was called out by Darren Carnell, whose relatives were early McCleary residents. “It was sort of always the event center. I remember, my Boy Scout troop, which was totally unaffiliated with the Methodist church, just needed a place to keep their stuff and have meetings, and that was here,” Carnell said.
A food bank, separate from the church, also operated out of the building.
“I was also thinking about the weddings and the funerals that were here, and what a central part of the community life it was,” Carnell said. “That this was a place where people got married and a place where we celebrated people after they had died.”
Joy Iverson, secretary of the McCleary Historical Society, shared that the Methodist Church held luncheons for local churches to get together .
“It was really nice to get together with people from other religions and just have those lunches together since we all basically believe in the same thing,” she said. “It was a nice way to meet more people in our community.”
Member at-large board member Randy Beerbower culled photographs, newspaper clippings, and wedding announcements to create a slideshow of the church that echoed everyone’s memories of its being a part of people’s lives over the decades. And it was fitting to see that the slideshow ended with photos of the McCleary Historical Society moving into the building.
“We have to be stewards of this building, and in the old days, Ada and Henry McCleary were the stewards,” Stoney said. “They helped build this building; they looked after it. Henry donated $5,000 for its construction, and we had the Methodist Church as part of this building for over almost 90 years. And we have a second group that are stewards of this building today that are doing a fine job of keeping the building together.”
