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90-Year-Old Celebrates 75th Anniversary Visit to Montreat Conference Center
Katherine Hoover Creager, now 90 years old, first came to Montreat Conference Center 75 years ago to attend a Youth Conference. She was just 15.
She and some other girls at the Youth Conference had a little adventure toward the end of the week. “We had been going to classes and things all day,” she recalls, “We were bored.” So they sneaked out to Black Mountain to see a movie. “I don’t even remember who drove,” she said, “but we saw Captains Courageous.” When the girls tried to sneak back in, however, they were caught and were sent before the tribunal. “We were terrified that they would send us home,” she said. Luckily for the girls, the leaders decided to let them stay for the rest of the week.
Katherine has many fond memories of Montreat. She couldn’t settle on what she liked best about Montreat, but talked about boating on Lake Susan, meeting people at Assembly Inn, playing card games at the lodges, going barefoot and walking down the creek, and singing and worshipping in Anderson Auditorium. However, one particular place that is special to her is the Prayer Garden in front of Assembly Inn. “I used to sit there and listen to the singing from across the lake,” she recalls. One of her favorite things was a little statue of a boy holding a bird in his lap that used to sit in the garden. While attending the Worship and Music Conference last year, she was disappointed to find that it was gone. Still, she says that one of the best things about Montreat is that “it hasn’t changed much over the years; it’s still pretty much the same. Montreat is a very special place.”
This Worship and Music Conference marks the 75th anniversary of Katherine’s first visit to Montreat. She has come to most of the Worship and Music Conferences over the last 16 years with her choir from First Presbyterian Church, Peachtree City, Ga., where she has sung in the alto section since she and her late husband became members there 25 years ago.
Katherine was born on February 9, 1918, in Demopolis, Alabama. She was baptized and raised in the Marion Presbyterian Church in Marion, Alabama. She has two daughters, who are also here for this year’s Worship and Music Conference, and a grandson.