The Good Neighbors

Almost everybody in Long Island's Garden City South knew Tibert V. Anderson and liked him. He was 17 when he arrived in the U.S. from his native Sweden, but his way of doing things seemed to suit his adopted country from the start. He worked in greenhouses to earn money for college, later finished courses in a Lutheran seminary, and was ordained. In 1947, after his board sent him to start a new church in Garden City South, he acted as contractor and did a lot of the work with his own hands. Last year the red brick building of St. Andrew's Evangelical Lutheran Church was up and the congregation well established; everything seemed to be going well for Pastor Anderson and his Minnesota-born wife, Hazel.

Then came catastrophe. Three-year-old Karen, third of the Anderson's four children, was taken to the hospital with polio. A few days later, Pastor Anderson came down with it. Hazel Anderson's mother died of a heart attack brought on by the news. Then Tibert Anderson himself died, at 46.

When Pastor Anderson went to the hospital, Garden City South roused itself in neighborliness. The neighbor who did most to get the others started was Mrs. Thomas Skelly, a Roman Catholic. She organized a committee to canvass the neighborhood. A "Pastor Anderson Fund" was established at St. Andrew's. West Hempstead and Garden City Catholics and Jews pitched in along with Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists and others. Though Mrs. Anderson soon got a teaching job nearby, St. Andrew's handed her five months of her husband's salary, and let her have the parsonage rent-free for a year. Meanwhile, the neighbors got together to build her a house of her own.

Ground was broken in April. A Garden City lumber company donated $1,400 worth of material, a contractor in the parish furnished labor, as did other men from the church and community.

Last week, at a little service of dedication, Mrs. Anderson was handed the debt-free deed to a $19,000, grey-shingled, four-bedroom house and its lot. In the course of the afternoon, between 150 and 200 people dropped in to wish her well. Said she: "I regard it as a tribute to my husband, as a beautiful monument to his memory." Said St. Andrew's new pastor, Reuben Swanson: "It is an expression of the love of God in the hearts of men."

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