Herbert Armstrong's "Failed Business Man" Home Street: Klikitat Street in Portland

Neighboring house on Klikitat Street in Portland, Oregon 

where Herbert Armstrong lived with his family 

while failing to support them as he spent 6 months in the local library.

Dennis made a visit recently to the area of Portland where Herbert Armstrong moved his family.  This is also the area he was living in when he was without work and spent 6 months parked in the library instead of supporting his family.

He loved to portray himself as a "failed business man" yet for someone who was such a failure he lived in an upper class home in Portland.  Just how truthful was Herbert in how description of the life of his family while living on Klikitat Street.

I happened to cross Klikitat  St. coming home the other day and realized it was where HWA lived and where Richard was born.  I went looking for 1831 but there was no such address between 17th and 18th that crossed Klikitat.  Close but not 1831.  I was impressed however with the homes.  Really large classy and I am sure the originals from the 1920's.  For being a "failed businessman" just three years earlier, he still had expensive tastes it seemed if that was the correct area of Klikitat.   ......photos of the homes closest to the address.  The homes put me in mind of smaller versions of those on the AC campus

In Fall 1926 while visiting Armstrong’s parents in Salem, Oregon, Herbert's wife Loma was introduced by her in-laws’ to Emma Runcorn. Mrs. Runcorn and her husband O.J. were lay leaders in the Oregon Conference of the Church of God, Seventh Day. They introduced Loma to the Saturday Sabbath doctrine. Hearing about Loma's new found religious fanaticism, Herbert became incensed. Loma challenged him to find biblical support for Sunday observance. Armstrong began an extensive study of scripture too prove Loma wrong.  

In Spring 1927 after spending many weeks at Portland Public Library, to his astonishment, his study revealed that the Sabbath was the seventh day of the week. As a result both Herbert and Loma began keeping the Saturday Sabbath. Armstrong frequently consulted with an evangelical minister and was then baptized in May/June 1927 by the Pastor of the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon. Herbert once said of this Pastor, "The man is the most godly man in all of Portland." Shortly after that, Armstrong and Loma began fellowship with a Church of God (Seventh Day) group in Salem, Oregon.  

On October 13, 1928 Herbert & Loma welcomed their first son Richard David "Dick" Armstrong. The Armstrong family was living at: 1831 Klickitat St. in Portland. On February 9, 1930 Herbert & Loma welcomed their second son Garner Ted Armstrong. The Armstrong family was now living at: 839 E. 75th St. N. in Portland. In Spring 1931 the Armstrong family moved from Portland to nearby Salem (Mulino? Armstrong's parents?).  

In June 1931 Herbert W. Armstrong was ordained by the Oregon Conference of The Church of God, which took place in Eugene, Oregon but the Great Depression was beginning and he was later temporary laid off as a Minister. In December 1932 Armstrong took a temporary advertising job in Astoria, Oregon with "The Morning Messenger" newspaper. In February 1933 Herbert got his full time ministry back but was paid only $3.00 a week salary. Local membership, mostly farmers supplied the Armstrong family with vegetables and grains for meals and paid their house rent. Herbert W Armstrong: His Eugene and Portland Radio Days

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But if these were the lean years finan- cially, they were years of coming into the true riches. Yet, I still had many lessons to learn. 

Not only was TRUTH to be discovered and dug Out of God's spiritual gold mine-the Holy BIBLE-but there was much character to be developed through hard, cruel ex- perience, the dearest teacher of all. 

I should not have thought so at the time-but God knew that I needed much more humbling-much more chastening and punishment at the hands of God! 

I had been humbled! 0 yes! And still, I know now that had God allowed me to have prospered financially at that stage of spiritual experience, self-pride once more would have seized me and the humility would have fled! The les- sons so far received by all this chasten- ing would have been lost! I was to have to suffer much more-and my family to suffer it with me! 

Gagging on Macaroni 

At this time, during 1928, we were living on Klickitat Street in Portland, Oregon. We were falling dangerously behind in paying the rent. The real- estate agent who collected the rent came very frequently to the front door. To others he was a kind and pleasant-look- ing man. He taught a Sunday-school class. But to us, he was a dark, fore- boding, frightening, almost devilish-appearing man, when, of evenings, he so frequently stood at our front ent a number of times out of his own pocket. 

At one time we were in darkness nights against our will. The electricity was shut off because the bill was de- linquent. My wife did her cooking on a small gas stove, and our gas was shut off. Only the water was left running. We were out of food, and out of fuel. Our heating stove was one my father had made, shaped something like an old covered wagon-with rounded top. 

The children were crying with hun- ger. My stomach gnawed with pain. Like old Mother Hubbard's, our cup- board was bare, save for a little maca- roni. But there was no cheese or any of the ingredients used in baking maca- roni. There was not even a grain of salt. AND, there was no money to buy any. door, demanding in a deep, bass, stern tone: "Can I have the rent?" 

We simply didn't have the rent! We began to live in darkness, without lights, in hopes he would think we were not at home. Whenever he came, we knew just how a whipped dog feels when his tail is between his legs. Actually, this man, who appeared to us almost as an enemy, was kind enough to pay our  rent.  Plain Truth September 1959

The Failure of COG Media

A reader here sent the following observations and questions regarding how Church of God leaders portray themselves as great stalwarts of truth, yet when you check out the number of readers and followers, the numbers are minuscule even among their own membership.

I noted, for example, that Pack is on Twitter.  Not too surprising I suppose, and 100% of his tweets consist of announcements of his stupid RCG videos. 

.But one thing struck me as odd.  His number of followers 

Don’t they have some thousands of members?  Then why does he only have less than 900 followers?

(Incidentally, browsing through his followers just to see if I knew any of them, a lot are obviously not members – some are typical automatic follower accounts, follower fishers (uninterested parties that follow solely in the hope of getting followed back) and such  -- it’s probably less than 700 actual members that actually follow him, maybe even less.

Is he not considered important enough by all of the members to just follow him?
To me, that speaks volumes about his power even in his own church. https://twitter.com/davidcpack/followers Along the same lines....

Then there is David Hulme and his "Vision" 

Hulme’s videos are posted on YouTube, where the average number of views is somewhere around 700-800 per video.  

https://www.youtube.com/user/videosbyvision/videos Now, most have them been sitting around for 1 or 2 years, and most of those from the past year have less than 1000 views, which is pretty pathetic.  I have Youtube videos that have been around that long and accumulated more views than that!

It’s more pathetic considering COGIA also has some thousands of members, you would think at least the membership would definitely view the videos to have a base line of at least that number of views.  But apparently much of the membership can’t even be bothered to view them, so why would anyone else?

"We Found A Gold Mine"

Guest column:

For years, like many others, I had concluded that Herbert W. Armstrong (HWA) had done well under Loma D. Armstrong's influence but then, after she died, HWA went off track.  This made sense as this period after Loma dies is when he began to purchase the real expensive planes and spend much of his time traveling in luxury.

However, after reading more of HWA's earlier writings and by re-visiting his autobiography, it became clear that the duplicity went much further back in time and that Loma was in on it too (at least passively). It was clear that even as early as 1947, that both of the Armstrong's were enjoying life at a standard of living far above the average church member.  Few members could have afforded a 7 bedroom, 4,169 sq-ft home on 0.4 acres adjacent to Cal Tech, nor could they have afforded a 6-week first class luxury tour of Europe.  Most still can't 

After realizing how HWA lived while simultaneously claiming one financial crisis after another (even while the income was growing at around 30% per year), comments that I had previously discounted about HWA being largely motivated by money began to make perfect sense. 

One example:

"Honey, I know how we're going to get rich"

Gene Scarbrough, who was an elder in YEHOVAH's Church for over forty years, was ordained in 1967, and came out to Pasadena, California, in that year to serve full-time in the ministry. He told me that years ago his daughter Peggy, spent some time visiting with Mrs. Loma D. Armstrong, who took a liking to her. While they were together one time, Mrs. Armstrong reminisced about how the Work and Church began. While reflecting on how the ministry of her husband Herbert and his eldest son, Richard David Armstrong, originally got started, Mrs. Armstrong told Peggy, "They got into it for the money!"

This type of candid statement would not be surprising if heard from the lips of an enemy of the Church. But, coming straight from the lips of Mrs. Loma D. Armstrong, it packs a wallop!

Another friend corroborates the above story in part. According to his information, Garner Ted Armstrong once told a teacher in the church at Big Sandy and a personal friend that when his father was in the aluminum siding business back in Oregon, he got a call from far away to make a bid on a job. Herbert jacked up the price because he didn't want the job, the location was so distant. To his surprise, the customer said, "When can you get started?" It turns out the customer was the minister of a Seventh Day Adventist Church, and had plenty of money from tithes and offerings. According to Ted Armstrong, upon returning home that evening, Herbert -- who all his life wanted to be considered successful in business and make lots of money -- told his wife, "Honey, I now know how we're going to get rich!"

The above comments may be found at the Hope of Israel site:

And just yesterday (5/14/16), from Art Mokarow...

"We found a gold mine!"

While speaking with Mr.Mokarow about how my views regarding HWA had changed after examining his earlier writings, and how I began to question if he had ever been sincere, Art shared the following, "Before GTA was even preaching, HWA had told Loma that 'We found a gold mine!'"

-Kevin