When other white pastors fled Hilltop, Peace Lutheran’s stayed. Today his legacy lives on

Pastor Holle Plaehn wouldn’t want anything to do with this column. According to Elder Toney Montgomery, a fellow pastor and the former president of the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance, Plaehn would almost certainly shake his head, wave his hands and defer any credit, in the Texas accent he carried with him from youth.

Everything Plaehn accomplished during his 32 years leading Peace Lutheran Church at the corner of 21st and South Cushman on Hilltop, he would tell you, was simply God working through the congregation and the neighborhood it served. He had little to do with it, he would insist.

With all due respect to God, Montgomery politely disagrees with the assessment.

Plaehn died last month at the age of 86 after a lengthy battle with Multiple Myeloma, and Montgomery is one of many in Tacoma eager to honor him for a life he spent in service to the Hilltop community he genuinely loved.

Today, Plaehn’s legacy is all around, Montgomery believes, whether seen through Peace Lutheran’s long-running free meals program or the success of the nonprofit Peace Community Center, which the church opened in 2001 to focus on providing academic and social support to Hilltop kids and families.

“For me personally, I would call him a friend,” Montgomery said this week of Plaehn, who was called to Peace Lutheran, along with his wife Carol, in 1973, fresh off a stint serving as a chaplain at the city jail in Madison, Wisconsin. “For the community, he was a pillar — a quiet pillar.”

In the annals of Tacoma, and particularly Hilltop, there have been a number of prominent, influential faith leaders. Black icons like Rev. Joseph A. Boles, Bishop Curtis E. Montgomery, Bishop Thomas L. Westbrook, Rev. Edna Travis and the Rev. Earnest S. Brazill quickly come to mind. All of them left a lasting impact on an increasingly diverse urban neighborhood, and all of them inspired believers who continue their important work today.

In many ways, Plaehn’s story is similar, if only less told, and aside from one small detail: He was a white pastor who found his calling on Hilltop.

At a time when many similar churches and their white congregation members were fleeing the neighborhood, Plaehn chose to open the doors of his historically German-Russian church to everyone in the neighborhood, including its predominantly African American residents, regardless of their religious backgrounds.

Over three decades, including the 1980s and ‘90s, when drug-related violence was a constant presence, Plaehn became a fixture in the blocks surrounding Peace Lutheran, known for his walks around the neighborhood and recognizing his neighbors by name. It was a routine he continued long after his retirement in 2003.

According to Kris Plaehn, one of Plaehn’s six children, her father was never afraid, whether he was pounding the Hilltop pavement door-to-door or helping to organize demonstrations against gang violence.

Plaehn invited everyone to church, but that wasn’t her father’s sole motivation, his daughter said. Mostly, he was driven to help anyone who needed it without judgment, whether it meant welcoming people into his home who had no place to go, counseling local gang members or driving parishioners to early morning dialysis treatments.

“We never worried about him because he knew everybody. He could go up to every drug dealer standing on the corner of 16th and J and he would know their names. His real thing was that you had to minister to people where they were,” Kris Plaehn said. “You had to be there where they were, and that meant the church had to minister to the people who were in the neighborhood. He wasn’t interested in being a ‘white savior.’ For him, it was about the people from the neighborhood; they’re going to be the ones to lead.”

As an example of her father’s approach, Kris Plaehn recalled one of his first big decisions as pastor at Peace Lutheran: welcoming Clarence Pettit, a Black lay pastor from the neighborhood, as an associate in the mid-1970s. At a time when racism was commonplace, nearly half of the congregation left, she said. But those who stayed were committed, and the church eventually grew. A gospel choir was started, and through the efforts of late congregation member Ruby Williams, so was Peace Lutheran’s feeding program, which still provides meals every April and October.

Aida Perez, now 55, is one of the unlikely parishioners Plaehn recruited. In the 1980s, Perez was living not far from Peace Lutheran and also struggling with alcohol abuse, she said. She remembers the day Plaehn first showed up at her door, and her feeling at the time that someone like her wouldn’t be “welcomed at church.” She also recalls hiding her beer when he arrived.

“I was like, ‘Oh, no, here comes a priest,’” said Perez, who has now been sober for nearly 30 years and has volunteered with the Peace Lutheran meals program for just as long. “He taught me the love of God through him, by how he accepted me for who I was and not what I did.”

Willie Stewart, who became the Tacoma school district’s first Black principal in 1970, also recalled the first time he met Plaehn. The two Texans crossed paths at a marriage at Peace Lutheran where Plaehn wed an interracial couple. At the time, according to Stewart, such a ceremony was rare and controversial.

Stewart said Plaehn became a lifelong friend, in large part because of the pastor’s commitment to lifting up the people of Hilltop, and in particular Black families and young people.

“I think that being raised in the south and seeing the degradation of persons due to the pigmentation of their skin, he had a mission for God to welcome everyone, and he wanted to be an instrumental piece of that,” Stewart said. “I truly think he was driven by the scripture. As Jesus said, ‘Everyone is welcome in the kingdom.’”

On Wednesday, Montgomery said he’s looking forward to paying tribute to Plaehn during a public memorial service scheduled at Peace Lutheran on Jan. 14 at 11 a.m. Along with all his other qualities, Plaehn also had a good sense of humor, Montgomery said. Before he died, Plaehn asked Montgomery to sing at his memorial, and even picked out a song for him. With a laugh, Montgomery said he plans to do his best for his friend.

How will Montgomery remember Plaehn?

As a champion for Hilltop, and a man of unwavering faith and conviction.

“Pastor Plaehn might have been ahead of his time, but his timing was perfect,” Montgomery said.