From the Mansfield News-Journal, Saturday, December 24, 1983, Page 6A
Christmas churchgoers at St. John's United Church of Christ, 68 Park Avenue East, Mansfield, will think they've stepped back in time tonight.
Both the 7:30 and 11 p.m. services will be conducted in candlelight, a practice discontinued years ago, and a 40-foot by 9-foot mislaid Nativity mural has been lifted to the place of honor in the sanctuary.
The Rev. Gerald G. Schuessler said this year's attempt to spark warm memories of Christmases past at St. John's began when the church's sanctuary committee decided to do something new and different for Christmas this year.
Some remembered the mural, ordered specifically for and donated to the church by the late Elmer Eckert, a billboard advertiser.
The problem was, no one knew where the mural was.
"Then I remembered there was only one thing in the church that could be that big, and I had seen it on top of the cabinets in the parish hall kitchen," Schuessler said.
Indeed, it was the mural, relegated to the out-of-the-way spot many years ago and forgotten.
The mural was in disrepair, had been mended with tape and was quite brittle. Committee members recoated the back to give it body, took off the tape and touched up torn spots. Dean Hahn built a collapsible frame and the mural was hung in the sanctuary.
Schuessler said that in his seven years at St. John's he had not known of the mural, but he did some investigating recently and discovered that murals like it were used as holiday billboard advertisements by area business men in the early and mid 1950s.
According to Mrs. Eckert, her husband gave the mural to the church for a Christmas program in 1955. At that time it was displayed free-standing in the sanctuary.
Now it hangs above the pews and will remain up at least through Epiphany, Jan. 6, Schuessler said. Some church members would like it to stay up permanently.
The mural shows the nativity, complete with wise men and shepherd. Across the bottom, reads, "And when they were come into the house they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down and worshipped him. Matt. II:11."