By Aliza Alperin-Sheriff
Calvary Baptist Church’s annual three-day rummage sale is run by a small, dedicated group of volunteers, including one who has been working at the sale for 50 years.
The sale, which has grown into a popular event over the years, will be held on May 29, 30 and 31. It was started by Comrade Class, a women’s fellowship at the church. Although Comrade Class no longer exists, the sale has continued, said Sophia Pedersen, who recalls the sales origins back when she was a child.
The original purpose of the sale was to provide funds for the upkeep of the parsonage. However, from the beginning, some of the revenue was set aside for missions.
“We have kept up that tradition in different ways,” said Rev. Dennis O’Neill, who has been pastor at Calvary Baptist Church for six years and is the church’s first pastor not to live in the parsonage.
Today a portion of the funds is used to serve the needs of the church and the rest is used for missions. The missions that the church supports range from the local Hopewell-based charity Christine’s Hope for Kids to helping out the victims of major international humanitarian crises, such as the earthquake in Haiti.
“Our goal is actually to give 100 percent [of the sale’s proceeds] to missions,” explained O’Neill, noting that the church has met this goal at least once.
Pedersen, now 80, started volunteering with the sale as a young married woman, and has remained involved ever since. She served as director of the sale for many years, but recently she has taken a step back and allowed others to take charge.
Even after so many years, Pedersen remains enthusiastic about the sale.
“It’s a love, it’s just a love. Love it, love it, love it, always have,” she said. “I think about it all year long, live for it all year long, plan for it all year long.”
Pedersen enjoys selling secondhand goods so much that the rummage sale is not the only place where she does it. She spends winters in Florida, and for the past 25 years has been volunteering at a thrift store there that raises funds for the Humane Society.
Another longtime volunteer is Pat Dansberry, who has worked at the sale since the 1970s. Dansberry, who lives in Hopewell with her husband, works in market research at RL Associates in Princeton.
Dansberry is a very active member of Calvary Baptist Church, where she teaches Sunday school and sings in the choir. She also heads up the Christmas Bazaar, held the Sunday before Thanksgiving every November where the church serves breakfast and lunch and sells soup. Her grown son, a chef, comes in every year to help her make over 200 quarts of soup for the event.
Dansberry said that she enjoys the rummage sale because “it’s an activity where people within the church family get to know each other…in a different atmosphere than just on Sunday morning.” She added that she enjoyed the relaxed environment and the chance to work together with other members of the church.
Preparing for the sale each year is a demanding task. Today, preparations are overseen by Ben Primer, the associate librarian for rare books and special collections at Princeton University. Primer wasn’t even involved with the sale before he took over running it three or four years ago. He has been a member of Calvary Baptist Church since he moved to Hopewell in the mid-1990s, and sings in the church choir as well as the Hopewell Valley Chorus.
The church begins collecting items several months in advance and volunteers start actively preparing for the sale three weeks before it starts.
Primer said, “A lot of the work is coming in and pricing things.”
Although the process of pricing each item individually can be tedious, Pedersen said it is important because the customers really appreciate it and have expressed the belief that it makes the sale unique.
While sifting through every item, volunteers also do their best to make sure that no valuable items were donated accidentally.
“A person who isn’t a member of the church gave us wonderful jewelry a couple of years ago. We wanted to make sure she knew what she was doing. She did and was just so gracious,” said Pedersen. Sale of the jewelry raised hundreds of dollars, she said.
The first day of the sale is always a frenzy. Although the sale doesn’t open until nine, there’s always a line of people waiting to be let in by seven, and the line sometimes reaches around the corner.
“I’ve asked if they’re selling Springsteen tickets,” joked O’Neill.
Although running the sale is hard work, the volunteers always find things to enjoy.
“Every rummage sale we will find some item that’s donated and we don’t know what it is,” Pedersen said. “The whole time we work, we ask people what they think it is. We have a lot of fun with that.”
Customers also provide amusement. O’Neill said one year there was a living room set that hadn’t been sold. It seemed like a shame to get rid of it, but the church had no way of storing it for a year. Then a group of college students stopped by the sale on their way to a concert.
“The kids literally bought it as a lawn set for the concert that evening,” he said.
Although Primer described the sale as “a vital part of the church’s budget,” O’Neill said that he sees creating a sense of community and connecting with people as one of the primary goals of the sale.
“It’s more socially oriented than business oriented,” he explained.
The Calvary Baptist Church rummage sale will be held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. all three days at 3 E. Broad St. in Hopewell.
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