Free Labor of Love : Witnesses’ Elbow Grease Leaves Stadium Sparkling

At one time, some members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses believed the end of the world would commence in September, 1975.

Good thing for San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium that it didn’t.

While they are waiting for the Battle of Armageddon, the Witnesses have been keeping busy by donating thousands of dollars in free labor to spruce up the stadium, where they hold annual summer assemblies.

On Monday, the San Diego City Council voted to accept the Witnesses’ latest gift--an offer to remodel the stadium’s administrative conference room. The city has agreed to supply $16,500 in materials so that the religious group can perform $45,000 worth of work to enlarge and refurbish an area that has been unimproved since the stadium opened in 1967.

The offer is the latest in largess from the Witnesses since 1983, when they first used the stadium for their four-day meetings in the summer.

Not content with just paying rent, Witnesses routinely went through the sports facility and cleaned windows, shampooed rugs, scraped gum off concrete, wiped the seats and refinished badly worn wooden chairs.

Then they became bolder. In 1984, they asked to do something more and they heartily agreed when the city suggested changing the “flushometers” that were corroding in the stadium’s 600 toilets.

Last year, with the city’s warm permission, they remodeled the administrative offices. Gone was the bureaucratic blend of blah walls and common fluorescent lights. A design and construction crew installed oatmeal wallpaper, custom oak cabinets, mirrors, a new reception counter and accent lights, set into a black ceiling.

“My office was pretty dingy and the reception office was tiny and cluttered and a mess,” said Bill Wilson, stadium manager.

“They came in one Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. and threw us out of here, and at 8 a.m. on Monday they had finished it off--they were putting the last light bulb up in my office.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Wilson, who joked that he was afraid the elaborate job would trigger an investigation into corruption. “I thought I was in the wrong office. It was a total shock.”

Wilson said he became uncomfortable this year when the Witnesses unveiled their latest plan to remodel the conference room, where stadium staff members and the city-appointed stadium authority meet. It was so “exotic” that Wilson said he had to tell the Witnesses to tone it down.

“I said, ‘Fellas, we can’t do it because we’re surely going to be investigated. I can see it as an executive room in the Chase Manhattan Bank,’ ” Wilson said.

So Wilson and the city settled on something more appropriate for a stadium. New carpeting. A new 16-foot conference table. Expanded meeting space. Special mirrored wall tiles that move to reveal enlarged graphics of the stadium and its grounds.

Hal Walker, the San Diego interior designer who is coordinating the job, said all the labor will be performed over a weekend before the Witnesses meet again in San Diego in late June.

“It’s really exciting to come in after the weekend and see their faces,” Walker said.

Jim McCabe, a San Diego attorney and spokesman for the Witnesses, said Monday that the stadium work is one way to enhance the public image of the religious group, whose members can be seen walking along downtown streets during the day holding the group’s magazines out for view.

“Over the years, a lot of people have given a lot of negative publicity to the Jehovah’s Witnesses because of our convictions based on biblical beliefs,” McCabe said. “So we like to try to let people know that we are concerned about the community in which we live and we are doing what we can in making a positive contribution.”

He said another purpose is to strengthen the “good relationship” the group has with the City of San Diego. The group’s annual gatherings at the stadium draw about 25,000 from San Diego, Imperial, Riverside and Orange counties, as well as western Arizona.

McCabe, an attorney, said the extensive cleanup of the stadium is performed before and after the annual meetings because “when we use a facility, we consider it as our place of worship, and we try to make it as nice as possible.”

Not counting Monday’s $45,000 gift, city officials estimate the Witnesses have performed free cleaning and remodeling worth $100,000. The volunteer work is done by professional designers and builders so “you get good, top-quality work,” said Assistant City Manager John Lockwood.

The city, in turn, gives the Witnesses a break on the rent. It charges the group the routine $3,500 a day for the stadium. But the city charges only a flat $1,500 per day for use of the parking lot, rather than $2 per car. This arrangement saves the Witnesses about $2,000 a day, said Jack Argent, the stadium’s assistant manager.

The friendly agreement between the city and the Witnesses is not without irony for the religious group, however.

In performing the thousands of dollars’ of free work--replacing toilet flushers, landscaping and remodeling offices--the Witnesses are ultimately making the stadium a grander place for sporting events. Although there is no prohibition against going to sports games, McCabe said, Witnesses as a whole are not disposed to joining the throng of fans who make their pilgrimages to the stadium to sputter invective at opponents of the Padres and Chargers.

“We view intense competition as not promoting love and brotherhood and the kind of qualities that we espouse in our door-to-door evangelism,” he said.