RELIGION / JOHN DART : It’s No Joke: Pastor Going Strong at 93

The Rev. J. (Jim) Whitcomb Brougher Jr. tells so many jokes that he keeps detailed records in well-worn notebooks to ensure that he doesn’t repeat himself.

Brougher has regaled churchgoers, Masons, breakfast clubbers, yachtsmen and other regular audiences for more than half a century--sometimes with jokes on himself.

“I was at Forest Lawn yesterday and they said, ‘It doesn’t pay you to leave,’ ” the 93-year-old Brougher said this week, walking slowly and with a slight stoop through Glendale First Baptist Church.

The church building was only two years old when Brougher was hired as pastor in 1927.

He’s still there.

“I wrote my seminary master’s thesis on pastoral changes (from church to church)--and I never made one,” Brougher observed.

Brougher’s penchant for humor comes naturally. His father, the Rev. J. W. Brougher Sr., traded stories with friend Will Rogers in the 1920s and preached at the cowboy humorist’s funeral.

In 1935, at age 65, the senior Brougher, who lived to be 98, joined his son as an associate pastor at Glendale Baptist when the membership was at a high point of 2,200. The senior Brougher stayed at the church for 10 years.

Now, a third-generation Brougher will become associate pastor of the 369-member church. After 30 years as pastor of four American Baptist congregations in the Pacific Northwest, the Rev. Frank Brougher, 55, has joined his father in Glendale.

Frank Brougher, who will be installed Dec. 10 during the church’s 11 a.m. service, said he was accepting an open invitation from his father, but only after seeing a role in trying to revitalize the downtown Glendale congregation.

Jim Brougher, who was barely slowed in his weekly schedule by a hernia operation on Oct. 30, makes it plain that he’s not cutting back on his routine.

In fact, that reminded him of a doctor who was impressed with the health of patient who had just completed a physical exam.

“You’re in great shape for a man 60 years old,” said the doctor.

“Who told you I’m 60? I’m 80.”

“How long did your father live?” the doctor asked.

“Who said he’s dead? He’s 100.”

“Well, what age was your grandfather at death?”

“Who told you he was dead? He’s 120, and he’s going to get married.”

“Why does he want to get married?”

“Who said he wanted to get married?”

The nonagenarian pastor two years ago made his usual early Wednesday morning appearance at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club near Griffith Park despite having had a bone spur removed from his foot a few days before.

Brougher, his mind and voice still sharp, is the longtime chaplain of that club as well as the Propeller Club of the Long Beach-Los Angeles harbors and a Los Angeles Masonic organization. He’s also a regular speaker at the Glendale Club and the Kiwanis of Glendale.

“I’ve been doing that for 50 to 60 years,” he said. When he’s called upon to give a speech, the pastor reaches for one of 32 lecture outlines. “All humorous,” he said.

Even in sermons in church, Brougher manages to squeeze in some jokes:

At a fair, a strong man squeezed a lemon with his hand, seemingly draining every drop from the fruit. The strong man challenged anyone in the crowd to get another drop from the lemon for $50. A small guy stepped forward and squeezed out a tablespoon of juice. “No one’s ever done that before,” said the strong man, handing the fair-goer his prize money. “Who are you?” He answered, “I’m the treasurer of a Baptist church.”

Jane Wilson, who has been on the staff of the Los Angeles Baptist City Mission Society since 1952, said, “I find him to be an utterly fascinating person because of his abilities.

“He has an incredible memory,” she said, recalling his telling about arriving with his family in Los Angeles in 1910 when his father began a 16-year ministry at Temple Baptist Church in Downtown Los Angeles. Each family member rode in a separate car in a caravan from the train station to the church site, she recalled.

Brougher said in an interview this week that his father might have departed much sooner than he did from Temple Baptist Church, which later doubled as a theater where D. W. Griffith’s silent epic “The Birth of a Nation” premiered and was known as the Philharmonic Auditorium before it was torn down a couple of decades ago.

“The members told my father that they would cancel their pledges to the church if he left before the building was paid for,” the Glendale pastor said.

Wilson said that Brougher’s joke-telling is often a vehicle “to make a point or apply a biblical truth.” Wilson will participate in the installation service for Frank Brougher along with the Rev. John Jackson, executive minister for American Baptists in the Pacific Southwest.

In 1993, the Rev. Emory Campbell, who was then executive minister of the Los Angeles Baptist City Mission Society and has since died, remembered a joke Jim Brougher told at a dinner celebrating his 65th anniversary as the Glendale pastor, a story that seemed to contain a prophetic irony.

“He told of three guys who went to a train station but arrived so early that they started drinking in the restaurant to pass the time. Suddenly they noticed the train they were waiting for was pulling away. All three raced to catch it, but one was left behind on the platform,” Campbell said.

“A train official on the platform asked the guy who was left why he was laughing. ‘I missed my train, but those two came to see me off,’ he said.

“I think Jim Brougher was saying with that joke that ‘a lot of people came to see me off and I’m still on the platform,’ ” Campbell said.