When a Mission Cheated Lake
Michigan
Mel Trotter
On a rugged, cold night in January, a man staggered through the streets of Chicago intent on ending his life in the icy waters of Lake Michigan. But on Van Buren Street God intervened, and the man was pulled through the doors of the Pacific Garden Mission.
Harry Monroe, an ex-counterfeiter, was leading the singing when he saw the youthful drunkard being ushered to a seat. Abruptly he stopped the music. "Let us pray," he said. "O God, save that poor, poor boy."
Mel Trotter's head jerked erect when he heard the prayer. After that he managed to hear part of the testimonies and preaching. Through it all, his head reeled with the aching memories of his past.
His father was a saloon keeper and a drunkard. Mel often tended the bar. At nineteen he started drinking and betting on "sure shots" until he finally lost his job.
Then when he married, he promised his bride that he would never drink again.
But one night after a long drive Mel went to stable his horse. Suddenly a devilish desire swept over him. Without saying goodbye to his wife, he pushed the
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horse back out into the snowstorm. When he returned he had averaged a drink a mile with three quarts left for home consumption.
His next reformation held up for eleven and one-half sober weeks. When he weakened, he sold his horse for drinks.
He moved to the city where his sober spells became shorter and less frequent. "I'll quit," he vowed more times than he could remember. But he didn't. He began staying away from home for weeks at a time, even stealing to quench his thirst.
Mel was hospitalized and given treatment for alcoholism. When he was discharged, he was given a medicine kit. After fifteen minutes on the street, he traded the kit for three drinks of whiskey.
He did not even stop drinking when his wife gave birth to a baby boy. One day after a ten-day drinking binge, Mel came home to find his dead son in his wife's arms. Overcome with grief and guilt because of his neglect, he decided to kill himself.
His wife put the lifeless infant down and dropped to her knees in prayer. Then she arose and pulled Mell into her arms, turning him from suicide.
"I'll never take another drop," he promised as hot tears streamed down his face. But two hours after the baby's funeral, Mell Trotter staggered home — drunk again.
On the night of January 19, 1897, with all this behind him, Mel Trotter started toward Lake Michigan to drown himself. He never arrived there, however, because he was pulled into a mission.
There he heard Harry Monroe, the superintendent,
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tell of how God had saved him from a life of drunkenness and counterfeiting.
At the close of the service, Monroe gave an invitation. "Jesus loves you," he said, looking squarely at Mel. "Make room in your heart for Him tonight."
Mel Trotter jumped to his feet and moved forward. Harry Monroe pointed him to Christ.
Afterward, Mel spent every night he could in the mission. Sometimes he played the guitar and sang gospel songs. Frequently he and Harry Monroe visited churches in the Chicago area as a team.
Three years after his conversion, Mel Trotter was appointed superintendent of a rescue mission in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he spent forty years in fruitful ministry. During that time he used the fifteen-hundred seat Grand Rapids mission as a base to start sixty-six other gospel lighthouses in this country — all designed to reach the down and outer for Christ.
All this happened because a rescue mission cheated Lake Michigan out of a suicide victim.
