The Board of Directors for the Perry County Lutheran Historical Society, which operates the Lutheran Heritage Center & Musuem, has voted to offer the position of Museum Director to Denise Hellwege. After her prayerful consideration, she has now accepted that position, and yesterday was her first day on the job. Denise is now added to the list of wonderful people who have served as director since our museum opened in 2005. We are thrilled to have her on board.

Denise moved to Perry County about a year ago when her husband, Rev. John Hellwege accepted the call to become pastor at Salem Lutheran Church in Farrar and Zion Lutheran Church in Crosstown. Several months ago, Denise joined our group of volunteer docents and has served us faithfully in that role. Now, she will assume a different role as our director. We trust that she will lead our museum well into the future.

Denise and her husband spent the past 8 years in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Rev. Hellwege was a professor of historical theology at Concordia, Edmonton. Denise has a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. In Canada, she has been a part-time church secretary for two different congregations. Throughout her married life, she has mostly been a homeschool mom for her four children. She presently has four grandchildren to whom she is much closer now that she lives in Missouri.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will recognize the name, Hellwege. Pastor Hellwege can indeed trace his roots all the way back to the original Hellwege who made his way to Perry County, Heinrich Hellwege. A post was written about Heinrich that was titled, The Fourth Marriage. It told of his 4 different wives. Rev. Hellwege is a descendant from his 4th wife.

Denise was born and raised in the Chesterfield, Missouri area west of the city of St. Louis. Denise wants people to know that the Chesterfield of her youth was nothing like it is today. It was a rural area at that time, but has now been swallowed up to be part of the St. Louis metropolitan area. Denise attended Lafayette High School in Chesterfield. That is the same high school where the St. Louis Cardinal, David Freese, the 2011 World Series MVP, attended.

Denise experienced a good baptism as the director on her first day. The visitors to the museum included a pastor from Minnesota, a man and some of his family from Germany, and a couple from Australia. In addition, Denise also got to assist in assembling a new Mississippi River history exhibit that will be opening soon at our museum. Not every day is going to be quite that exciting, but Denise already found out that she will never know ahead of time what kind of interesting visitor will enter the door to our museum.

If you are in the neighborhood, stop by and introduce yourself to Denise.