No Golden Trowel
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When in Bahá'í history
Wilmette (today: Wilmette, Illinois, USA)
‘Abdu’l-Bahá laid the cornerstone of the House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, on 1 May 1912. A temporary tent covered a spot of prairie overlooking Lake Michigan. People from different nationalities were on hand to ceremoniously turn over a bit of soil. Miss Irene Holmes of New York presented the Master with a golden trowel for the ground-breaking. He handed it back and asked instead for ordinary tools.
Star of the West reported at the time: “Restoring the precious emblem to its leather case, Abdul-Baha next called for the implements necessitated by the gravelly nature of the soil, and in response there was brought to Him first an axe and then a shovel. With these tools of the every-day life of the workers of the world Abdul-Baha and friends from every race present, excavated a resting place for a stone which had been brought to the spot as a loving contribution of material and labor by earnest Bahais from both east and west.”
He then laid the cornerstone.
Source: Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Annamarie Honnold), pp. 18–19; Star of the West, vol. 3, no. 4 (17 May 1912), p. 6.
Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: corner-stone).
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