Corinne True and the Temple Fund

A retelling based on Corinne True's report as financial secretary of Bahai Temple Unity, printed in the Star of the West (Vol. 1, No. 4, 1910), with details from H. M. Balyuzi's 'Abdu'l-Bahá: The Centre of the Covenant, Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By and Messages to the Bahá'í World, Rúḥíyyih Khánum's The Priceless Pearl, and the introduction to The Diary of Juliet Thompson. Words in quotation marks are from those books.

Corinne True was a Chicago believer whose home at 5338 Kenmore Avenue was often a meeting place for the Bahá'ís of that city. Her life's service was given to the first Bahá'í House of Worship of the West, the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár on the shore of Lake Michigan at Wilmette.

At the national convention of 1909 the American believers formed Bahai Temple Unity to carry out that work, and Corinne True served it as financial secretary. Her report to the convention of April 1910, printed in the first volume of the Star of the West, shows what the work looked like. Between March 1909 and April 1910 the fund had received $20,397.95. More than $7,000 of it had come from believers in India, Persia, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Russia and Egypt, sent first to 'Abdu'l-Bahá in 'Akká and forwarded by Him to America. Gifts had come from Berlin, Paris, London and Constantinople, from Mauritius, Canada, Mexico City and Hawaii, and from more than sixty places across the United States. She listed the small sources as carefully as the large: the blessing boxes a believer in Cincinnati had handed out, a widow's quilt fund, the sale of a book of hymns, and the gifts of the Bahá'í Sunday schools. "Abdul-Baha tells us," she wrote, "it is not so much the amount of the gift as the love of the heart prompting the gift."

In the same issue a Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá was printed praising the generosity of the friends toward the American Temple: some of them, He wrote, "sold portions of their clothing on the streets."

In 1912 'Abdu'l-Bahá came to America, and on His visit to the Temple site at Wilmette He laid the dedication stone with His own hands. When He returned to Chicago that September, the meetings at Corinne True's home grew so large that on one occasion three rooms were full and people crowded the staircase. Balyuzi writes that her services to the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár "were already outstanding and were to become truly exemplary in the years to come."

Soon after 'Abdu'l-Bahá's passing she went on pilgrimage to Haifa with her daughter, and the Guardian gave her instructions about the building up of the national administration. On her return she wrote to him about the 1922 convention, at which the National Spiritual Assembly was elected, and she was among those elected to it.

Construction of the Temple at Wilmette took more than thirty years. It was dedicated in 1953, and Corinne True lived to see it. By then Shoghi Effendi had named her a Hand of the Cause of God, in his announcement of 29 February 1952. Among the believers she was known as "the Mother of the Temple."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Corinne True's report in the Star of the West, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1910), and the other books named above.

Editors, S. O. T. W.. (1910). *Star of the West*. Bahai News Service. https://bahai.works/Star_of_the_West/Volume_1/Issue_4