By Michael IrelandSenior International Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
BRANSON, MO (ANS) -- With his brother Peter, Jack Herschend founded Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri based on the location of an old mining cave in The Ozarks. It has now become the leading theme park in the United States as the most-revisited entertainment site in the country.
“It’s been a great Christian culture to raise sons and grandchildren in,” he told me.
Herschend said that in 1946, his parents came to the Ozarks from Chicago to hunt wild flowers.
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The Marvel Cave at Silver Dollar City (Courtesy Silver Dollar City)
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“There’s a greater variety of wild flowers in the Ozarks here in Southern Missouri than there is any place else in the United States. And they met and fell in love with two old maids in their seventies who owned a cave.
And no electricity, no running water, no telephone -- but they owned a cave. Mary and Hugo (Herschend) ended up leasing the cave from the Lynn sisters because they had no family to leave the cave to.
“We were here in the cave business for four years when I happened to go by the Post Office in downtown Branson and saw that our parking lot was for sale. The parking lot had been school grounds for a town that was at the mouth of the cave. And we had no idea we had to buy back the school grounds in order to make the lease from the Lynn sisters good, and thus was born the idea of rebuilding this whole town.”
Jack continued: “Now I’d like you to believe that we had this 200-year plan (and that) we knew that two-million people were going to visit and so on, but none of that would be true. We were totally surprised when we built the first phase of Silver Dollar City that four times more people came to see the city than had ever come to Marble Cave and so we scratched our head and said we began to think about this and that’s basically how we got our start.”
Jack, gray-haired, soft-spoken and now in his eighties, shared his love for the Lord and how he came to know Jesus as Savior.
“I was tough, I’m a far left-brained -- everything’s gotta be logical, I gotta have proof. And a traveling hardware salesman instead of playing golf every Saturday he’d grab his Bible and he’d come wherever and I thought ‘Oh gosh, John Shanahan’s here again,’ and he’d just stay with me and stay with me and stay with me, and finally I said, ‘John I’d love to believe, I want to believe partially because I admire you so much, but I can’t believe -- I need proof. So he brought me a book called ‘Those Troublesome Miracles,’ and the book described the New Testament’s thirty-five miracles of Jesus. And as I read that book and thought it’s easier to believe than try to explain away thirty-five miracles. And so that was the turning point for me, and my wife was a believer, she and I had been married six years when I became a believer; she would take our children to church every Sunday and she would invite me, but she would never push and she if she’d pushed I’d have run.
“So John Shanahan was the vehicle the Lord used -- my wife could have been such a liability -- and I love the fact that she would pray for me, she invited me, but she never pushed. That was a tremendous testimony to me of what God was all about, what Jesus is all about.”
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Peter and Jack Herschend, founders of Herschend Family Entertainment which runs Silver Dollar City (Courtesy Silver Dollar City)
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The Herschends, who have both now retired from running Silver Dollar City, use love as a guiding principle in running the theme park. What are some of Jack’s favorite stories of Silver Dollar City, and how love has been that guiding principle?
“I will try and tell you, but I will admit that as I tell these stories I get emotional, so I apologize if I crack,” said Jack, adding: “There are so many.”
Herschend then told me about one worker at Silver Dollar City who made a distinct impression.
“There was a big six-foot, six-inch tall man who paved roads all of his career and the last ten years he came to work at Silver Dollar City and he was a street sweeper, six-foot, six-inches tall. And one day I was coming into the park and here he was on his knees with a little girl who was in a wheelchair and he was giving her something, and I couldn’t see what it was, but after they parted and the little girl was just beaming I said, ‘Luke, what in the world is going on?’ And he said: ‘I buy five-hundred silver dollars every year and when I see a little child who has a disability I make sure that he or she gets a silver dollar. There’s love in action,” said Jack, who started weeping as he recalled the memory. “Sorry I told you I…,” he said.
“But he’s just a special person. You get to see it all over the place,” Herschend said.
Jack continued: “One of the things that we neither encourage nor discourage is for our Silver Dollar City family to witness to our guests and they find great tasteful ways to do so… They’ll do it in music -- they’ll say ‘If you’d love to stay afterwards and visit with us, we’d love to visit with you.’ They build a relationship, they ask about the guest and what’s going on in their lives and they earn the right to talk to them. So it’s a real common thing at Silver Dollar City.”
I asked Jack to tell me about the phrase used at Silver Dollar City about ‘making memories that are worth repeating.’ I asked him if he could give me one instance of someone he’d heard from that came and had a wonderful memory they said it was worth repeating?
“You ask good questions, but my problem with the questions is there are so many examples,” said Jack. “The Homestead Pickers play on the front porch of the homestead which is over a hundred-fifty-year-old log cabin and they play great Gospel music and secular music as well.
They’ve got a song that they found called ‘On My Father’s Side,’ and the story tells of Christ from the standpoint of his mother and also his father, not Joseph, but meaning God. And it is a gets you by the throat and people come back time after time and there at the front porch of the McHaffie Homestead I hear people say play ‘On My Father’s Side’ one more time. We’re the most-revisited theme park in the United States and it is stories like that you don’t find at Six Flags or Disneyland and that brings people back, and it’s a memory worth repeating.”
I told Jack that in America it seems that we can be amused until we’re out of our minds with 400 cable channels and so many ways to fill our time. Would he speak to the difference between amusement in entertainment, and something that’s godly and spiritual?
Thoughtfully and quietly, Jack responded: “I think there’s a hunger in all of us, whether we’re believers or not and often times we can’t even identify what it is. But in this day-and-age of cell phones and so, on and on, there’s a hunger to get back to some basic, something that is not electronic and Jesus fills that void and so when you let people experience in a very tasteful way…I think of it as seasoning a meal. A certain amount of seasoning makes a meal taste so much better, but if you get just a little too much of it it spoils the whole meal. A little too much witnessing can spoil the experience, but most do a great job of just giving folks an opportunity to experience Christian culture. And we have rides, and we have shows and a cave to go through, but as I listen to people they come back time after time because of the people that they’ve met here and at Silver Dollar City.”
When pressed about IPods and cell phones and everyday electronics, and being asked to go further into what’s happened in our culture, with our families still struggling with the darkness coming into our lives in so many different ways, and yet Silver Dollar City and the Herschends, their company, both Jack and his brother, have been in the midst of that culture but taken a stand, how have they been able to do that in the middle of what is closing in on families today?
“It’s really been easy,” said Jack, laughing. “It’s we’re selling something that people hunger for, as I just described. And so we don’t have to adjust to the changing times -- people are hungry for the basics of faith, the basics of family and flag, and I get emotional every time I watch our opening ceremony when we ask veterans to be a part of flag-raising and you see veterans like me right now with tears running down their face because they’re being recognized, and it’s easy to just be what we are and people hunger for that faith, that flag, that family value, and that’s not going to change. The enemy is going to come up with all kinds of innovative new things that are going to get in the way, but the hunger within all of us, that’s a constant.”
If Jack has a message for folks who may or may not have heard of Silver Dollar City, what would he like to say to them?
“You’re good,” said Jack. “If I could just take a minute I would just encourage them to seek out what is deep down in their hearts going to fulfill them and few of us take the time in our busy existence -- we just we’re driven by all kinds of influences, so taking time to just stop and think about what it is that is really important in our lives and each individual gets a chance to decide that. It’s seldom going to be making that next sale when you think about what’s going to really be important to you.
“And if folks have the opportunity, God is going to reveal Himself. If people will take the time just to stop and reflect on what is it really that is going to fulfill me. So I would just encourage people to take time to think about themselves.”
**ANS would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.
| ** Michael Ireland is the Senior International Correspondent for ANS. He is an international British freelance journalist who was formerly a reporter with a London (United Kingdom) newspaper and has been a frequent contributor to UCB UK, a British Christian radio station. While in the UK, Michael traveled to Canada and the United States, Albania,Yugoslavia, Holland, Germany,and Czechoslovakia. He has reported for ANS from Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel, Jordan, China,and Russia. Michael's volunteer involvement with ASSIST News Service is a sponsored ministry department -- 'Michael Ireland Media Missionary' (MIMM) -- of A.C.T. International of P.O.Box 1649, Brentwood, TN 37024-1649, at: Artists in Christian Testimony (A.C.T.) International where you can make a donation online under 'Donate' tab, then look for 'Michael Ireland Media Missionary' under 'Donation Category' to support his stated mission of 'Truth Through Christian Journalism.' Michael is a member in good standing of the National Writers Union, Society of Professional Journalists, Religion Newswriters Association, Evangelical Press Association and International Press Association. If you have a news or feature story idea for Michael, please contact him at: ANS Senior International Reporter |  |
