Blazing a new trail

• By ED CULLEN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 17, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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WALKER — Three years after The First Baptist Church of Algiers was ruined in Hurricane Katrina, the 80-year-old church, bookstore and broadcast service are in Livingston Parish.

Founded across the Mississippi River from New Orleans in 1927 by the Rev. L.R. Shelton, the church was rededicated last month during the congregation’s spring Fellowship Day.

With the advent of the church’s broadcast service in 1943, the congregation and radio listeners from around the country have gathered at the church the last Sundays in April and October for a homecoming.

Albert Pendarvis, 78, known to the radio congregation as “The Old Trailblazer,” is the pastor. Pendarvis lives on 40 acres in Walker with his wife, Joyce.

Pendarvis, who was born in Walker, founded B&D Electrical Co. with his brother, Buddy, in 1966. The “D” in the company’s name stands for “Doodle,” Pendarvis’ nickname.

Pendarvis left the multimillion-dollar business to his children to run in 1980 and retired at age 50. The company has about 200 employees today, Pendarvis said.

“I had a motor home and travel plans,” Pendarvis said.

Instead, Pendarvis served as a lay preacher with the church and held services at First Baptist of Algiers’ mission on Marilyn Drive in Baton Rouge.

“I did some other things, too,” Pendarvis said. “I developed land and built houses.”

Pendarvis, who became the full-time pastor in 1996, had been living with his wife in Algiers for 13 years when Katrina hit.

“The roof of the church peeled back like a tin can,” the pastor said. Shelton founded his church in an old vaudeville theater called Foto’s Folly near Algiers Point, across the river from the French Quarter.

“Rain kept coming in,” Pendarvis said. “They wouldn’t let us back down there for 3‰ weeks.”

When Pendarvis walked inside the church in Algiers he saw “green mold growing on the walls and slime dripping from the shelves of the broadcast control room.”