‘Beacons of life and beacons of hope for the community’
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Welders from Barnes Welding work on welding the beams of the cross together. -
Blayne Barnes works on welding parts of a 60-foot cross together. The cross is being erected at the Watonga Church of the Nazerene. Photo Provided Watonga Republican
The vision Kason Oakes had for an 80-foot cross in Watonga took a year to come to fruition, but it’s about to be fully realized.
Oakes, the lead pastor at the Watonga Church of the Nazarene, had seen a You Tube video on a similar project in Hennessey.
“Tracy Davison had been putting up these crosses. The video said he was on a mission to spread the crosses all over the state,” he said.
Oakes called Davidson, who lives in Ringwood, about erecting the giant cross in Watonga and encountered a small problem.
Davidson told him he would like to help but had run out of pipe for the projects.
“He told me, ‘Whenever I started this project there was someone who donated all of the pipe for these projects. I’ve done so many of them, I’ve simply run out. If you happen to run across any, I wouldn’t mind doing it to continue this mission,’ ” Oakes said about the phone call.
That was in January, and the cross project kind of percolated in the back of Oakes’ mind.
Davidson told the Enid News & Eagle newspaper that he got the idea to build the cross at Ringwood when a pipeline company donated a large quantity of 24-inch pipe commonly used to build gas pipelines.
He built the cross in his hometown, and then started looking for other places around the state to do the project.
Davidson was motivated to take on the cross projects to bring more people into a relationship with Christ.
"I think people are getting away from Christ so bad," Davidson said in the newspaper. "I thought it would be good to get these put up everywhere we can."
Oakes received a phone call in the fall from Davidson.
“He said, ‘Hey, are you ready to put up a cross?’ ” Oakes said.
Davidson had received donations of more pipe, so he was able to put up a few other crosses, including one at the Rock of Restoration Church in Calumet near the Cherokee Trading Post on Interstate 40.
“Really, it’s just a stake in the ground,” Oakes said. “Basically, it’s a symbol of hope, hopefully for our community. A symbol of life, especially during these dark times. It can be something that symbolizes that as people come into town, or leave town. That’s really what the object of what the crosses are. Beacons of life and beacons of hope for the community, and anybody who sees it.”
A lot of hard work has gone into getting the cross ready to go at his church, located at 1412 E. Russworm St., Oakes said.
Davidson has an engineering patent for the blueprint of the crosses, Oakes said. His blueprints tell how deep the base of the cross has to be in the ground, making sure it will withstand certain types of weather, Oakes said.
“We have to make sure it doesn’t blow over or things like that. He has got the patent and blueprints that have been approved,” he said.
A video on the church’s Facebook page details how the base was set up. A piece of pipe was embedded into the ground about 15 feet deep and surrounded by concrete.
“It was pretty interesting to watch him with his big drill bit, probably sixfoot wide in circumference,” Oakes said. “It was just a really big massive hole that he drilled down. Yeah, that thing is not going anywhere.”
Blayne Barnes of Barnes Welding and his crew welded the cross beams together, Oakes said, noting that Barnes’ background as a former pipe welder came in handy.
“It just got painted and sandblasted yesterday (Dec. 10),” he said. “The goal, our hope, is that by Christmas it will be erected.”
They still have to figure out how the cross will be backlit and some other electrical issues. But it won’t be long until the cross project is finished, Oakes said.
“Hopefully the community will see a crane lifting that thing up and putting into place within a couple of weeks,” he said.