Mel Trotter

Melvin Ernest Trotter (May 16, 1870–September 11, 1940) was a former alcoholic who founded and directed the Grand Rapids, Michigan City Rescue Mission for more than forty years and became a leader in American fundamentalism during the first four decades of the twentieth century.

Mel Trotter was one of seven children born in Orangeville, Illinois to a bartender who drank “as much as he served.” In 1887, the family moved to Freeport, Illinois where Trotter became a barber and was shortly thereafter gambling and drinking heavily. Four years later in Pearl City, Iowa, Trotter married Lottie Fisher, who was horrified to discover that her husband was an alcoholic. Trotter later said, “I loathed the life I was living. I tried my level best, but it wasn’t in me.”

Trotter lost his job in Pearl City, and he and his wife moved to a more rural area in an attempt to help him stay sober. He lost another job and they both moved to Davenport, Iowa, where Mel tried his hand at selling insurance, a job he lost the day after his son was born.

Trotter began leaving home for weeks at a time, and when he returned after one period of drunkenness, he discovered his two-year-old dead. Believing that he bore the responsibility for the child’s death, he considered suicide. He stood beside the coffin and swore that he would never touch liquor again. Two hours later he was staggering drunk. Hopping a train, he landed in Chicago in January 1897 where he sold his shoes to buy another drink.

Drunk, broke, and shoeless in the snow, Trotter was nudged inside the Pacific Garden Mission, where he was converted after hearing the testimony of its director, Harry Monroe. Trotter got a barbering job and spent every night at the mission. He could play the guitar and sing, and he and Monroe represented the Mission at its supporting churches.

In 1900, Grand Rapids businessmen decided to establish a rescue mission in the city’s ramshackle red-light district, and Monroe suggested Trotter—who had never even led a mission meeting—as the director. Conversions occurred at the mission almost immediately when it opened under Trotter’s direction, and Trotter found he could preach and also manage the toughs who tried to disrupt the proceedings. On one occasion he had the crowd sing “More About Jesus” while he tossed the hooligans into the street.

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