Chell, Erwin Frank, 1918-

Erwin Frank Chell was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 2, 1918, the son of Gilbert Frank Chell and the former Meta Emily Hein. Gilbert Chell was entirely of Swedish heritage, Chell was an Anglicized version of Kall, and was a second-generation American. Gilbert was born on a Minnesota farm and was very hardy; as a young man he worked a variety of hard-labor jobs while also playing baseball as a semi-pro. Even after the birth of his children his weekend income from baseball exceeded his weekday pay as a factory worker. This extra income provided the Chells with more security than many other working-class families. Mrs. Meta Chell was like her husband American-born, but entirely German in heritage; her grandparents had been born in the Prussian provinces of Posen and Pomerania.

Though both Erwin's parents were born Lutheran, the fact that one was of Swedish heritage and the other of German heritage had the effect that their family was not tightly identified with one synod alone. As Erwin states in his reminiscences, his family lived in several St. Paul neighborhoods while he was a child and they would attend the nearest Lutheran church; sometimes the church would be of German heritage, while at others Swedish. "I don't think we had a lot of synodical loyalty, but joined the most convenient church. Going to church was important to my parents." Erwin's childhood of devout religious observance, coupled with his parents' broad Lutheranism, instilled in the boy a mixture of religious ambition and tolerance. Erwin's future career as a missionary lasted only twelve years as at its end he no longer believed that theological differences among Christians were enough to justify the continued separation of their mission fields.

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