This Article was recently posted in the Napa Register.
Napa preacher has delivered the word for 60 years
Raising a tent for the Lord
In August of 1948, Rev. Paul Price led Napa's first Pentecostal revival from within a tent pitched on an empty lot on Soscol Avenue.
Price had paid $25 to lease the empty lot and acquired the tent, pulpit and benches from a Santa Rosa Nazarene minister for $400.
"Everything was supplied as I needed it," Price said. "I was thrilled with it."
The congregation stayed there for a few months before moving to a building next to the Napa Valley Opera House on Main Street.
More than 60 years later and in a new location, the church is thriving and Price's enthusiasm for preaching remains strong.
"I'm still in love with what I'm doing," Price said recently. "I'm in love with the word of God."
Price, who turned 87 on Valentine's Day, is never far from New Life Tabernacle, with headquarters now in a solid building constructed in the 1970s on First Street.
On occasion he still fills in for Pastor Clayton Brown, microphone in hand and cane close by, preaching about current events, youth and parenting.
And while he claims his "Model-T" frame no longer allows him to do as much as he wants, Price continues to visit churches affiliated with United Pentecostal Church International, the umbrella organization based in St. Louis, Mo. Only recently, he visited Pentecostal churches in Los Angeles, Fresno and Berkeley.
"He keeps surprising us all the time," said Brandon Noyes, his 22-year-old grandson. "He's all over the place."
Heading west
A grandfather of three and great-grandfather of two, Price explained his mission and that of the church. "We're going to teach them from the cradle on through to know the word of God and how they should live," Price said.
Noyes, who was discharged from the U.S. Army last summer after serving two tours of duty in Iraq, said his grandfather has always been there to offer advice.
"My grandpa is like the chairman of the board," Noyes said.
Price keeps in touch with church members by phone, calling on members who are sick or lonely.
Sara McLeod, who has been a church member since the 1980s, said the founding pastor has been like a grandfather to her four children.
"He's dedicated," McLeod said.
Originally from Brookhaven, Miss., Price grew up listening to Pentecostal preachers in front of his grandparents' porch.
His father was a sharecropper and a carpenter, but there was no work in Mississippi. So in 1935, Price and his family, including his parents, three brothers, a sister and an aunt, packed up their 1929 Plymouth and left Mississippi for the Central Valley in California.
The family settled in Kerman, near Fresno, where Price spent his teen years.
He became a plasterer and stucco contractor while he began to preach at the suggestion of a mentor.
"I just felt it was a natural thing," Price said.
For years, Price worked with his wife, Alyce Lorraine Hammond, whom he had married in 1942. She helped her husband lead the Pentecostal church in Kerman before they moved to Napa, where they raised a church as well as three daughters, Gaylyne, Renee and Karla.
Paul and Alyce Price traveled throughout the United States on behalf of the Pentecostal church after Paul Price became in the mid-1960s district superintendent of the Western District of United Pentecostal Church International.
Daughters Gaylyne Price and Karla Green said their parents formed a great team.
During his first decade in Napa, when Paul Price earned a living in plastering and stucco, his projects included one of Napa's first residential subdivisions, the Greene's Cleaners building on Jefferson Street and other commercial buildings in Napa. He also built the congregation's first church on East Avenue.
In the 1970s, the congregation outgrew that building and, with the help of a son-in-law, Keith Green, Price built the church at 2625 First St. Price also sold real estate.
"I enjoyed real estate," Price said. "If I were not a preacher, I'd be a real estate salesman. I don't know about now, but back then it was fun," said Price, who left the business to concentrate on the church.
Brandon Noyes, the grandson, said that while he is pulled to the ministry, he has begun pre-medical studies at Pacific Union College. His grandfather has told him to first make sure to have a good career to fall back on, Noyes said.
Price's wife, Alyce, died in 2003.
Four years ago, Price remarried, to Etheleen Toole, a longtime family friend.
They live in a new subdivision in Vacaville, where Gaylyne also lives.
While Paul Price lives in Vacaville, he loves Napa. His crypt is at Tulocay Cemetery, he said.
"I'll leave from Napa. (There is no other) place in this world that's better than Napa," Price said. "No way."
