So who was she?Īimee Kennedy was born in 1890 near Ingersoll, Ontario, where, at age 17 she met, fell in love with, and married Robert Semple, a magnetic Irish Pentecostal itinerant preacher. The resulting scandal put the character of Aimee Semple McPherson on public trial. So when, five weeks later, on June 23, Sister Aimee turned up at a Mexican border town near Douglas, Arizona, people were confused - and excited. In the mourning period after she yielded to the Pacific, despair reportedly caused one girl to commit suicide, while a deep-sea prowler looking for McPherson’s remains died of exposure according to Carey McWilliams, one “ecstatic follower…glimpsing an image of Aimee on the bright, shimmering waters…was forcefully restrained from plunging into the waves” and another, “twenty-six, leaped into the sea crying, ‘I’m going after her,’ and was drowned.” McPherson, the evangelical preacher known as “Sister Aimee” or just “Sister” was one of the most beloved, enigmatic, and identifiable characters of the Jazz Age in the Golden Land.
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