To understand northern Alabama's two principal cities, look no farther than their symbols:

Birmingham is guarded by the Vulcan, a giant iron statue of the mythological god of metal-working. Vulcan looks down, approvingly, on the industrial center of the Deep South from his perch atop one of the lush, rolling hills surrounding this city. Birmingham, with a metropolitan population of about a million people, is a city with foundations of iron and steel.Huntsville's landmarks are gleaming, skyscraper-height rockets on display, whose functioning twins are taken to launching pads and propelled into space. Called Rocket City, Huntsville is home to the Alabama Space and Rocket Center, a vital cog in the U.S. space program. It is located near the slow-moving Tennessee River, some 100 miles north of Birmingham, and is about one-quarter the size of its bigger brother.

And to understand the progress of the Church in the two cities, look no farther than these same symbols:

Birmingham is called the Magic City, but growth of the Church over the years there has been anything but magic. In Vulcan's manner, it has come step-by-step, tempered by sacrifice and persecution.

Dorothy M. Horne, a member of the Birmingham-area Indian Springs Ward, aptly describes this in a poem she wrote called "This People." Part of it reads: "A people, tested in the flame, / And rising, tested at each gain; / Struggling, giving, moving, / Going forward in His name. / This people, building Zion, / Stone by single stone. . . .

In Huntsville, old-time members of the Church remember the consistent prayer of Lola Rice, as a small group of them would gather and meet in their run-down, rented facilities: "Lord, fill this valley with Latter-day Saints." Dr. Wernher von Braun, the renowned rocket scientist, had come to Huntsville in 1950; by 1956 came the dawning of the Space Age and a major National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility; with the NASA complex came people from all over the United States, including many members of the Church. Somewhat like a rocket, the Church had been launched in Huntsville, whose valley was suddenly filled with many more Latter-day Saints.

It is possible that not a single member of the Church lived in northern Alabama in the year 1900. Early missionary efforts about that time were met with severe persecution. It was not uncommon for missionaries to be severely beaten or whipped by the people they visited; a few elders even gave their lives.

The first stirrings of success came in and around the small town of Elkmont, located north of Decatur, a few miles from the Tennessee border. Patriarch Samuel L. Brown of the Huntsville Alabama Stake remembers as a boy arising at 2 a.m. to catch a train to take his family 10 miles from Athens to Elkmont to attend Church. At first, meetings were held in members' homes, or under the welcome shade of a tree.

Then in 1931 a small chapel was built - on donated land, with donated lumber and labor. The first meeting there drew 80 people, more than enough to fill the little building, but by that evening more than 300 members and investigators had gathered, some traveling long distances by horse team, to hear the elders.

Visits from the traveling elders were always a treat, for the well-scattered members had little else to cling to. Branches, even by 1950, were few and far between. The Church was built organization by organization - a Sunday School in one member's home, a Relief Society in another's, a Primary in still another's - if, indeed, there were enough members for such a rotation! Progress was painfully slow.

Luther and Hasty McGahee were among the first members in Huntsville, whose LDS numbered just four or five families in 1950. Sister McGahee recalls attending meetings in the newly organized Huntsville Branch in 1952 and "watching plaster fall from the walls onto the speaker." Meeting in this soon-to-be-condemned carpenters' union hall spurred the small branch's sisters to action - they immediately began selling punch and cookies and raised more than $100 toward a new building within a few months. It would and be several years, though, before the money would be put to use.

Roots of the Church in the Birmingham area seem to stretch to McCalla, a small town on the metropolitan outskirts, about 15 miles southwest from city center. Home Sunday School was established as early as the World War I years, and the McCalla Branch was organized in 1937. A commemorative plaque on a secluded, wooded roadside in the town marks the place where meetings were first held and points out the nearby creek where baptisms were conducted. The Birmingham area's first chapel was built not far away in the 1940s.

In Birmingham proper, a small branch held its meetings in the foyer of a movie theater in the early 1950s - and had plenty of room to spare. "We usually had 10 or 15 out to sacrament meeting," recalled Halva F. Lindsay, the first branch president in Birmingham. "We didn't have enough priesthood leadership at first, so I had to obtain special permission to call an outstanding 17-year-old young man to be my counselor."

By 1957 the Birmingham members had built, with considerable sacrifice, a big new meetinghouse (now the Birmingham Alabama Stake Center) in one of the nicest parts of town. "Everyone thought we were crazy to be putting up such a huge building," said Lindsay, who added that attendance had grown by then, but only to 40 or 50 people each week. "But we grew into it, outgrew it, added onto it, and have outgrown it again."

The dedication of such men as Stance H. Moore, president of the North Alabama District during most of the 1950s, helped the Church gain momentum, credibility and strength. Pres. Moore, who lived 40 miles southeast of Birmingham in Sylacauga, traveled the width and breadth of the 200-by-200-mile district Sunday after Sunday.

Others contributed, as well, for even home teaching was an adventurous sacrifice. Patriarch James A. Prestridge of the Bessemer Alabama Stake remembers setting out with his father, Jessie W., the first thing Saturday mornings to call on Church members and returning home well past 10 p.m., and more than 200 miles later. Huntsville's Sister McGahee says it was not unusual for members to serve in five or six Church positions until the numbers caught up with the organization.

The late Elder LeGrand Richards of the Council of the Twelve spoke at a Birmingham District Conference in the early 1950s and predicted that if the members remained dedicated and faithful, some of them would live to see stakes organized in the North Alabama District.

Patriarch Prestridge attended that meeting. "There were probably 200 or 250 people at that district conference," he recalled. "I said, `Well, I can't visualize it.' I thought I might live to see one stake."

He has lived to see four. The Huntsville area, blessed with the sudden infusion of military and NASA people, achieved stakehood 20 years ago, on March 3, 1968. Then came Birmingham in 1975, Montgomery, also in 1975, and Bessemer (suburban Birmingham) in 1982.

"The Church in Birmingham is alive and well," said Pres. Barry W. Seidel of the Birmingham stake. "It is going forth with great vigor." Indeed, where handfuls of persecuted saints once met under trees, there are nearly 10,000 members of the Church in 20 wards and 10 branches - and no more carpenters' union halls for meetinghouses.

Pres. E. Allen Rich of the Huntsville stake gives a similar report for his city: "The members here are doing a great work. Convert baptisms have doubled in the past year, temple attendance has more than tripled over the past five years and more than 100 people a year are being reactivated. And the Church's image in Alabama is improving all the time."

With that increased acceptance and legitimacy has come more success in missionary work. Pres. M. Dalton Cannon Jr. of the Alabama Birmingham Mission reported that mission-wide baptisms in 1987 was doubled over the number in 1986, and his missionaries aim to increase that by half again in 1988. "There is progress here," he said. "And I see it continuing, and even gaining in momentum. The members here are wonderfully supportive."

Beneath all of this lies the same sort of steely devotion of the Church's early pioneers in this state. Saints in Alabama still make sacrifices not required of members where the Church is more concentrated. Trips to the temple are 300-450 miles round trip. (Members of the Church here seem to have a special affection and affinity for temple and family history work.) Home and visiting teaching assignments are often scattered over many miles. Some members, particularly in rural areas, still face persecution and ridicule for their religious beliefs.

But they advance on, as firmly and consistently as Vulcan, and with the same sort of quiet dignity that typifies the placid, graceful countryside around them.

Another of Sister Horne's poems, "Southern Saints," explains:

"Gentle manners belie the strength / Beneath the surface / Waiting to be tapped;

/ Courteous speech, soft accents, / Hide force and purpose / Ready to be mapped. . . ."