CROSS TO BEAR
UPPER CHI FLOCK HOPES FOR REBIRTH AFTER BELOVED CHURCH IS CONSUMED BY FLAMES
UPPER CHICHESTER >> Devoted members of the Memorial Presbyterian Church watched helplessly Monday morning as their beloved place of worship erupted in flames.
Along 3217 Chichester Ave. in Boothwyn, ladder trucks took to the skies as brave firefighters plunged into the church as black smoke poured from the shattered gothic-style arched windows that adorn the facade of the 130-yearold structure.
Pastor Robert Kaufman was in disbelief when he got a call at 8:36 a.m., saying, “Your church is on fire.”
“As I was coming here I was thinking about how we spent a week discussing the trials and troubles that Jesus went through,” Kaufman said. “Yesterday we celebrated the resurrection.”
Luckily no one was inside at the time of the fire.
Kaufman said he’ll once again be praying for a resurrection, but now in particular for the church which congregation just celebrated Easter Sunday.
“It was a reminder that the church may be in disrepair, maybe totally, we don’t know yet, but one thing we do know is that it will be resurrected,” Kaufman said.
It was a difficult moment for longtime parishioners watching firefighters one-by-one carrying stacks of Bibles and hymnals for storage along with anything else of value that survived the Monday morning blaze.
Barbara Fecondo, 89, grasped tightly two offering plates that had been salvaged from the gutted church. She said she’s been a member of Memorial Presbyterian since the 1950s and said Monday morning that she was witness to a very sad occasion.
“We were all here yesterday,” Fecondo said. “It was a nice service. They had all the flowers inside and it looked very pretty.”
She along with other church faithful were at a loss for words.
“We don’t have all the answers right now,” she said.
The Presbyterian Clerk of Session, Annette Hart, 66, took a moment to find the words to describe the scene she witnessed.
“I’m just hoping the damage isn’t as bad as it looks,” Hart said. “I am hoping we can rebuild. That is the main objective.”
Memorial Presbyterian Church was built in 1885, serving the community of Upper Chichester for over 130 years.
Kaufman said the message on Easter became even more relevant Monday following the fire.
“We had a service of rejoicing and giving thanks to the Lord,” Kaufman said. “The sermon said that Easter Monday should be as happy and as joyful as it was on Easter Sunday.”
“Every day of our lives should be one of joy,” he said.
Ogden Fire Chief Craig Small said officials had initially “written off” both the church and the adjacent structure before firefighters dove into the structure filled front-to-back with black smoke.
“They did a hell of a job,” Small said. “Without those first crews we’d have lost the building ... they went in with zero visibility and put the fire out. That’s a great job.”
Fire companies from Boothwyn, Reliance, Lower Chichester and Ogden were among the first on the scene, assisted by crews on the second alarm from Aston Township, Claymont, Talleyville, Prospect Park, Bethel, Brookhaven, Rocky Run and Concordville.
The bulk of the fire was kept to the rear where the altar was located. One parishioner said that an entire wall had burned away, which she noticed after looking straight through from the front steps to the back of the church. Kaufman said the fire had burned through the floors to the basement and stretched upstairs to the roof.
He said the pews remained intact.
“We have a spirit of seeing this through,” Kaufman said. “We will revive, we will see a new Memorial Presbyterian Church, maybe livelier and more zealous than we were before.”