Project uplifts St. Paul’s UCC
Elevator project gives access to church members
After everyone endured the year that was 2020, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ is beginning 2021 with something uplifting for its members.
Earlier this week, the church’s 10-year — from raising money to the construction and completion — el
evator project is ready for use for its members.
The church, located at 201 N. Perry St., has had a hard time maintaining handicap accessibility for its members with its old elevator breaking down and unable to be repaired. Church member Lynda Hadley who also spearheaded the project said the church had trouble with the estimated 30-to-40-year-old elevator in 2010, prompting the need to fund a new one.
In 2016, the church received a generous donation from the family of a late member who was a proponent for handicap accessibility.
“It kept breaking and people would get stuck and things got worse and worse,” Hadley said. “And we hoped that we could use it for this project.”
By December 2019, Hadley said the money had grown to the point where the church had about half of the amount it needed to fund the project as the church decided by 2017 that something needed to be done with the elevator constantly breaking and parts not being available to fix it.
“My husband was spending so much time trying to figure out how to keep it going,” Hadley added. “We had to quit using it, which we didn’t want to do. Several members rely on that elevator to get in here.”
For the next year and a half, Hadley and her husband Glenn researched the best way to make the project happen, contacted Garmann Miller & Associates to draw up the plans and in December 2018, the congregation voted to go ahead with the project.
But the more than half-a-million dollar project still needed more funding as the church turned to fundraising efforts. Hadley said one of the fundraising campaigns involved members of the congregation taking pledges between $10,000 and $50, which generated close to $50,000; another campaign involved letters being sent to members asking them to pledge $1,000, which generated about $30,000 to $40,000, and a raffle.
By the time the elevator project was complete, the congregation raised nearly $132,000, and coupled with the donation the church received a few years ago, Hadley said the church only has to raise another $6,000 to $7,000 to pay off the entire $514,000 project.
“I’m very proud,” Hadley added. “This congregation did such a great job.”
Hadley said the church’s weekly Breaking Bread event uses the elevator with members needing to get supplies down from the basement. The elevator extends to three stories and can hold as many as three to four people at a time.
“We also have a lot of families with kids who are holding that love bucket in one hand and trying to get kids up the stairs; they won’t have to do that now,” Rev. Rhonda Hainer said. “They can go to the elevator. It is also a wonderful testimony to the community of St. Marys that we are fully accessible, open to all people and we want to be welcoming to all people.”
The project expanded a bit to enclose the access to the basement from the elements to make it safer and convenient for members who needed to have access to the basement. The door leading outside is also handicap accessible. Four stained glass windows were also preserved and put into the new church’s new exterior wall.
“And Lynda’s husband, Glenn, was up here almost every single day overseeing [the project],” Hainer said. “He was more of a foreman than the actual foreman. It takes that dedicated person to man a project like this so between the two of them [Glenn and Lynda] we should have this dedicated in their honor.
“People worked very hard and are proud to have this open to the community so that all can enjoy coming and worshipping here.”
Construction on the elevator began in March, during the COVID pandemic shutdown, but that also allowed contractors from H.A. Dorsten to work uninterrupted. After passing all of the inspections, the elevator was open last Sunday.
“I do know we had one member, Ken Braun, who got a ride upstairs and he said, ‘Oh my, it is just wonderful,’” Hainer added. “And there were a lot of people who have not come back to church because they were afraid of getting stuck in the elevator or had hip surgery and now they have decided to come back.”