Hammock Publishing’s Bill Hudgin’s has spent the first few days of this vacation week with other members of his church in the aftermath of Sunday night’s fire at the historic building of First Presbyterian Church of Gallatin, Tenn. Here is his wrap-up report from the scene:
Monday night, 24 hours after the fire, we held a prayer meeting in the parking lot. My estimate is that more than 100 people came despite falling temps. A bunch of the firefighters came, too – they arrived in their truck which startled all of us at first, thinking yet another hot spot had been found.
The – captain, I guess, I didn’t hear his rank – explained how difficult it was to reach and fight the fire, and apologized for not knocking it down further. No one wanted his apology – he and the crews had saved the building despite considerable personal risk to themselves! We cheered them, as he introduced them individually, like they were NFL stars. There were some light moments, as when the captain said he belongs to the Church of Christ and wasn’t sure about some Presbyterian terminology. Apparently, the Church of Christ doesn’t use the term sanctuary to describe the area where worship is held. They also do not use musical instruments in their worship service, prompting our minister to slip in a jibe,” So that’s why you let our organ burn up?” Everyone roared with much needed laughter, no one louder than the captain himself.
There was good news – the sanctuary floor had been vacuumed dry, the pews were safely in storage and looked like they can be cleaned to good as new, except for a few that will need more work to reverse water damage. The roof and stained glass window are still uncovered but will be shortly. Waterlogged ceiling tiles and insulation are coming down and the drying process has commenced. We have the continued use of the jail trustys to clean up – it struck me, and my wife and others, I am sure, that this is the reverse of the New Testament command to go into the prisons and minister to those incarcerated.
And there was a defining moment, at least for me. Toward the end of the 30 minute service, our pastor, Mickey Shealy, was relating this good news and the process to decide where to meet for the interim. He spoke movingly about the cross on the organ gleaming in the afternoon sun streaming through the roof. As he answered questions about what had been salvaged, I saw a hand rise above the crowd, holding a small, stemmed silver cup. The member holding it pressed forward and Mickey took it. For a moment, he just held it in his hands, and the enormity of what had happened seemed to weigh down on him. Then he shook it off and lifted the cup.
Our communion set – chalice, wine carafe, plates – always sits on a special table in the center of the dais we use for a pulpit. The table, which bears the carved inscription “In Remembrance of Me” was smack dead center where the ceiling fell in. Drenched plaster and lath flattened the table – a TV station showed it being pulled from the rubble – and it dented the communion set, but did not destroy it. This battered cup, hastily shined on someone’s jacket, shone in the floodlights aimed at our gathering. “This season is about hope, and this is about hope,” Mickey told us.
I hope they don’t send the communion set off to be smoothed and restored. The dents are part of our history now, People will tell their children and grandchildren, will welcome new members with the story and show them where the ceiling fell. It’s another of the small miracles we have shared, and will share.
In the previous post, Hammock Publishing’s Bill Hudgins provided his first-person account of the fire at the historic First Presbyterian Church in Gallatin, Tenn., outside of Nashville. This morning, he returned to the church to help other church members begin the clean-up. Here is his follow-up account:
A clear cold morning revealed the true extent of the previous night’s fire damage to First Presbyterian Church in Gallatin, TN. Actually, the morning started with a scare, because around dawn, it was clear that some part of the roof was still burning. The stream of smoke, backlit by the sun, whipped away in the breeze behind a TV reporter who was doing a live remote from in front of the church. I was home watching, and wondered if she was going to stand there and comment while it burst into flame again. Fortunately, the fire station is a block away and they had been checking, too, and were there as the reporter was signing off and before I could think to grab the phone.
They were still there an hour or so later when I arrived to see what was happening. It’s a good thing to have builders and contractors and construction company people as members of your church. A generator was going, powering up lights and a shop vac. A couple of kerosene heaters were blasting away. I was assigned mop detail, to push water out of the ground floor. Anyone who has ever run a mop or a squeegee knows that you lose as much as you move, but if you keep at it long enough, dry spots start to appear. And so they did-we mopped below as, above and off to one side. firemen sprayed more water and hacked glowing chunks out of an ancient poplar beam that had resisted wind, rain, hurricanes, snow and ice storms and time itself, and now appeared reluctant to give up the last remnants of the fire.
Our sheriff had offered the aid of a group of trustys, from the jail just a block or so away. They pitched in with vigor, bringing ash and moisture damaged hymnals and Bibles out of the sanctuary, boxing them up and loading them on a pickup. I was packing the boxes in the pickup and wound up being interviewed by another TV team doing the follow-up story. We drove the books about 100 feet to another door and the trustys and others carried them upstairs to the relatively unscathed library where Servpro would take them to be cleaned. A funny story – one of the women of the church was determined to find something to do to help, and grabbing a broom, proceeded to sweep in front of us guys as we labored up the steps with the boxes of books. Someone gently directed her to another place to sweep so we didn’t have to stand there while she cleaned the path for us.
Our aged pews were recently restored by a master craftsman here in town. Most escaped water damage, because the fire was concentrated at the front of the sanctuary, but they had soot and ash all over them. As some guys who work for a local contractor unbolted pews, the trustys carted the pews out, to be taken to Cresent Furniture’ warehouse here for storage and cleaning. I spotted one pew outside in the sun, waiting to be moved. Someone had left a book on the seat, and the clean rectangle of rich red plush upholstery shone in the sun, surrounded by gritty grey.
Before noon, the fire finally appeared to have given up, and the hoses had been coiled and stored. I heard the siren go off down the block – another call, elsewhere. I hoped it was a false alarm. All this time the temps had been in the mid to upper 20s. That’s cold, and I realized I was suddenly very chilly, but it could have been worse if the temps had dropped just a few degrees further in the night, to the teens as they were over Christmas weekend. The sun was out, and salt lay everywhere, and our footing was pretty decent.
Another funny story. My wife came down and saw the interior damage for the first time. She was talking with one of the church trustees, praising the job the jail trustys were doing. He misunderstood and thought she was complimenting him and his two equally elderly colleagues. He did think it was pretty funny when she explained.
By a bit after noon, the trustys and the Servpro guys were carrying out bags of insulation, soaked ceiling tiles and debris, plus rolls of drenched carpet. The contractor and his crew were bracing up the roof over the organ at the very front of the sanctuary, to allow them to place tarps over the hole. The blackened walls of the sanctuary gave off a fine rain of dust and soot, caught in sunbeams streaming through the roof. We had a brass cross mounted in the center of the organ pipes, and it was still there, stained, wobbly, but otherwise undamaged. A blackened glass cup on a shelf in the back held 40 cents, someone’s honor contribution for a copy of the “Upper Room” of which four more, sooty copies lay on the shelf. We’re going to have a prayer meeting at 6 in the parking lot, and a meeting of the church membership afterward to discuss the future. As our minister said, the church building burned but the church is undamaged, and goes on.
Hammock Publishing’s Bill Hudgins provides a first-person account of a fire last night at the church he and his wife, Wilda, attend, Gallatin’s First Prebyterian. According to news accounts this morning, the church building was errected in 1836-37.”:
There was a fire at First Presbyterian Church in Gallatin Sunday night, the church we go to and where we were married 25 years ago this coming Wednesday. It apparently started in the audio system near the front of the sanctuary, over on the right side as you face the building. Burned part of the organ and that front part of the sanctuary, the ceiling fell in over the choir and pulpit area, the heat broke out or at least something destroyed, a stained glass window the Dodsons bought in memory of Wilda’s brother, Frank, who died a few months after we were married.
There’s smoke and water damage in the new part of the churchbehind the sanctuary, there was fire in the roof as well, and of coursesmoke throughout the sanctuary. But they said the pews back from thepulpit didn’t get wet, and we were able to salvage a lot of records anditems from the study and office and other parts of the building. It was pretty moving to see everyone pitching in to move things, older members struggling to carry speakers, books, chairs, and younger members stepping in to take the things and caution everyone about the ice that was quickly overtaking the parking lot.
People kept, well, sneaking is not quite the right word, but taking every opportunity to try to enter the sanctuary and other parts of the building to assess the damage and bring out more stuff. The baptismal font came out eventually – it narrowly escaped being crushed by the falling ceiling.
There’s a Dairy Queen just down the street a block, and they sent coffee and burgers up to the firefighters. Good thing there wasn’t another call tonight, as they had fully committed all their resources to this. We stayed about 90 minutes and when we left, they were still watching some hot spots in a roof area. I suspect they will be there quite a while yet to make sure it doesn’t flare up again.
A friend called us and we raced up there – a passerby had seen the smokeand flames, and called the FD, which is just a block away. I got aglimpse inside the sanctuary, and could see the damage to the organ, theceiling and walls. General consensus is that it is not as bad as itcould have been. The organ came from the old downtown Nashville Presbychurch, so no knowing how old it is. Amazing that with all the old woodtrusses and organ and everything else, that it didn’t just go up in flames.
They had been talking about an addition, but the newest part design wasmaking it awkward to come up with a workable design. So this might turnout to have a silver lining if they decide to tear down some or all ofthe new part and rebuild the whole thing.
We will know more in the morning – I plan to go up there and see if I can help. The sheriff has offered us lots of trustys to clean, carry, etc. as well.
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