by Mary Donovan

[ENS] St. Paul's Chapel stands directly across the street from what was the World Trade Center Complex. The graveyard backs onto that street, with the chapel farther east on Broadway. Miraculously, St. Paul's appears to have suffered little damage. None of the windows were broken and the gorgeous Waterford chandeliers (which had been carefully taken down and hidden all during World War II) are still intact, although their brass connections are tarnished to a dull gray. The Rev. Lyndon Harris, the chapel's vicar, speculated that the trees in the graveyard saved the church from the ravages of the explosions. One of the giant sycamores at the back of the space was totally uprooted by the force of the explosion and its leaves may well have shielded the church.

St Paul's Chapel, built in 1766, is the oldest public building in continuous use in the city of New York. It was in this chapel that George Washington prayed, just after his inauguration as the first President of the United States. And that chapel today is a refreshment center in the midst of the reclamation work.

The front of the churchyard is a solid line of port-a-potties. At the one large open space at the end, a welcome sign urges workers to enter the church, eat, rest and pray.

The portico of the chapel has two huge charcoal grills where Episcopal volunteers stand flipping hamburgers and handing them out to workers for whom a hot meal is the ultimate luxury. Sodas, water, juices are stacked high on one table--snacks and nuts and candy bars on another. Large insulated urns provide the gallons of coffee that keep so many of the crews going.

Church on the scene

Inside the church there are medical supplies, including bandages, creams, ointments, aspirin and extra hard hats and face masks. Clean socks, toothbrushes, batteries of every size fill other tables. The nave of the church is dim--for the electricity has not yet been restored to St. Paul's. Large votive candles flicker on the altar and on many of the side railings.

But as your eyes become accustomed to the dimness, you see people in many of the pews sitting mostly alone, sometimes two or three people chatting quietly. And then as you walk closer, you see others sleeping here and there, spread out on the pews covered with blankets and makeshift pillows.

There are priests here and there, talking quietly to police or construction workers, or helping to direct the parish volunteers as each team arrives with new questions: "Where is the catsup? Who's got the identification badges? Has anyone got a cell phone that works?" And behind it all is a cleanup crew, mopping, dusting, carefully cleaning off the myriad plaques and historical markers that line the walls of this historic building.

This is where the Episcopal Church is at the disaster site. Right in the center of the action. But the strategies to keep this group going involved a much larger response. It began at Seamen's Church Institute (SCI), an Episcopal organization that has ministered to the needs of seamen in Manhattan, Port Newark, and many other parts of this country. The Institute's center is across the tip of Manhattan, near the East River and the South Street Seaport.

When the call to evacuate lower Manhattan came, the institute's director, the Rev. Peter Larom, and the staff decided not to evacuate but rather to remain open to offer what ministries were needed. The building's chapel stayed open with priests available day and night. The upstairs lunchroom remained open, quickly exhausted the supplies on hand and soon became a collection point for emergency food and beverages. The upstairs offices and showers were made available to rescue workers as a place for a change of clothing or rest. For the first few days, the institute did not have telephone service or electricity but they did have large charcoal grills on which food could be cooked.

To mobilize volunteers, students, faculty and staff from the General Theological Seminary took on the task of scheduling volunteers and getting them to the area. Episcopal Charities opened a relief fund and quickly collected cash for necessary supplies. With the cooperation of the police, a route from General to St. Paul's Church was set up and a van from the seminary, sometimes driven by Jenny Ewing, the dean's wife, ferried the workers to the disaster area. Other volunteers at GTS called local churches and gradually New York's parishes took on the responsibility of assembling 24 hour teams of parishioners. The two centers- -at St. Paul's and at SCI--have remained open 24 hours a day staffed by these volunteers. Tonight, Sunday, September 23, the 24-hour staffing will end but a dawn to dark ministry will continue.

SCI still serving

The SCI location remains critical because it is close to disaster headquarters set up both by the police and by the national guard.

The lunch room, now thankfully with electricity restored, continues to be full of men and women in the blue police uniforms or the National Guard khakis, genuinely enjoying a chance to sit and chat and eat warm food. Priests are available for counsel in and out of the chapel. Yesterday four chaplains arrived from Michigan, Iowa, Maine, as well as several New York rectors and vicars.

The supplies that have been ferried to SCI and from there to St. Paul's, are in ample abundance everywhere-so much so that the Rev. Jean Smith, SCI's chaplain, admits that the next need for volunteers will be to figure out how to pack up and store the unused supplies, perhaps using some of the donated socks and toiletries to fill the Christmas packages for seamen that go out each December from the institute.

A special SCI newsletter, with graphic photos of the Episcopal Church's ministry in this crisis, is on its way to all SCI branches and supporters.

[Mary Donovan and her husband, Bishop Herbert Donovan, visited the area around the World Trade Center and this is her eyewitness account]