Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504290011
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE AND MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Oh my Lord," gasped Herbert Coles Jr. as he emerged from choir practice at First Baptist's new church, a block away, and saw the flames shooting through the belfry. "It's gone."
For hundreds of black Roanokers, the tall, stately brick church was their spiritual birthplace.
They left it in 1982 for their new church, a modern building with central air-conditioning and easier access for elderly members. But the old church was always right there, towering near their smaller church.
And many assumed it would be there forever.
"There's a lot of beautiful memories there," said a somber James Robinson, 70, baptized in the church some 58 years ago. Later on, at home, he said, "Our parents sang in the choir, were baptized there. It really makes you cry on the inside and the outside, too."
Saturday afternoon, he and three other deacons stood alongside the Rev. Kenneth B. Wright, First Baptist's pastor since 1973. From the high-banked lawn of the new church, they watched the flames do their awful work.
Wright was at home in Elliston when he got a call that the church was on fire. Arriving and seeing it, he could not speak at first. "It's ... it's too strong," he said.
Then he said he felt obliged to make a statement. "The building was a part of a journey - let me change that - is a part of a journey of faith, and that faith says that all things work together for good to them who are called according to His purpose." He was quoting from Romans 8:28.
"A great good will come of this," he said, rejoining his deacons on the hillside.
According to local histories, First Baptist's congregation was formed in 1867 - one of the oldest in the Roanoke Valley - and the church was built around 1898. It was designed by H.H. Huggins, a leading turn-of-the-century architect whose other credits include the old Roanoke County Courthouse, the No. 1 Fire Station in downtown Roanoke and a dormitory at Hollins College.
The Rev. Arthur Leonard James, pastor from 1919 to 1957, led the church to install stained glass windows, build a playground (one of the first in the city for black children), start a radio program and support a missionary in Africa. James also published The Church News there, one of the earliest black publications in Southwest Virginia and still a detailed source of local history.
The church was listed in the Virginia Landmarks Register several years ago and was nominated for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Local researchers found that First Baptist had the largest black congregation west of Richmond between the late 1890s and the mid-20th century.
At the fire's peak, the wind blew smoke and hot ashes down Gilmer Avenue, igniting tiny fires in yards up and down the street. People scurried to douse the spot fires with buckets and hoses, and one woman extinguished a small blaze in her yard with the handiest plastic receptacle, a Frisbee.
The gusty winds blew a piece of church history into Ethel Duckett's yard - a piece of tin stamped with a patent date of 1884.
In the past couple of months, Duckett said, neighbors had been cleaning up litter, clearing brush, painting houses and trimming their lawns. There was renewed interest in a historic designation for the neighborhood.
But the church was the oldest thing there, and without it, Duckett fears people will lose faith. "This is going to be disheartening," she said.
With tears on her cheeks, Evelyn Bethel watched the fire from beneath a canopy of pine trees on an empty lot, site of the former mansion of the medical Claytor family. It, too, burned years ago, as have many Gainsboro homes and landmarks.
Bethel is president of the Historic Gainsboro Preservation District and was at home on nearby Patton Avenue getting ready for a neighborhood meeting when told the church was on fire. She and her sister, Helen Davis, were baptized there.
Friends kept coming up and hugging Bethel. "Do you believe our church is going down?" asked Mamie Lee, an old friend from church.
Down Wells Avenue, two people watched the fire from the penthouse balcony at the Hotel Roanoke. Elderly people peered through windows at the nearby Our Lady of the Valley retirement home.
As firefighters sprayed water on the smoking hull of the church, Jeanette Warrington walked slowly up Jefferson Street, stepping carefully over water hoses and around children. She turned to gaze upon the church.
"It's heart-wrenching," said the 67-year-old Roanoke native. "I was born there, so to speak. All my family - parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles. And I have been with First Baptist all these years.
"How did it happen? I never question why," she said. "That's God's work. He knows best. I'm praying that somehow it can be salvaged."
She looked at the blackened bricks, the jagged walls and the gaping hole where the roof had been, and said, "It looks rather doubtful."
"I dread going to church tomorrow, because they're going to be crying," said Evelyn Williams, who attends the new First Baptist. "I can see their faces. Oh, they loved that church."
In the aftermath of the blaze, as young boys started a half-hearted game of pickup basketball and onlookers began to wander away, Williams leaned on the fence of her front yard on Gilmer Avenue and shook her head as she thought about the church.
"And just to think I was passing by today and it looked so pretty, and now it's not there," she said. "I'm just sick. I just hurt all over."
by CNB