FAITH : A New Light
Stained-glass windows give Christ Church-Episcopal a new look
By Clint Cooper, Staff Writer, Chattanooga TimesFreePress

The parishioners at Christ Church-Episcopal on Douglas St. are seeing by a different light these days.

The 22 amber-glass gothic windows at the 101-year-old church are being transformed into original stained glass creations by lifelong member Leasty Chapman. "They’re beautiful," said the Rev. Jocelyn Bell, rector. "They give a whole different look, a whole different light feeling to the church."

The 11-foot-high window creations are designed by Mrs. Chapman’s mother, Evangeline LeNoir. Mrs. Chapman puts the windows together, and she and her husband, Dan, an engineer at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, install them. The windows are created from parts of the old amber glass; colored, hammered stained glass; and approximately two-foot tall stained glass panels and medallions that were privately purchased in the 1980s. "I wanted to draw it all together," Mrs. Chapman said, "but I’ve never done anything this big."

Ms. Bell said two incidents sparked the project — finding the smaller panels in the church’s tower room and repairs that needed to be made on the rose window high above the altar area. Mrs. Chapman, she said, proposed to do the work on the rose window and, while she did so, conceived of creating the stained-glass windows with the antique panels and medallions inserted. It would be done in colors that tied in with the rose window. "It all came to her — that this is what we could do," said Ms. Bell. The idea was that each of the 22 windows could be given as a memorial or in honor of someone, she said. And as the memorials were given, the windows would be completed.

The work began a little over a year ago, said Mrs. Chapman, who with her two daughters runs a stained glass business, Gonnaki Originals. Now only five windows have not been claimed, she said. Each of the windows is a little bit different from the next, she said, but each of them has the same ratio of amber glass to colored glass.

Christ Church officials said they believed when the church was constructed in 1906-08 or when it was redesigned in 1929-30, plans called for stained glass windows. "None of us have ever found out for sure," said Ms. Bell. "We believe the original plan was for stained glass windows, but there wasn’t money to do them." The antique panels and medallions were purchased by Christ Episcopal members in a Middle Tennessee antique store, said the Rev. Harry Lawrence, associate rector at the church and priest-in-charge at the time of the purchase. He believes they were made in Germany and are over 100 years old. The panels apparently once hung in a Catholic Church which had closed, Ms. Bell said. She believes the church may have been dedicated to Our Lady of Loretto because of the panels’ depictions of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Each of the windows takes about six weeks to complete, Mrs. Chapman said. The smaller panels themselves have to be broken into over 100 pieces before being installed in the larger window, she said. "It’s an interesting melding of the old and the new," said Dr. Lawrence.

One of the windows was given by eight members of the family of the Rev. Reginald Mallett, rector at the church 1931-33, and Lucy Murchison Mallett. Mrs. Mallett was aunt and godmother to the Rev. Bill Murchison, an Episcopal minister and current member of the church. "Now, she is memorialized in an exquisitely restored panel in the updated lancet (window)," Mr. Murchison said.
One of the windows honors the two grandchildren of a member, and another will be done in time for the spring baptism of a grandchild of another member. A third was done in memory of Bertram E. LeNoir Jr., Mrs. Chapman’s father."It’s multi-generational," she said of the project.

Ms. Bell said she had no idea members would react to the idea of the windows as they have.
"People are really responding," she said. "All this has been done in a year, and it’s made an amazing difference. It’s beautiful."

The church is gaining both aesthetic changes and physical improvements from the installation, Ms. Bell said. As the Chapmans install the windows, they also waterproof and caulk the sashes, she said. In addition, they put plexiglass on the outside to protect them from breakage, Ms. Bell said. The overall project, Mrs. Chapman said, is daunting but exciting. "This is the coolest thing I ever imagined to do," she said.
 

E-mail Clint Cooper at ccooper@timesfreepress.com

This story was published Saturday, December 14, 2002. Reprinted by permission.