The Morning News from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 37

'rr it P2 A gift from China P4 Unthinking cruelty 06 Episcopalians convene Saturday, Feb. 1, 1986 The News Journal Wilmington, Del. It ft 1 3 3 Stall photos by Pat Crowe Frank Webb (right) paints inside old St. Paul's Methodist Church, which stands on High Street in Odessa. UI a cnurcn 1 a new look Restored by volunteers 1 wanted to preserve the old graveyard on either side of the building.

Some of the community's notables are buried there. The oldest tombstone, according to a survey made many years ago by Frank Zebley, is on the grave of a woman named Rachel Hays, who died Sept. 21, 1838. The Peninsula Conference sold the old building, and for several years it was used for storage and remained mostly untended. But in 1974, Leonor Hampson bought the cemetery and By EILEEN C.

SPRAKER Staff reporter FRANK WEBB, at 62 an avowed retiree, says he's hooked on restoring interiors of old churches. He's especially fascinated by those whose interior designs involve stenciling and intricate painting of embossed metal ceilings and walls. He enjoys climbing on scaffolding and restoring the big, intricate medallions and rosettes that were often the central interest in church ceilings a century and a quarter ago. Off and oti for the past seven years, Webb ffias Been working on the interior of old St. Paul's Methodist Church on High Street in Odessa.

In the past 20 years, he's also worked on restoring mid-19th-cen-tury interiors of several other churches, including Immanuel United Methodist Church in Town-send and the Pencader Presbyterian Church at Glasgow. The old St. Paul's building in Odessa, built from 1851 to 1852, was abandoned long ago as a house of worship. Its congregation moved across U.S. 13 to a new site on Main Street in 1955.

After that, the old Federal-Victorian-style, red brick, two-story church on High Street suffered vandalism and neglect. But about 20 women in the Women's Club of Odessa were determined to save the landmark. Not only were they interested in the church for its architecture, but they She added that the building is not being restored just for restoration's sake. "We plan to use it. It will be available for community meetings, art shows, concerts and such.

We currently have an exercise class going on downstairs. "We've had five weddings here since the restoration began. One bride wanted to be married here because her mother and father had said their vows here. She wanted to open the big balcony doors and toss out her bouquet just as her mother had done." The church in its heyday was elaborately stenciled, with a gold border above the wainscoting all around and stenciling high on the walls just below the ceiling and along the rectangular panels in front. Old English letters in red, stenciled high above the altar, proclaim: "The Lord is in His Holy Temple." Webb wanted to restore all this when he agreed to do the painting, but for a while he was stymied by a lack of photographs of the church.

When turn-of-the-century pictures finally were rounded up, they had to be blown up to show the stenciling designs. "Then I spent a week just doing stencils," said Webb as he showed off his handiwork this week. He and his partner, Raymond Webb (no relation) of Rising Sun, spray-painted the gilt stencil designs, but the letters were something else. They had to be executed from a scaffold that almost The Women's Club of Odessa wants to preserve the former church's architecture and its graveyard. all, and promptly turned it over to the Women's Club preservationists.

Since then, restoration has been going on slowly but surely, said Helen Wallace, who has been chairwoman of the restoration project for more than 12 years. "We've gone along and done what we could as the money was available," she said. Money has come a bit more easily since the church went onto the National Register of Historic Places on May 13, 1982, Wallace said. 1 he St. Paul's restoration includes the church's intricate painting and stencil work.

Sunday-school rooms are on the ground floor, and the sanctuary is on the second. Wallace remembers going to Sunday school in a little anteroom off the brand-new kitchen that is part of the restoration. Two restrooms have been installed on the ground floor, and a deep artesian well supplies the water. One of the priorities as the work began 12 years ago was to restore the old stained-glass windows, all memorials to prominent Methodists and Odessa residents, all of whom seemed to live to a substantial age: Bishop Levi Scott (1802-1882), who presided at the church's See WORKERS D3 touched the ceiling. "I felt like Michelangelo must have felt," the painter said.

The two Webbs have been helped in the painting by Robert Scott ot the Newark area. The cornerstone of old St. Paul's was laid in August 1851. The church, like so many built between 1850 and 1870. has two stories.

The Marcher to set out on the road to peace i Hospital chapel to be dedicated at Sunday service Apkee of refuge By EILEEN C. SPRAKER Staff reporter i t. i i HI- ffftw, fyaJkWV ft 5 By EILEEN C. SPRAKER Staff reporter AS AN experienced hiker, 63-year-old May Hatchard, who has signed up for the Great Peace March starting March 1, has no qualms about crossing the United States on foot. The Hockessin grandmother is one of 2,500 who plan to make the whole trek from Los Angeles to Washington.

The walk will take almost nine months, from March 1 to Nov. 15. Hundreds of others are expected to join the group for shorter intervals as members hike to draw attention to the peace movement. Hatchard learned of the walk through her church, First Unitarian in Sharpley. But before that, she had made up her mind pretty firmly about the need for peacemakers.

"I'm very much opposed to building more nuclear weapons in order to eliminate them," she said. "I feel the way to go is to get rid of them. This undertaking will mean nine months of media recognition for the peace movement." Hatchard hikes regularly with the Wilmington Trail Club, so she believes she's in good shape. "I hiked the club's Brandywine End to some 37 miles, last fall." starting at Downing-town, and ending near Hagley Museum, she said. Originally from Vancouver, British Staff photo by Pat Crowe Chaplains Lloyd Evans (from left), William I litchens and Frank J.

Greene A SMALL GROUP representative of the scores of people who have been involved will gather Sunday afternoon at Christiana Hospital to dedicate a tiny chapel, on which the volunteer junior boards have been working since the hospital opened a year ago. The chapel, a short way down the hall and to the right of the main information desk, is a combination of old and new. The center panels of the randomly stained glass windows, for example, came from a chapel in the old Wilmington General Division. The windows were gifts from families and friends of Carpenter Clinic patients. Some new panels have been added, designed by Bridget B.

Bartholow. The beautiful crystal and brass chandeliers once adorned the coffee shop at the old Memorial Division. New is a huge, carved wooden dove-in-hand plaque by Wilmington artist Jeffrey S. Hatfield. It repeats a design in one of the old stained-glass panels.

The contemporary altar furniture and window encasement were done by woodworker Forrest Guth of Pembrey. A new organ was given by Jane Schermerhorn in "Virginia Scott was her volunteer organist for some 20 years." With that tradition, it was no wonder that the old junior board of Memorial Division, on which Reybold served, was much concerned about establishing a chapel in the new hospital complex. Cooperating with the three chaplains at Christiana Hospital, Reybold and her committee set to work on a very limited budget. Assisting were Schermerhorn, Anne Marcial, Mary Sue Lang and Bernice Guy. The Rev.

Lloyd E. Evans, an American Baptist and chaplain chief, is pleased with what has been done. Weekend services are conducted by the See CHAPEL Dfi memory of her parents. The chapel is a quiet place where hospital patients and their families can take refuge. "But it was a nightmare a year ago," said Gerry Reybold, chairman of the junior boards' chapel committee.

"We naively thought we could just move what we had from the chapels at Memorial and General divisions and make it all fit in here, but it didn't work. We had to start with a new design," she said. Reybold said the chapel at Memorial Division was launched many years ago by Mrs. Edwin R. Sheppard.

Now retired and living at the Mayfair Apartments, Sheppard "was a committee of one. She arranged the flowers, arranged the services, got the volunteers," Reybold said. May Hatchard wants her grandchildren to know of her concerns. Columbia, but long an American citizen, Hatchard worked as a chemist in her younger days, "but for 40 years, I've been a homemaker." She's mar-See HATCHARD D6.