Top Stories	UPDATED: Wednesday, September 12, 2007
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‘The chapel that stood’

Posted on Saturday, September 01, 2007

By Michael G. Williams
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Barely 100 feet from Ground Zero, the floor of Rev. Stuart Hoke’s office shudders as a New York City subway train passes below St. Paul’s Chapel. Dressed in a neat blue pinstripe suit, the slender but imposing Episcopal minister leans back in his chair.

His hands folded, he patiently awaits the question that he knows will come. “Were you here on 9/11?” He was, and it was a day that changed the future and mission of his church.

The morning of September 11, 2001, dawned with clear skies in New York City. Hoke had just arrived at Trinity Church’s office on Wall Street (St. Paul’s sister church) when he noticed smoke pouring from the top of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

Rumors that a small plane had struck the building were already buzzing through the growing crowd by the time he made his way over to see what happened. But moments later, United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower at nearly 600 mph, spilling a mist of jet fuel and debris over Hoke and the other awestruck onlookers.

“We couldn’t get our senses around what had happened,” Hoke recalls. “The woman next to me asked the most incredible question. ‘Is this the setting for a movie?’ she asked.”

It wasn’t until a colleague of Hoke’s shouted, “Stuart, run for your life!” that he sought shelter back at Trinity’s office building a few blocks away. From there, he ran to Trinity Church where he conducted an impromptu service to calm a mass of terrified people.

From 150 yards away, one explosion after another drowned out the prayers and hymns as each floor of the North Tower collapsed. Hoke describes people screaming and crying, huddled under pews chanting, “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” “A wave of dust overtook Wall Street, and everything went from bright daylight to incredible darkness,” he says.

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Out of the dust …
Out of this dust and darkness was born a mission thrust upon the once sleepy St. Paul’s Chapel just across the street from what is now Ground Zero.

Several blocks from the site, pressure from the rushing debris blew out Trinity Church’s windows, so naturally, many assumed St. Paul’s was gone. It wasn’t. Save for a cracked pane of glass, the building was untouched.

This made it the perfect headquarters for emergency workers. Before any of Trinity’s staff could even get to the church, workers were already inside setting up equipment. “They innately knew that they could come into the church and set up shop,” Hoke says.

Within a few days, the chapel was a place for recovery workers to find food and shelter. It bustled with doctors, nurses, and food service personnel from hotels like The Waldorf-Astoria. The 240- year-old church now found itself in the world spotlight. It was “the chapel that stood.”

Gradually, volunteer groups from synagogues, churches, and civic organizations around the globe were helping at St. Paul’s. According to Hoke, thousands of letters poured in to the chapel— mostly from children—and before long, banners and signs of hope and encouragement festooned the walls (and still do to this day).

“You couldn’t help but sit here for a moment in a pew if you were an exhausted policeman or fireman and read some of these letters from children saying, ‘I love you,’ ‘I care about you,’ ‘Our hearts are with you,’” Hoke says.

“You would see them just burst into tears of gratitude.” As Hoke recalls, the chapel was an energized place and, in his view, the brightest part of Manhattan during one of the darkest moments in contemporary history.

But despite this energy, he believed that it would all end once the city began the reconstruction effort in June 2002. He was wrong. A chapel that used to serve about eight people at Sunday mass now attracts 35,000 visitors a week from around the world. Hoke says that the chapel has become a place where people come to cope and grieve.

A magnet for thousands
Relatives bring relics of those killed in the attacks— bracelets, pictures, and other mementos—creating living shrines that never stop growing. Even those with loved ones in Iraq have come to St. Paul’s to leave pictures and letters expressing both grief and hope.

“People are full of gratitude that a place like this exists,” Hoke explains. “It’s a safe place to express grief or to find energy in what the church can do.”

Others express rage over 9/11. They ask Hoke if he’s ever angry about these attacks happening right in his own churchyard, and his answer to this question hasn’t changed in six years—“No.”

“Angry is the last thing that we want to be,” he says. “We don’t want this tragedy to eat us up. We want to live.”

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‘The chapel that stood’

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