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Vandals attack spire, spirit of country church
Friday, January 18, 2002 By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
SUMMERVILLE, Pa. -- Had the vandalism started and stopped with paint balls, fired at such close range that they left 30-some nickel-size holes in the church's vinyl siding, the vexed congregation might have shaken its collective head and written it off as devilment by a night-riding miscreant or two.
But the vandalism didn't stop there.
At Bethlehem Lutheran Church, a century-old country church well hidden in the western-most hills of Jefferson County, at least one attacker came out of the night early Wednesday and heaved rocks through three of the building's dozen stained glass windows. Another window was shattered by a paint ball.
Inside, two more of the 100-year-old windows were bashed out, leaving only sagging skeletons of lead framework, chips of stained glass and traces of the names of the long-gone members to whom the windows were dedicated.
Two 12-foot pews were ripped from their moorings and overturned. The 18-inch high brass cross and collection plates were thrown from the sanctuary's little oaken altar. Aged Bibles the size of library atlases were snatched from the pulpit and lectern and thrown on the floor -- chapters upon chapters of Daniel and Ezekiel ripped out and crumpled like tissue.
And woven through it were spatters of blood from an intruder cut crawling into the sanctuary through a shattered window.
By state police estimates, the loss comes to $60,000. But for this congregation -- officially 24 strong, many of them local farmers and most of them post-retirement-age members who have gone there all their lives -- numbers offered nothing that anyone could comprehend.
"I saw it, and I was just sick," said church Treasurer Ray Hetrick, 74, a lifelong member. "I've just never seen anything like it."
While investigators summoned to the church bandied about names, there are no suspects and the lone motive seemed to be destruction, said Cpl. Jeffrey Lee, crime unit supervisor from the state police barracks in Punxsutawney. While the multicounty region saw a few other isolated episodes of church vandalism last year, none seems related and nothing rose to the level of the destruction at Bethlehem Lutheran, Lee said.
Bethlehem Lutheran, though, just didn't seem like a place vandals would find.
The little white church, 70 miles northeast of Pittsburgh and 12 miles northwest of Punxsutawney, has a white steeple jutting 30 feet among the hills, a landmark in a neighborhood with no close neighbors. Its sanctuary was a tidy affair: two sections, 10 pews in each. The music is no more elaborate than its spinet piano.
For now, though, the sanctuary is littered with smashed stained glass and rocks. Furnishings are strewn. Broken church windows are boarded over with plywood. And a year after Bethlehem Lutheran's last pastor left for another assignment, there is no minister to rally around for support.
The congregation probably won't have services there Sunday -- the damage is too great. Members likely will worship with their sister congregation in Shannondale, 15 minutes across the line in Armstrong County, Hetrick said.
"Then," he said, "we'll just get down to cleaning up and doing what we have to do to get the place in shape."
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