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ST. CHRISTOPHER’S CHAPEL
ST. CHRISTOP HER’S CHAPEL
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By Kathleen Thomas
Photos: 1. The chapel steeple was installed shortly after the consecration in 1965. 2. The Rev. Whitney Edwards speaks in chapel. 3. Glee Club Director Greg Vick leads a group of students and alumni at Homecoming / Reunion weekend 2015. For more than 56 years, the cream-colored clapboard building has been used as a chapel, physically nestled in the center of campus, emotionally nestled in the hearts of boys who matriculate through.
Upper School Chaplain Whitney Edwards describes it as “a place in the geography of these men’s hearts,” like their mother’s or grandmother’s home. “It’s a touchstone, and when they come back, it’s a part of where they return,” she said. When they take their places in the pews, she notices
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ST. CHRISTOP HER’S CHAPEL
how they assume relaxed postures, reminiscent of boys and teenagers, di erent from the ones they carried in.
And just as people are transformed and sometimes resurrected, so too are buildings, and none on campus more than the chapel constructed in 1917 as a gym. It was primarily used as a basketball court where spectators sat within inches of the sidelines and crammed in balconies just above the nets. The building also hosted drills for boys in uniform as a world war blazed across the Atlantic. Later the space segued into a rec room for boarders with ping pong and pool tables, a weight room and
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lunch room with picnic tables, where smells of sweat and rotting food surely intermingled often, if not daily.
When former French and Drama Teacher Joe Knox joined St. Christopher’s in 1958, he remembers the “decrepit, unsightly, dusty, drafty” space being used as a changing room for Bulldog Football. “There was a kind of pit down over there somewhere — I have wiped it from my mind — but it was very, very crowded, and that was where I was supposed to help keep order while about 100 boys got in and out of their uniforms,” he said in a January 1995 chapel talk. “I don’t remember anybody using any showers.” After 48 years, StC’s fourth headmaster, Warren Elmer, oversaw the building’s metamorphosis into a chapel. In his talk, Knox detailed how an indoor wire fence was razed; floors were sanded and varnished; the heater repaired; new lights, a bell and belfry installed; and a brass lectern and pulpit retrieved from storage in the Episcopal Diocese headquarters on West Franklin Street. The building was painted and plywood wainscoting added, along with indoor stairs for balconies. A curtain used behind the speaker’s platform in Scott Gym for the School’s 50th anniversary was repurposed to hide the boiler. Simple wooden pews, notoriously uncomfortable to keep worshippers from dozing, were salvaged. Mr. Elmer is credited with constructing a cross to hang over the altar, which eventually had to be replaced due to warping from intense temperature changes due to uneven heating and cooling. The altar was donated and refinished by former Athletic Director Richard Kemper.
When Edwards first visited the chapel, she was struck by the simplicity and intentionality of the interior, with each piece a gift from St. Christopher’s extended family. “We love beautiful things, but we don’t love fussy, fragile things in the sense that we have to be careful around them,” she said. ”You can’t break those pews. The boys can roll in there and be who they are in their fullest sense.” She’s particularly fond of the building’s wide windows that draw one’s eye skyward.
The chapel opened with a service of consecration for All Saints’ Day 1965. Bishop Gibson, along with former headmasters Robert Bugg and John
Nikkos Kovanes ‘22 makes an announcement during chapel. Page Williams, and the dean of the Church Schools in the Diocese of Virginia, attended.
Later, flags were hung from rafters, representing the School’s heritage. Today they represent languages taught, along with countries currently or recently represented by student exchanges. At some point, the chaplain and students painted shields representing the 12 apostles, simple boy artwork that adorns walls upstairs and down.
In recent decades, the chapel has been home to grades nine through 12. Each grade level is assigned specific pews, and moving from one section to the next is a quiet rite of passage for those who matriculate through. The Middle School started using the space for services in 2019 before the pandemic shuttered campus, and last year COVID-19 mandates required separate, smaller gatherings in bigger spaces.
Former Chaplain Melissa Hollerith broadened the chapel’s scope during her 20-year tenure with community events — faculty vs. student trivia competitions, birthday celebrations, Student Council Christmases, poetry recitations, academic and athletic recognitions. She remembers a doughnut-eating contest when overly enthusiastic fans spilled out of pews to cheer on classmates, leaning into the communion railing, splintering it in two. Because the railing was rarely used, administrators decided it didn’t need to be replaced. “Chapel was a natural space where we played and where we prayed,” Hollerith said. “This is where we sang, this is where we cried, where all the intimate moments happened. It was just ours. We cheered our recent victories and lauded our national merit finalists. It is where anything of import in our community was shared.”
She said for those who didn’t attend, they missed something that couldn’t be recreated, bonding moments “where you can feel the glue that holds the community together.” The Rev. Edwards noted that one can feel a mood move through the room in an organic and powerful way, growing “in respect as the speakers o er themselves to the crowd,
Former Upper School French and Drama Teacher Joe Knox compared the chapel building’s ups and downs to those we all feel in our lives, calling it the most important building on campus in a 1995 chapel talk. Chapel was Upper School Head Tony Szymendera’s first experience at St. Christopher’s as a prospective teacher.
“ is is the building that depends the most on what you and the surrounding natural beauty give to it. It’s here that we celebrate our victories together, and where we mourn the deaths of our fellow Saints. It’s here that we partake together of the Lord’s Supper. It’s here that we get ourselves revved up for each new day. It’s the only place on campus where we all sing together, pray together, and get that strong sense that we’re all in this together — that we are a community that cares about each other, that cares about our fellow man. What we do in this building helps to make all the other buildings serve their highest purposes.” “Without anyone having to explain it, I had the opportunity to see and feel what was important to the community in 20 minutes or so. Everyone was there. What was valued was self-evident. The warmth, the brotherhood, the humor, the relationships, the very personality of the institution came through in the building, the people, and the minimal time sitting there. It set the tone and expectations for the day. I’ve loved every minute in that space since, and strive as one of the caretakers of that time and space to have others make that connection to our community every time they are there.”
From his book, “Brush your teeth and say your prayers,” which chronicles chapel talks he delivered during his tenure at St. Christopher’s
and the boys share the experience as one.” Missionary Society President Kent Goode ’22 remembers reading the Passion during a Good Friday service as a freshman. “I remember feeling the sense of the room and how everyone was so dialed in and understood what this time meant. It was a cool feeling being up there.”
It’s a place where memories take root — the Class of 1996 packing your parachute chapel talk, a 1991 mock homecoming court with Upper School Head Tony Szymendera and History Teacher John Burke donning dresses, wigs and makeup, Jack Bolling’s crowning for his 75th birthday, former Math Teacher Richard Towell’s reading of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” and a senior class prank that transformed the building into a discotheque, complete with smoke machines and a mirrored ball hanging from the ceiling. And yet, even with that prank, respect for the space was observed. The boys used painter’s tape with their decorations so as not to damage the painted wood.
Hollerith, now assistant priest at Christ
Students get fired up during a Halloween costume contest from days gone by.
Writer-In-Residence Ron Smith arrived at StC in the 1970s, and describes himself as an atheist, resolved that if his new employer made him pray, he would resign. Upper School Assistant Dean of Faculty Andy Smith talked about the significance of the daily gathering in a 2019 weekend chapel talk and why he adopted the habit of arriving five minutes early.
“I had my prejudices. I assumed that chapel would be dogmatic and narrow. Within two months, chapel ritual and assembly were my favorite things each day, times for communion with my fellow searchers (after knowledge and after what can only be called spiritual experience), a time to dissolve my voice in the community voice by singing out, a time to utter and ponder sacred language. When, a few years later, a Jewish friend at the school said to me, ‘I love chapel,’ I cheered quietly inside. ... I find chapel a place where we can be uncertain together, human together.” “ ere’s a calmness, and there’s a serenity here with the pews and the flags and the floor and the balconies and everything else that’s a part of this location, and it’s a really important way for me to begin my day. en that bell rings, and the boys enter, we find ourselves five days a week throughout the entire school year in our daily gathering. For me it has become something resembling a family meal, that time your family has to get together to share whatever kind of food or bread it might be. It’s not so much about the meal itself. It’s about the connection. It’s the fact that we’re here yet again.”
Refinished benches and floor in 2021 uplift the chapel space.
Church, Georgetown, misses the intimacy. “At St. Christopher’s, I could see all their faces. It’s sacred ground with the faculty encircling the boys, as if they’re saying, ‘We will surround you. It might be a good day, it might be a bad day, but either way, we’re here to walk with you and support you.’”
People of all faiths and no faith are welcomed to take part in simple services that include a hymn, lesson, prayer and message.
Jack Farhi ’07 remembers getting his rabbi to speak at chapel and how it was the people there who made the experience so memorable. He remains grateful to the Rev. Hollerith, who reached out and supported him when his family was going through a tough stretch. Hollerith said that chapel, similar to parenting, creates a portfolio that people will lean back into later in life: “That’s chapel at its best, that you knew God’s love in that room.”
Time and time again, alumni return to campus and reference chapel as the experience they miss most. “There is something truly magical about getting to start your day as a community there,” said Stephen Davenport ’08. “In my life, anything close to that has never been replicated.” Now working as StC’s leadership giving o cer, he still cherishes time there, noting that the public speaking skill set is cultivated and nurtured at StC, largely through chapel, and also where singing loudly is expected.
All buildings require maintenance and improvement, and fundraising for the graduating Classes of 2020 and 2021 targeted the chapel, bringing in $300,000, half going to renovations and half to create an endowment to support the
— Kent Goode ’22 Missionary Society President
building’s ongoing and future needs. At the front entrances, bricks were redone and engraved to honor those alumni who funded the recent renovations.
Last summer, the scu ed-up hardwoods and cracked pews were refinished to a soft and buttery sheen. To accommodate growing Upper School enrollments, the speaking platform was reduced in width to make room for four pews that seat an additional 24 boys. The red carpet covering the platform was replaced with wood. A new audiovisual system, the most expensive improvement, allows for state-of-the-art streaming and recording. Holders installed under benches will soon house copies of the Book of Common Prayer. “The idea is to preserve and enhance the space so that it’s fully functional for our boys today and for alumni,” said Director of Development Jane Garnet Brown. “Our No. 1 concern is wanting to make sure that the chapel tradition continues, that this space is well stewarded so that generations to come have that experience.”
Future projects may include turning the storage area into a bathroom and buying the proper Episcopal furnishings for funerals, weddings and baptisms to expand the building’s use for alumni, faculty and sta .
Meanwhile, Edwards said she cannot think of another place on campus where the boys take such ownership. “They’re invested in it in a way most religious communities only dream of,” she said. “It’s their chapel. It has held so much respect from these kids and their predecessors for so many generations that it’s palpable. It’s too simple of a space for anyone to mistake the building for the faith they hold in it. It’s like a reflection of their own desire to be good and to have integrity and be who they say they are.”
Boys singing in chapel is a long-cherished tradition.
Seniors and freshman return to Memorial Chapel in 2021 wearing masks and socially distanced.
