Alan Stewart, a longtime member of the First Universalist Church of Southold, shared his heartbreak and memories with SoutholdLOCAL only hours after the fire that destroyed the church Saturday night. Here, in his own, words, he describes the experience of watching his beloved church burn to the ground:
Tonight I just held witness to something that I’ve only read about in newspapers, or on TV, or news clips on You Tube or in some bad Hollywood action movie.
I’ve just seen my church burn to the ground.
My church has just burned to the ground right before me.
I’ve always had a church.
The one constant in my life was church.
Before theater, before marriage and divorce, before Chicago, before girls or school, or movies or books even — before my life began. . . .
I had a church.
Now nothing remains of that majestic old building.
The First Universalist Church of Southold, a building that has stood through World War I and II, the Korean Conflict, Vietnam, going back to, perhaps, the Civil War is gone.
” The church at that bend on Route 25 . . . ” people of Southold would say.
That pretty little — or big, depending who you were talking with. The Christian Science church up the street might call us big, St. Patrick’s across the street directly in front of us might call us small — that pretty white church is burnt away and gone.
The fire cranes look like one of those Martian Ray machines in that old “War of the Worlds” movie. The one with Gene Barry, not that awful Tom Cruise movie. They’re pouring down water hard on what remains of the spine of the our old girl’s roof. All lights, all heads, all cars and trucks are now focused on the crumbling remains of that beautiful steeple of my church.
It’s gone. The services I attended with friends and family.
The music is done. Oh, God, yes . . . the music I would hear. Those rich, black, big pianos. Our organ . . . gone. Just restored less than two weeks ago.
The new floor in our Parish Hall.
Weight Watchers.
Maureen’s Haven.
AA.
Our youth group.
Our board meetings.
My stage readings.
Our lunches.
Our dinners.
Thanksgiving and X-mas service.
Sundown Service and its poetry and drums.
Our office.
Our kitchen.
They now fill a black spot of ashes onto of a little hill.
My home, as much as I can call it my home, is shivered and broken, surrounded by men and women who are describing to each other the twisted image that has become my place of worship.
It’s somehow right that I walk to my other home right now.
The first time I really saw this church for how she really looked was when I was jogging by here when I first arrived to Southold.
It was here, jogging, feeling great, struck by the beauty around me that I decided to stay. I felt here was where I belong.
All that right here.
At this church.
