One year later

By William Kibler, bkibler@altoonamirror.com
A year after fire destroyed its church on 17th Street in Pleasant Valley, the Altoona Alliance congregation still is looking for a permanent home.

Since July — two months after two teenagers accidentally set the fire while playing with a “trigger lighter” after the May 6 Sunday service — the congregation has used the former First Presbyterian Church near City Hall, vacated by its former congregation’s merger.

The building has been “adequate,” but it’s not where Alliance wants to be long term, said Randy Rydbom, chairman of the congregation’s Planning Committee, responsible for finding a permanent location.

The committee thought it had the right site recently when it recommended a 60-plus-acre tract on a hill in Logan Township, but a vote fell shy of the required two-thirds majority.

It shocked the leadership and church member Donna Martino, she said.

Member Jack Sloey cast a “no” vote after telling the assembly that he thought $2 million to prepare the ground was high and the tract unnecessarily big.

Church member Marla Crust had different misgivings.

“What would Jesus do?” she asked. “Would he stay there in the city among the people” in a needy neighborhood? “Or would he go out on the hill and build a big, fancy church?”

An uncertain future



The downtown facility is a few blocks from Alliance’s early home on 11th Street, before it moved to Pleasant Valley in 1983.

Some church members see the return to the neighborhood as the work of providence, said a parish member who didn’t want her name used for fear of exacerbating tensions the debate over moving has generated.

The church building is “gorgeous,” said landlord Pastor Carol LeBlanc of Providence Presbyterian, the congregation created when First Presbyterian’s congregation moved to Broad Avenue.

Providence is letting Alliance use the building in exchange for the cost of utilities and the salary of a custodian.

“I don’t think staying at that church is really an option,” said Scott Manganella, former interim pastor and occasional substitute preacher for Alliance.

There’s nothing wrong with maintaining a ministry in the city, elder Bill Mack said.

Alliance has “done a few things” to reach out to families and children there, Pastor Tim McGarvey said. But the church is too small, has too little parking, lacks air conditioning and has accessibility problems, while its historic status limits potential for improvements, Mack and others said.

“We need a building we can call our own,” he said.

Martino’s comfortable in the sanctuary but thinks that the Sunday school and other rooms are “not user-friendly,” and the parking is so bad she goes early to get a space.

The Alliance Planning Committee has discussed bringing the 60-plus-acre Logan Township property back up for a vote, having determined that it was the best option among several properties.

Mack thinks there’s other properties the committee has not identified that would be a better fit.

Going back to 17th Street is not feasible because modern wetland regulations have taken the use of 2.5 of the original 8 acres, while setback rules impose further limits, Sloey said.

The 75-family congregation was growing out of that church before the fire, Manganella said.

The congregation is trying to sell that tract. It offered the property to one party who previously had offered to buy it for $3 million, he said. But the new restrictions “put a damper” on those discussions.

The church’s fire insurance policy has paid off, but Rydbom wouldn’t say how much or whether the church was satisfied with the amount. The congregation expected $3 million but only has received $1.5 million so far, Sloey said.

The fire

After the fire, the congregation has needed a full year to “kind of get our feet underneath us,” Manganella said. But he senses “unity” now.

Early on, Rydbom was grieving. He watched the church burn that afternoon, realizing it was as good as gone — and thought of all that he and others were going to have to do.

The steps needed to be taken started with an emergency board meeting, even as the embers were glowing.

“The process is what made me emotional,” Rydbom said, “making sure we did what was the right thing.”

He had less of an emotional attachment to the building than others who had gotten married or attended funerals there.

The first two or three months after the fire, “our heads were spinning,” Manganella said. But that time was instructive.

One Sunday, McGarvey was officiating at Pleasant Valley Elementary School without hymnals, an organ, piano or offering plates.

“‘We’ll just have to change the way we do church,’” Manganella recalls McGarvey saying.

That was when he realized the church wasn’t the building, it was the people.

“What mattered was there was a group of believers,” he said.

Manganella said the congregation has gotten past the realization that two boys from families in the congregation caused the fire.

They ignited cotton balls on a display board in a Sunday school room, then stomped on the flames. They thought they had the fire out and put the board behind a cabinet, but the cotton reignited, and the fire got into the ceiling and roof space.

Police charged the boys with arson and other crimes in July, and juvenile court sentenced them to six months’ probation in September.

Mixed emotions

“It was a protracted process,” Manganella said.

But when it was over, it was time to move on, he said, adding that he senses resentment.

The boys’ families were devastated, but they’re healing now, although the anniversary will be a tough time for them, Rydbom predicted.

Congregation members love each other and pray for the families, even though they don’t know who they are, he said. Church leaders didn’t reveal their identity, he said.

“People don’t need to know who they are to wish them well and pray for them,” Rydbom said.

Martino has mixed feelings. She said church leaders seemed too ready to push the matter behind them, discouraging members from talking with the board about what happened.

“I thought it was healthy to talk,” Martino said. “I don’t think it should be a deep, dark secret.”

She believes in forgiveness, but she asked rhetorically, “How are you going to forgive, if you don’t know who you are forgiving?”

Nevertheless, Martino isn’t sure she would have wanted leaders to stand up in church and reveal the names.

“It must be a nightmare” for their parents, she said.

Sloey has no problem with the way leaders handled it because it’s better not to add stress, he said.

He feels sorry for the parents who have a “scar they’ll carry on their minds for as long as they live.”

Sloey and others members know the identity of the boys, and he sees them all the time at church “under their parents’ guidance,” he said.

Throughout the year, McGarvey has returned to the theme of “God’s faithfulness,” reflected in the generosity of the community in money donated during the months after the fire and in other ways since by individuals, churches and businesses.

He will speak of it in recognition of the anniversary at today’s service, and he plans to peek in “the rearview mirror” and take a long look in “the telescope” toward the future.

He hopes to show his appreciation to the community by making the congregation’s future home available for events such as weddings and activities such as gym sports.

“They’ve given to us, and we want to give back,” he said.

LeBlanc doesn’t know what will become of the temporary church after Alliance leaves.

Her congregation’s dream is for it to become a center for an ecumenical variety of ministries, including the 12-step programs and clothing outlets that remain there from the time the Presbyterian congregation occupied it.

A less-appealing possibility would be to sell the building and lose control of what happens.

“I would hate to see it demolished,” she said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.