Retired Navy Stanley Gavlick, front, of Delray Beach,
and others salute the flag during The Immortal Four
Chaplains Memorial Service put on by The Boynton
Veterans’ Council at the Ascension Lutheran Church
in Boynton Beach on Feb. 3. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Tim Pallesen
The story of the four chaplains who gave their life jackets to others on a sinking military ship during World War II is retold each year in a Boynton Beach church or synagogue.
A Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and two Protestant ministers were aboard the USS Dorchester with 600 other men when the ship was torpedoed by an enemy submarine off the coast of Greenland on Feb. 3, 1943.
“The guys were rushing on deck with no life jackets,” Tom Kaiser, chairman of the Boynton Veterans Council, said in telling the story.
The chaplains gave their life jackets so others could live.
“It became an automatic death sentence for them,” Kaiser said. “Four chaplains of different faiths went down with the ship to honor their buddies. They were last seen linked in prayer and singing.”
Boynton veterans alternate sites for their annual interfaith ceremony to honor the four chaplains.
The ceremony was held the past two years at Temple Beth Kodesh, a Jewish synagogue. Before that, St. Mark Catholic Church hosted the anniversary of the Dorchester tragedy.
The ceremony with color guards was held this year at Ascension Lutheran Church. The scripture was John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this — that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Stokes
The Rev. William “Chip” Stokes, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, is one of six nominees to become bishop of New Jersey.
Stokes, who has been at St. Paul’s for 14 years, told his congregation that he and his wife, Susan, have mixed feelings about the possibility of leaving.
“We love St. Paul’s and living in Delray Beach. I love being a parish priest,” Stokes wrote. “The idea of leaving is difficult for us.”
Church members at St. Paul’s will hold their breath until Episcopalians in New Jersey elect their new bishop from the six nominees on May 4.
“I hope it is clear that it is not a given that I will be elected bishop or that I am leaving St. Paul’s,” Stokes wrote, noting that he was nominated but not elected Newark bishop in 2006.
“If I am not elected, I will understand this as God’s call to continue to serve you and our incredible church,” he said. “In either circumstance, I will be both happy and content feeling confident that I am responding to God’s call and will for me.”
Teacher Christy French teaches the alphabet to students in the early start program at Trinity Lutheran Church and School in Delray Beach. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
The 2-year-olds are back on campus after Trinity Lutheran Church and School opened its new $1.7 million Early Learning Center on Feb. 20.
Cason United Methodist had been leasing classroom space for the youngest of Trinity’s preschool students the past three years.
Meanwhile, the waiting list for 3- and 4-year-olds to enroll in Trinity’s weekday program had been growing.
“The obvious choice was for us to build something larger,” early childhood director RaQuel Marten said.
The new 10,000-square-foot building has nine classrooms, offices and a 5,000-square-foot playground. It shares a 7-acre campus with Trinity’s church and a K-8 school for 360 students.
“Cason has been a great help to us along the way,” said assistant principal Jamie Wagner, who led the building effort. “But the new building allows us to bring our kids back on our own campus.”
A preschool for 2-year-olds at another church required a separate license and director to operate. “These are our youngest students, and we felt they were disconnected from the Trinity family,” Marten said.
The Early Childhood Center allows the popular preschool program to expand from 95 to 150 students. “This allows us to open our preschool and pre-kindergarten levels to the public,” Marten said.
She said many parents are seeking more than just day care for their children.
“They want a curriculum so their child can build a foundation with Jesus as their savior while they are young,” Marten said.
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Mordechai Ben David, known as the King of Jewish Music among Orthodox Jews, performs for the first time in Boca Raton on March 18.
Child prodigy Ethan Bortnick also performs in the concert hosted by the Chabad of East Boca.
Tickets for the 7 p.m. concert at the Mizner Park Amphitheater start at $18. Go to www.ticketmaster.com or call 417-7797 for information.
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The writings of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Anne Frank, Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela will be sung by students from Pine Crest School and the choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on March 10.
The 3 p.m. concert is the South Florida premiere of the new work by popular composer Karl Jenkins. A 15-piece orchestra joins in to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Music at St. Paul ’s concert series.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for students. Nobody will be turned away if they are unable to pay.
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The Methodists couldn’t wait 100 years ago when Lake Worth’s original developer was promising that each of the major denominations would receive land to build a church.
The development company, Bryant & Greenwood, was advertising Lake Worth as the “Wonder City” to attract new residents from up North, offering strawberries in January to anyone who wanted to move there.
A Methodist pastor came to town in April 1912 — the same day that the Titanic sank — to perform the first baptism.
Worship services began at a home in January 1913 as the official beginning of Calvary Methodist Church. Church women sold quilts and jams and painted faces on coconuts to raise money to build a church.
The developer said each denomination would get land for a church in two years. But the Methodists wanted a little church before then.
So a deal was reached in which a Methodist minister in Iowa gave land and building materials for the Methodists in Lake Worth to build Dudley Chapel. The chapel became the Iowa minister’s retirement home two years later, when Calvary Methodist received its land from the developer at its present location.
The Methodists moved into their chapel in April 1913, making them the first to claim a church building in Lake Worth.
“It was an unspoken competition. We were ahead of everyone else,” church historian Todd Velez said.
Calvary Methodist grew to 1,400 members in the 1960s. A large sanctuary with a 47-foot stained glass window opened in 1968.
But the congregation fell into hard times because of Lake Worth ’s changing demographics. To pay the bills, they lease space now to four Hispanic and Haitian congregations and six drug and alcohol recovery groups.
Only 75 Methodists attend Sunday worship services.
“The question is whether we’re going to survive,” Pastor Chris Dillon said. “It’s a challenge for us to prove we need to be here.”
As the congregation celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, the Florida Methodist Conference has scheduled a March 9 viability study to determine if Calvary Methodist can continue.
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The hungry now can receive frozen foods — not just canned goods and nonperishable food — from 10 food banks in the county.
Art Works 4 Food, a nonprofit that auctions art for charity, donated 10 small chest freezers to the Palm Beach County Food Bank, which delivered them last month to the agencies that distribute food to the hungry.
South County food pantries offering frozen food now are Pathways to Prosperity at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Boynton Beach, Our Support for Children in Delray Beach and the Jacobson Family Food Pantry at the Jewish Federation of Boca Raton.
Tim Pallesen writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Email him at tcpallesen@aol.com.
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