Dr. Michael J. Lewis’ personal and professional lives collided when a fire destroyed a former Luzerne County church just over a week ago.
“To me it was just absolutely heartbreaking,” he said.
The former St. Hedwig’s Church in Edwardsville was demolished after it went up in flames on the morning of Feb. 19. The church closed in 2007 and Catholic Social Services of the Diocese of Scranton eventually sold the building in March 2020. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
WVIA News spoke to former parishioners and a leader from St. Hedwig’s, many sharing memories over the last week.
Lewis, 65, lived in Kingston as a child and grew up hearing that his great-grandfather, Ignaz Rutkowski, was a volunteer who helped build St. Hedwig’s. Polish immigrants founded the more than 100-year-old parish, with the church completed in 1909.
“As with a lot of family legends, you take it for granted," Lewis said. “You don’t question it,” he said.
But due to his profession, Lewis was in a unique position to confirm that story. He’s an historian, a professor of art and architecture at Williams College in Massachusetts and the architecture critic for the Wall Street Journal.
Years ago, Lewis found a list of church founders on a document dated 1901, the year the group began assembling. His grandfather Ignaz was listed among the names.
“It took them seven years to raise enough money to start building the church,” Lewis said.
In the fire’s aftermath, memories of family gatherings, from weddings to funerals, came flooding back for Lewis. But he also reflected on the architect and the building itself.
“It’s hard for me to talk about it without having emotions,” Lewis said. “The historian-researcher part of me looks at it as an object built by so many people for so much money at a certain time, and the human part of me has the deepest memories and associations with that church.”
Irish-American architect Owen B. McGlynn designed hundreds of churches and other buildings in Northeast Pennsylvania, including St. Hedwig’s and James M. Coughlin High School in Wilkes-Barre, according to Lewis. McGlynn made a sizable impact on the regional landscape in his short career, despite dying of the 1918 flu pandemic at 40 years old.
But McGlynn isn’t just a name to Lewis, who said he has “a weird feeling of possessiveness” over the architect. Lewis learned that his grandmother was friends with McGlynn’s daughter and knew the family well, even though McGlynn himself died young.
“So suddenly, this name I knew only out of dusty books, … is a real human being in living memory,” he said.
Others reminisce after fire
Although Heather Harlen said she hasn’t identified with Catholicism in years, the fire at her old church on Zerby Avenue still made her tear up.
“It was a really powerful place of community for my family and me,” she said.
Harlen grew up in Edwardsville, but now lives in Emmaus outside of Allentown. She drifted away from the Catholic Church when her beliefs began to clash with the religion’s official stance on issues that were important to her. But Harlen makes a distinction between the church as an institution and the place of worship where she grew up.
“So there’s the ‘capital-C Church’ but then there’s your community church and the people,” she said. “The act of going to church every week as a family was very fortifying and watching our elders, how they served in the church."
Harlen was very involved as a youth at St. Hedwig’s. She taught religious education classes, volunteered at festivals and was on the youth committee.
Among her favorite memories are the bazaars and bingo nights. She said she looked forward to both events every year.
“The food was so good, from the potato pancakes, to the pierogies, to everything,” she said. “Everything just tasted better there at the church bazaar.”
She’s also grateful to have met the Rev. Gerald Gurka, who she calls “a really transformative priest.” Harlen said Gurka made the young parishioners “feel seen and heard and valued” after starting a youth group.
Gurka was a part of St. Hedwig’s in the late 80s and early 90s.
“I remember a very vibrant community that welcomed me as a young assistant priest,” Gurka said.
Gurka is now the pastor at St. John the Baptist Church in Larksville, located a little over two miles from his former church. Smoke from the fire was throughout the area that Sunday, he said.
A parishioner from Gurka’s current church said he had a hard time accepting feelings about the fire. The man, who lives close to St. Hedwig’s, said he witnessed the former church building in decline over the years.
“He said it pained him so much to see the church burnt, but he said despite the pain of still wanting it to be there vibrant and okay, he felt a different kind of peace that it was no longer becoming overgrown and unkept,” Gurka said. “He said that was such a horrible feeling.”
