Spirits dampened, not destroyed at Portsmouth church

PORTSMOUTH

It was a blaze that tore into the work and dreams of many.

Members of Zion Baptist Church cried as they recalled a rich history that dates to 1865.

Olde Towne merchants gathered across the street, looking at the ruins of Skipjack Nautical Wares & Marine Gallery. The renovated 1924 building was both home and livelihood for Joe and Alison Elder.

City leaders promised longtime efforts of downtown revitalization would not be slowed .

The fire destroyed three buildings along High and Green streets, drew 35 firefighters and woke up dozens before sunlight Thursday. The third building, Visions Community Services Center, was an adjoining facility owned by the church.

The fire left a close-knit congregation without its brick sanctuary for Christmas. Members of the predominantly black congregation met Thursday night in a closed meeting at the nearby Fourth Baptist Church.

The destruction also displaced about a dozen people , at least temporarily, from apartments above storefronts.

Jeff Terwilliger, battalion chief for Portsmouth Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services, said the cause of the f ire could not be determined because firefighters weren’t able to comb through the buildings. They hope to get inside today, he said.

“It’s devastating,” said Ed Forlines, president of the Olde Towne Business Association. “It’s going to punch such a hole in the community with a very established congregation like that, as well as a strong business.”

City Councilwoman Elizabeth Psimas, who has a business and home downtown, said the whole block easily could have gone .

Like a lot of people, Psimas got calls that drew her to the scene.

“You just stand there and cry,” she said. “That’s all you can do.”

City leaders said downtown revitalization efforts would not be slowed . They have long charted a course for preserving old buildings hand in hand with revitalization.

The 600 block of High Street increasingly has become the model for what that can look like.

According to city records, the combined church properties on High and Green streets are assessed around $2.5 million. Skipjack was assessed around $454,000.

The loss of the church and business are a setback for the downtown community, said Kathy Warren, development director for the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority. The authority spent millions acquiring blighted properties on the north side of the block in the 1990s.

Those 19th and early 20th century storefronts were resold to entrepreneurs willing to restore them to their past splendor. That work was a “catalyst for the other side” of the block, she said. The trend is now moving to the next block.

The camaraderie of the business people who have pioneered that revival has made for a tight-knit community, Warren said.

“It’s going to dampen their spirits and it’s a very unfortunate thing that has happened right before the holidays,” she said.

“But I think they will all pull together,” she said. “They always do.”

Residents of the building next to Skipjack waited all day to find out whether they would be allowed to get back into their apartments.

Meanwhile, the church received numerous offers of worship space from several other congregations.

Alethia Bryce, the city assessor, said she is a third-generation member of Zion. She was baptized there as were her parents. Most of her family belongs to the church, she said.

“It’s a church made of cousins,” she said.

Zion also was home to some of the city’s old families, Bryce said, naming numerous retired educators and business people.

Dr. Hugo A. Owens, the first black vice mayor of Chesapeake, had gone to the church for 40 years. His dentist’s office was across the street.

At 91, he stood out in the cold like the others, watching helplessly as the 107-year-old building turned into a charred ruin.

“This is just a building,” Fletcher Parker said. “The church is within our hearts. Hopefully, we can go on another 100 years.”

Parker, chairman of the deacon board, described the church as a “Bible-teaching, Bible-preaching” congregation that tutored children. It also served breakfast to the homeless three days a week in an annex that offered a place for them to shower and do laundry.

Delorestne Ward, an associate minister at Zion who was baptized at the church when she was 10, learned of the fire from a guard at a nearby shipyard.

“Everybody is visibly shaken by it,” she said. “That’s to be expected. But we still have hope, because we know that God is able.”

Onlookers snapped photos with cameras and cell phones throughout the day. Piles of bricks and other debris littered the area, including a large air conditioning unit torn out by the explosion.

“It looks like a war zone,” Terwilliger said Thursday morning.

The call came in after 4:40 a.m., Terwilliger said. When firefighters arrived at Zion, the found the building in flames. Hours later, water from firefighters’ hoses continued to cascade down the sides of buildings and along the sidewalk.

The Rev. Mike Boehling, who lives in the rectory of St. Paul’s Catholic Church, said he woke up before 6 a.m. and heard noises outside. He found large groups of people huddled, some with their pets.

They had fled the condos near the fire, and some were shoeless.

He opened the church so they could leave the cold and offered them water and food.

Most couldn’t get to their cars, which were parked in a lot behind the fire. Mamie King sat on a pew in the church about noon wearing pajamas, slippers and a house coat. She lives with her adult son in a building next to the antique store. A neighbor woke her up.

“She was bamming on the door,” King said. “I thought I was dreaming. We just grabbed what we could and went.”

She and her neighbors watched the fire rage as they ran away from their homes.

“We saw flames leaping out of the church,” she said. “It was like being caught in an erupting volcano.”

Rita Green said she lived in a renovated condo above a French restaurant on High Street. Her teenage son woke her up about 4:30. His room was filled with smoke, she said.

She looked outside and could see the reflection of the fire across the street and heard crackling.

“That’s what woke me up – the crackling,” said Sonia Williams, who was sitting on a church pew with her sister.

Williams, who moved into the condo three days ago from Florida to start a nursing job, said she saw beams on fire in the rear courtyard entrance to her condo.

For hours, Red Cross workers roamed the streets, providing food and coffee for firefighters and letting residents know they would help anyone displaced. Deon Foster watched from her High Street shop, Kitchen Koop, as firefighters poured water on the wrecked building across the street. Next door was Skipjack, its windows shattered.

“We re-establish; we rebuild,” she said. “We’re the Portsmouth family. “When it happens to one, it happens to all.”

News researcher Maureen Watts contributed to this story.

Janie Bryant, (757) 446-2453, janie.bryant@pilotonline.com;

Carolyn Shapiro, (757) 446-2270, carolyn.shapiro@pilotonline.com;

Matthew Roy, (757) 446-2540, matthew.roy@pilotonline.com;

Jim Washington, (757) 446-2536, jim.washington@pilotonline.com;

Dave Forster, (757) 222-5563, dave.forster@pilotonline.com