OLYMPIA — A 150-year-old church in Tumwater’s historic downtown is now home to another piece of history: a hand-carved cross standing 13 feet tall that was missing for years.
Stephen Morrison, the part-time rector at St. James Anglican Church, said the cross now hangs in the church’s sanctuary. He said there will be a dedication and blessing ceremony for the cross at 6 p.m. Saturday, April 8, and an Easter service at 10 a.m. Sunday, April 9.
The giant cross, weighing several hundred pounds, was carved by American liturgical artist Ernst Schwidder in 1976. Born in 1931 in St. Louis, he attended school at the University of Washington in the 1950s before becoming the head of the arts department at Valparaiso University in Indiana, according to the college’s website.
Schwidder eventually made his way back to the Pacific Northwest to continue teaching and making religious art. Morrison said the cross was originally a gift to the former St. David’s Church in Hoquiam, but it closed its doors not long after. The cross was hung on the roof of an outbuilding on the church grounds for about 20 years.
The outbuilding was sold at one point, Morrison said, and the cross was taken down. He said the congregation broke up and people lost track of the person in charge of the cross. All online accounts of Schwidder’s work listed it as missing.
But Marlene Taylor found out where it was.
Taylor, 82, married her husband, Dick, in front of the cross in 1982, before it left the public view. Taylor said her husband was a Navy officer who she traveled the world with, and once they decided to come back to the U.S., they moved to Shelton.
Over the past few years, Taylor got to know a Shelton man who used to be a congregation member at the church in Hoquiam. Turns out, he had the cross in a storage shed.
But the years of rain and mismanagement had affected the cross’ condition. Taylor said she knew of one woodworker, and he happened to run a church, too. That’s when Morrison was notified of the find.
The wood was chipped, areas were split and it was starting to rot. Someone had at one point used what Morrison called battleship paint on the cross, which even his concoction of removers and paint thinners did not remove. Morrison said he’s no restoration expert, but he’s worked with wood before and kept feeling nudges to work on the cross, even if he didn’t know exactly what to do.
Morrison worked on the cross for about a year, making minor revisions to keep its original look while ensuring its longevity. Taylor said Morrison has had it propped on sawhorses in the church’s social hall for months.
Morrison said he reached out to museums, including an exhibit featuring Schwidder’s work at Valparaiso University, to see if they’d be interested in the cross before the church decided to keep it. But because of its size, Morrison said, the cost of shipping it is too much.
Morrison said figuring out the lighting in the sanctuary to best highlight the cross is the final step. He said he was worried it would look gaudy or too big for the church, but he said it looks just right, like it was meant for that space all along.
This story was originally published April 8, 2023, 5:00 AM.
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