STANDISH – Usually, the members of Richville Chapel in Standish are the ones responding when community members need help. But, after last week’s arson that burned the small chapel to the ground, the extended community is coming to the aid of the church.

After hearing about the June 14 fire, which eyewitnesses told police was committed by two teenage boys, people from nearby and far off have offered the non-denominational church built in 1892 organs, pianos, new Bibles and songbooks, as well as monetary donations, said Greg Martin, the pastor.

One of the most beneficial donations came from nearby Richville Library. Within hours of the fire, library director Karen McNutt called Martin to offer the library’s community room as a temporary sanctuary.

“My husband, David McNutt, who went to the church as a child, got the idea Thursday real quick and said they needed a place to meet. So I had a customer in the library at the time that knew the minister of the church. She gave me the number of the church and I left a message Thursday and they called me back before we closed on Thursday and said, yes, we’d like to meet at the library,” said Karen McNutt.

Ironically, McNutt said, the library burned in 1970 and directors at the time, seeing a need for community space in the rural section of Standish, redesigned its layout to incorporate a large gathering room to be used by community organizations.

“The community helped us in our time of need and now we can help the church,” she said. “And we have the community room, which we wouldn’t have had if we didn’t have the fire. We thought the community room was a thing of the future that we’d need, and it is. So I guess good comes out of bad.”

According to Joe Thomas, acting state fire marshal, few details of how the fire started or how the teenagers were identified as suspects are being released due to an ongoing investigation. He did confirm that eyewitnesses saw the two teens at the church just before the fire. The teens, when investigators are not naming due to their age, are being charged with burglary and arson.

Firefighters from six area towns fought the blaze, which billowed dense smoke and spit fire into treetops, responding at about 1:20 p.m. They were able to bring the fire under control by 2:30 p.m. and left the scene at 5 p.m. Lack of manpower hampered their efforts since the fire took place on a weekday afternoon, Chief Brent Libby said. Standish responded with six people initially who first had to remove a downed power line and address two burning trees in addition to the burning church.

New space

On Sunday, 18 congregants of the Richville Chapel met at the library, and according to Martin, the service went well, despite the odd feeling of meeting in a new place after so many years meeting in the small church tucked among large pines.

Since the church celebrates communion weekly, Martin fashioned a communion plate out of plywood for the service.

“Everybody liked it, but I just wanted to do it, because we didn’t have anything and we didn’t have time to buy one, which we may in the future because I’m not much of a carpenter,” Martin joked.

Martin, 46, is an employee at D&G Machine in Westbrook and has been attending services at the chapel since he was 12. He’s struggling with why someone would want to burn the church, but says he is accepting of the situation and doesn’t hold bad feelings toward the 14- and 15-year-old youths who are charged.

“You want to feel angry. You want to feel there should be something done. But I just can’t feel that way all the time. It’s not that I want to feel that way, but now and then it comes along,’ Martin said. “But most of the time, I just feel they should get help, the kids who did this, and that they would realize what they’ve done. I don’t know if they realize what they’ve done.”

Martin said he would like to talk to the teens if given a chance. He didn’t know the boys, but said he is praying for them.

“I don’t know how they feel about it, I just hope they realize what they’ve done and feel some sort of remorse for that and I hope that they have some kind of regret, that maybe in the future they feel like they did a bad thing,” he said. “I just know it was deliberate and for someone to have a mind to deliberately do something like that, indicates their mind is thinking something differently than rational thought because it’s a wanton destruction. To do something to a church indicates maybe something personal. But I do hope they come out of this with a different mindset, thinking maybe I should live a better life. We pray for that. And we want things to go better for them.”

Martin preached from the Book of Job at Sunday’s service in the library, emphasizing the need to deal with life’s tragedies.

“Job lost his family and his house and his wealth, but in all the things that he lost he didn’t curse God in anything that happened. He said the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, and blessed be the name of the Lord. That was kind of the focal point [of the sermon], not to hold onto your anger and not to blame God or blame people for things that happen. Sometimes these things happen and it’s easy to blame, but we need to have forgiveness. That’s what the Bible tells us,” Martin said.

Finding restoration from their faith has been helpful but is compounded further by the response the church has gotten from the community, especially those good with a hammer.

Steve Thibeault, a Sebago resident and the son of Connie Fogg, a longtime member of the church who died in January, has stepped up to act as general contractor for the rebuilding project. He said he would take a reduced rate for the work, which will begin with acquiring permits from town and state regulating agencies.

Thibeault said the church would likely be rebuilt in a similar style, especially since the 14-year-old poured foundation is in good shape despite the fire.

“Being in the trade, whatever they needed to kick-start this thing, I’d be there to help them,” Thibeault said. “Whatever they want me to do, whatever capacity, to make sure the building’s completed, I’ll be there for them.”

For Thibeault, the work is personal since his mother and stepfather, Otis Fogg, who died in March, attended the church.

“I was at my office in Sebago when my boy came up and told me that the building was on fire, so I went down. When I saw it, my thought was if my parents were alive, they would have been devastated, as the Martins were. But the church is not a building, it’s the people who are in it. And although it was a beautiful building with the pews and the piano from the 1800s, and it’s a devastating loss for the community and the people that went there, nobody was harmed and the church can be rebuilt,” Thibeault said.

Martin said an architect is already on board, Ed Fitzgerald from Sebago, who’s a college friend of Martin’s. Martin also said another local man, Alan Green, is scheduled to remove debris from the fire.

“These are all people who are going to work for us that are local and would like nothing better than to help us,” Martin said. “So a lot of things have to come together. But things are going quite well.”

Martin said the church was insured.

“Things are going quite well on insurance. We’ve had meetings already and they see no reason to hold things up. But certain steps need to be taken,” he said. “Obviously we need to clean things up. Six to 10 large pine trees need to be taken down before we can start construction.”

Martin feels confident the Richville Library meeting place, while an appreciated haven, will be temporary, saying that within a year he hopes to be preaching from a new pulpit to a congregation seated in new pews inside a newly built church on the same foundation as the revered former building.

“The pews were original, shipped in by train. Pulpit, too. All these things were so old and they were treasured and the more I think about it, the church is just so old, you just hate to see it go. But we have to go on,” he said. “But, I don’t see it being a span of years. This may be within a year, it depends on hurdles, but the way things look now, things are progressing quite well.”

Using water from a nearby brook, Standish and Sebago firefighters battle the blaze at the Richville Chapel. According to Standish Fire Chief Brent Libby, first responders had to deal with a downed power line, as well as two large pine trees that caught fire above the church, whose roof had collapsed by the time first responders arrived at 1:23 p.m. Thursday. Authorities blame teenage arsonists. (Courtesy photo by Benjamin Knowlton)
The Richville Chapel on Route 114 near the Standish-Sebago line burned quickly after authorities say two teenage arsonists set the blaze at about 1 p.m. Thursday, June 14. (Photo courtesy of Rich Antinarelli)