This year, the village of Port Lions is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It’s really the relocation of the village of Afognak located on the island that shares its name. I’ve written many stories about this wooded, coastal village. The following excerpts are taken from my book, Close to My Heart and an article I wrote for the Kodiak Daily Mirror in 2005, the year that the Diocese of Alaska decided to have the Orthodox church in Afognak burned. I will share photos of the burning (the story explains how it all came about.) Those who have ties to the village may find it hard to see this once stately looking building, disintegrated by flames. I will never forget that day. I will share the photos and a film clip in another posting. I hope you enjoy these reminisces. I hope you will read the entire piece (two parts) even though it is very long. But since when could I be accused of brevity. – Mike AFOGNAK From where I was sitting on the flying bridge of the F/V Shearwater, it was merely a conspicuous white clump set amidst the green forest of Sitka spruce trees. I had to get a closer look so I grabbed a pair of binoculars in front of skipper, Joe Allen. There it was - a building tilting precariously toward the ocean. It looked like it could be washed out with the next tide. So that’s it, I thought as I put the binoculars back where they came from. The Nativity of the Theotokos Orthodox Church. For many years it was the focal point in the village of Afognak which residents evacuated following the 1964 earthquake and tidal wave. No longer a starosta or warden to look after it, the church became vulnerable to the ravages of nature and time and curious scavengers who thought there might be valuable religious items left in the church. But the valuables - the old icons from Greece, the candle, the decorated banners - were taken to Port Lions where the Afognak people resettled. I had seen many pictures of the church. It was surrounded by a yard enclosed by a neat fence. It was obvious that people took good care of it. There were other buildings near the church, hidden by the covering of the trees. I had gone by Afognak Island many times before, but this Saturday afternoon in May of 1997 I saw the village for the first time. There are those who say that Afognak village was wiped out by the 1964 tsunami, but that’s not really what happened. Some of the buildings were destroyed; some wrested from their foundations, driven into a swampy area. But a lot of the houses were still standing by the time the disaster had spent its fury. After a meeting to decide the future of their village, the residents opted to relocate a few miles away in a sheltered area in Kizuyak Bay. By the end of the year, the people of Afognak were members of a new community named Port Lions. It was named in honor of the Lions Club, one of several agencies that helped the people in the difficult move. Through the years the residents still identified themselves as Afognak people. Some of them went there in the summer to put up fish. They stayed in the homes they had been forced to abandon. In 2002 I walked through the empty village of Afognak. The church had deteriorated even more since I first glanced at it. It was sagging, collapsing on itself. The roof was punctured with gaping holes. Walls were caving in. Other buildings in the vicinity were also collapsing. But some were sturdy and looked like they can be lived in - with some work, of course. I felt sadness as I walked into the shabby shelter the church offered. There was a time when people packed in here for Pascha or Nativity. They were greeted by the pungent smell of smoky incense. Religious icons sanctified the walls. Somber Russian chants flowed through the nave. I imagined the booming voice of a Russian priest named Father Gerasium, giving a fiery homily, scolding the men of his congregation for drinking, neglecting their responsibilities. Boom, boom, boom. I could hear his staff banging the wooden floor as he chastises. But on this September day in 2002 there was no priest to admonish, to comfort, to warn. The sermon was in the air. The air that was filled with the stale smell of decaying wood and dead leaves, the sound of the encroaching waves lapping against the shore, the waves getting closer and closer through the years. I realized that abandoned buildings strike a sorrowful cord with us, because they’re an apt metaphor of our own lives. No matter how handsome we look, how healthy and comely we appear, we ultimately become empty shells. Silence replaces the sounds of music and laughter. Only smells of decay remain. But we are remembered, just as places like Afognak are remembered. The wind still blows through the Sitka spruce trees at Afognak. Critters eek out trails through the forest. Some may even inhabit the empty buildings, scampering across floors where dogs and cats once lay contentedly by a stove encasing a roaring fire as a punishing March wind rustled through the Sitka spruce trees. There’s a sense of sad justice. Animals, once forced out of their dens and burrows to make way for human residents, now have the run of the place. I had never visited Afognak when people actually lived there, but those who grew up there painted pleasing pictures with their vivid memories. I can see Gladys Olsen and her friend, Elizabeth Petellin in their black silk skirts and high-heeled black shoes, helping kids reel in a big halibut that one of them had hooked from shore. I can hear Johnny Pestrikoff’s axe grinding into solid cedar that he had picked up off the beach. I can see his sweaty face, smiling in satisfaction as he stacks wood for his stove. The smell of sweet, hickory smoke pours out of Jacob’s banya on a winter night so cold that even the fur-bearing animals stay in their nests and tree holes waiting for the winter air to lose its icy grip. And so, when I think of Afognak, my mind conjures up images I had formed through the years by listening to people who shared their stories in rest homes, care centers and houses, wishing they could go back to Afognak some day, even if the foxes, bears and eagles now are the only denizens of the place. The Burning of the Church So what do you do with a church that is slowly deteriorating? A church that was once a jewel of the village, a dividing monument that connected Russian and Aleut Town. A symbol of the unity. A House of God. The pride of the Faithful. There were plans of relocating it to Port Lions. A noble idea. There it would get the proper care and reverence that was lavished on it while Afognak was a living community. But what sounds good in theory, often falls on its face when one looks at the logistics. Who was going to physically remove the building? What equipment would that move take? How was it going to be paid for? How would the church hold up in this transfer? The project was abandoned. Meanwhile deterioration and decay continued to eat away at it. The pillars and foundation grew weaker. The nave and altar – the main part of the church– were severed from the entry. Part of the siding on the main building collapsed and one end of the roof fell to the foundation. Not a pretty sight. Leaders of the Orthodox Diocese of Alaska decided it was time to do what was done with all sacred objects that are no longer usable. Whether they be icons, buildings or vestments. Burn it. Rescue it from humiliating deterioration which was a mockery of the building’s original beauty. Just a few days after Easter of 2005 during Bright Week a group of students from St. Hermans Seminary, their dean, Fr. Chad Hatfield, and parish priest, Frs. Innocent Dresdow of Holy Resurrection Cathedral and Alexie Knagin of Port Lions went to carry out this honorable mission. Most people who burn churches are iconoclasts -- violators of the sacred objects. But not these. The people traveled to Afognak by boats operated by Alvin Nelson and Fr. Alexei. Before the fire was started, the priests and seminarians went through nearby graveyards and sang the Paschal greeting, “Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death.” They also hauled timbers from the center of the church to the beach and later put them on board Knagin’s boat. Alvin and his wife, Arlene, and Knagin sat on a rock several yards from the church watching as flames shot up to the cupola and soon engulfed the whole building. All three grew up in Afognak. Watching the inferno brought back every memory of Afognak. Arlene recalled people like Reader Sergay Sheratine, Sr. (“We called him Mr. Sheratine,” she said,) and Sam, the man who climbed up the stairway to the tower and rang the bells in a very special way. When fire watchers feared that embers would land on tinder dry spruce trees and other nearby buildings and start a major fire, Knagin remained calm. Memories squashed together as they sat there. Images leap into their memories like the shafts of flames that burst out of the windows. Arlene said prayers for the people that worked in the church. But Knagin looked calmly at the wall of flames which looked for dry wood that it might devour. “God is in control,” he said. “What is there to worry about?” Father Innocent Dresdow decided it was better to back up his faith with a bucket brigade. He carried like he was cooling down the Chicago Fire. The fire blazed like the wrath of God, His holiness and love, leaping through the windows in the building that once resounded with petitions to God. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Flaming rafters and beams tumbled to a fiery floor. Remember, O Lord, your servants. In the background the flames diminished, the crackling grew fainter. The only heat came from the sun that shone brightly through a feeble layer of clouds. Once it was certain that the fire was under control, the people had a picnic on the beach, an activity that the people of Afognak enjoyed often, Arlene said. The Lenten Fast was over. This was Bright Week. Hot dogs, salmon, chicken. As the boats made their way home, the passengers looked back to see a smoldering pile of charred wood. Some reverently made the sign of the cross. It’s not only the Orthodox faithful from Afognak who have ties to the church. Fishermen have used it as a point of reference for many years and now it’s gone. But in time, another religious landmark will take its place. “We plan to put a cross marking on that spot,” Hatfield said. “It won’t be forgotten.”
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 06:07:47 +0000
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