Chapel of Four Chaplains celebrates 70th year with virtual events

The Chapel of Four Chaplains will mark its 70th anniversary with a virtual service Feb. 3, as well as a series of weekly Zoom classes and ruck marches.

Located at Philadelphia's Navy Yard, the chapel is named for four heroic Army chaplains who made the supreme sacrifice at sea. When their troop transport SS Dorchester was torpedoed in the North Atlantic just after midnight on Feb. 3, 1943, the Rev. George Fox (Methodist), Rabbi Alexander Goode (Jewish), Father John Washington (Catholic) and the Rev. Clark Poling (Reformed) helped evacuate the ship and guide wounded men to safety. As time ran out, they removed their life jackets and gave them to others. Last seen with arms linked, praying and singing hymns as Dorchester sank, the chaplains perished with nearly 670 others in the worst single loss of American personnel of any U.S. convoy during World War II.

Veterans groups and other organizations nationwide observe Four Chaplains Day annually on Feb. 3. In 2019, more than 1,663 American Legion posts reported hosting services, ceremonies or other events memorializing the chaplains and the Dorchester's dead.

Bill Kaemmer, executive director of the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation, sees this year's anniversary as an opportunity to share the chapel's own unique history. "I think it gets a little lost," he says.

A retired master sergeant who served 29 years with the Army Chaplain Corps, Kaemmer is hosting a weekly "master's class" through February via Zoom, for supporters of the Chapel of Four Chaplains and others who are interested.

"It's designed for people who are looking for something a little more in-depth," he says of the class, which is on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern time. "We give them some more details about the ship, the story, the chapel. It's an open history class type of thing."

In the late 1940s, a group of Jewish business leaders approached Daniel Poling, father of the Rev. Clark Poling, with the idea of establishing a chapel where Jews, Protestants and Catholics could conduct services. "They had to persuade the Baptist Temple to allow them to put an interfaith chapel in its basement," he says. "It wasn't easy to sell back then, but they got it done, raising $400,000." President Truman dedicated the shrine Feb. 3, 1951, saying it would teach generations of Americans "that as men can die heroically as brothers so should they live together in mutual faith and goodwill."

However, in 1972, the church sold the building to Temple University, which eventually turned it into a performing arts center. The Chapel of Four Chaplains was without a permanent home until 2001, when it moved into a World War II Navy chapel at the old Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

On the fourth Saturday of each month, Kaemmer leads small groups on a seven-mile "chapel-to-chapel" ruck hike, from the original building on Broad Street to the current location at the Navy Yard. But he encourages people to organize virtual rucks in support of the Chapel of Four Chaplains throughout the year.

"We just challenge them to hike four miles, wherever they're at," he says.

For $50, a participant will become a member of the Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation (or renew membership). Those sending greater donations will receive a commemorative 70th anniversary lapel pin ($100), a ruck march T-shirt ($150), a Four Chaplains challenge coin ($250) and the opportunity to dedicate a 4-inch-by-8-inch brick at the chapel's Lost at Sea memorial.

Through the decades, the chapel has maintained dozens of artifacts related to the Four Chaplains story, including a massive painting depicting their final moments, written accounts testifying to their courage, and memorial tablets bearing the names of those lost.

During a January master's class, Kaemmer shared after-action reports from the Dorchester sinking. And last week, he welcomed Lynn Chickering, descendant of a Dorchester survivor, to talk about her grandfather's memories of the tragedy.

Chickering has two ties to Dorchester: her step-grandmother was a passenger on the steamship's maiden voyage in 1926, and her grandfather, Joseph Robison, was a master carpenter en route to Greenland on its final voyage in 1943.

"You had more than just Army personnel on board," she says. "You had the Merchant Marine crewing the ship, and the Navy Armed Guard manning the guns. There were also 144 civilians who were working for the War Department, and my grandfather was in that group."

Robison died in 1980, when Chickering was in high school. It wasn't until she was assigned to do an ancestry tree that she learned her grandfather survived the Dorchester sinking. He rarely spoke of it, with most of his family's knowledge of the event coming from an article published a few years after the war.

"He was in a doughnut raft in the water for seven and a half hours," Chickering says. "There were probably six to eight people with him, and by the time he was rescued, it was him and one other person. He said that if you stopped moving, you were dead."

Only 230 of the 902 people aboard Dorchester survived, and most were so frozen they could not grasp the ropes to climb onto the convoy's Coast Guard cutters. Their clothes had to be cut off, and each man was given a blanket, a cup of coffee and a cigarette while waiting in line to be rubbed warm.

Robison, who worked for McWilliams & Helmer Dredging Co., was one of roughly four dozen civilian survivors. He eventually made it to Greenland, where he worked on expanding the U.S. base. After a short return to Philadelphia, he went to Antigua for another contract job.

In 2014, Chickering visited the Chapel of Four Chaplains for the first time. "I fell in love with the story," she says. "And as I got to know more about the military chaplain corps and all they do, I fell in love with the chaplain corps, too."

As a member of Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation's board of directors, Chickering continues to be inspired by the example set by Fox, Goode, Poling and Washington – four men of different faiths who served God together.

"They not only got along from the time they met at Harvard but formed a deep friendship," she says. "That aspect is amazing to me, that they were able to put all their differences aside and work together as a corps. Their ability to put everyone else ahead of themselves so they would have a chance to live – that's selfless service. It's still very moving for me."

The Four Chaplains story has a lot to teach us today, Chickering adds. "It shows us that courage matters, thinking of others really matters," she says. "You're probably not going to take off your life vest and go down with a ship, but it could mean somebody is walking down the sidewalk freezing cold and doesn't have a coat and you've got 10 in your closet. You don't know where you'll find someone who needs something you can provide. There's strength in that."

Based on the success of this initial run of master's classes, Kaemmer may offer them twice a year, hopefully bringing on relatives of the Four Chaplains and others connected to their story.

He's also excited about another series of weekly Zoom calls conducted by the chapel: "Chat from Chaplains Hill," named for the section of Arlington National Cemetery where military chaplains are buried and memorialized. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern time, Kaemmer invites a chaplain to speak about his or her call to ministry. So far, his guests have included Army National Guard Chief of Chaplains Kenneth "Ed" Brandt, the Rev. Paul McCullough of the American Bible Society, and Chaplain Austin McGuire of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 104, Conference of Railroad Police.

"One of my long-term goals is for us to be a reference for others, people who are thinking about going into military chaplaincy, so we can connect them with other chaplains," he says. "Hopefully down the road we can establish a scholarship to help support them."

Go to fourchaplains.org to sign up for the Four Chaplain Memorial Foundation's newsletter, learn about chapel programs, donate and more.

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