St. George’s Celebrates 100 years  

St. George’s Episcopal Church of Cordova.

Everyone’s invited to help us celebrate 100 years of serving Cordova in our little red church! The church was dedicated on April 20, 1919. It was designed by Eustice Ziegler, our first priest and one of Alaska’s most favorite artists. Eustice ran activities in the Red Dragon (our parish hall, even older, built in 1908) and traveled up and down the railroad leading church services for the railroad workers and residents. Eustice is known as the early Alaskan artist who did the most to portray Native people. He also painted landscapes and other people he met including wonderful fishing scenes. The Red Dragon was the town’s first library and reading room and for over 100 years people have been using these buildings to help others with everything from soup kitchens to transient housing, classes, dances and even boxing matches in the early days!

Cordova’s first snow of the season blanketed the town in large, fluffy snowflakes for most of the day, including the red walls of St. George’s Episcopal Church, on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2018. (Photo by Emily Mesner/The Cordova Times)

We just had a structural engineer, Troy Feller, come by to look at the church and he was amazed how well the church is holding up – but he said we need three things: a new roof, a new roof and a new roof! We hope to raise the funding and have the weather to complete that this summer so we can keep going for another 100 years!

The Rt. Rev. Mark Lattime, the Episcopal Bishop of Alaska, will be arriving this Saturday, April 6 to begin the celebration. We’ll have Evening Prayer by candlelight at 7 p.m. on Saturday night.  Then on Sunday our church service will be at 10:30 a.m. There will be Godly Play for the children. After church we’ll have a community potluck and welcome at the Red Dragon.

The festivities will continue on Saturday, April 20 with an afternoon tea at 3 p.m. Stop by for tea and refreshments. We’ll have a prayer service and Easter Vigil with music at 4:15 p.m. that will end by 5 p.m. Our Easter Service on Sunday, April 21 is at 10:30 a.m. with an egg hunt and brunch afterwards. You’re all invited. Let the celebration begin!

Rev. Belle Mickelson holds Lupine the lamb at St. George’s Episcopal Church on Sunday, April 22, 2018. (Photo by Chelsea Haisman/for The Cordova Times)

The Rev. Belle Mickelson is the rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church cordovaepiscopal.org and reddragoncordova.org. She also travels bringing music to village schools with dancingwiththespirit.orgLast year Dancing with the Spirit spent 37 weeks in villages.

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