Navy Chapel Is at the Top of Most ‘Save’ Lists

The U.S. Navy has made a conscious effort to steer clear of the political machinations involved in the city’s plans for the old Navy Hospital in Balboa Park. But it’s especially difficult when the discussion turns to the Navy chapel.

“Anybody who has served here feels the chapel, more than any of the other buildings, should be saved, regardless of the city’s plans,” said Lt. Cmdr. Rick Tittmann, who is overseeing construction of the new hospital in Florida Canyon. “We’re really pleased that the sentiment seems to be that the chapel should be saved as some kind of a veterans memorial. Because of the regulations involving the separation of church and state, we couldn’t build a religious chapel like it today. If it’s lost, it could never be replaced.”

The 14,500-square-foot, wood-frame chapel, built in 1944, is the one building on the hospital grounds that seems certain to avoid the wrecking ball when the city takes over the land. Veterans’ groups from throughout the nation have flooded City Hall with letters supporting the plans for a memorial. And acting Mayor Ed Struiksma is spearheading the movement to convert it to a memorial in honor of the more than 450,000 veterans in San Diego County.

“The building and the surrounding grounds would provide an excellent site to hold Veterans and Memorial Day services to honor those who have served and are serving the United States,” Struiksma said. “All one has to do is understand and respect the emotions of family members who have used this magnificent chapel, adorned with its many stained glass windows, to see why this site would be an outstanding location for a memorial.”

Those stained glass windows, along with the organ built into the chapel’s balcony, were donated by various veterans’ organizations when the chapel was built in the final days of World War II. Since then, it has been open 24 hours a day, for countless weddings, christenings, nondenominational services and moments of private meditation. Tittmann said the Navy would save the windows and other chapel adornments if the chapel were to be torn down--would even go so far as to “cart them off in the middle of the night” if necessary.

Not that there is much opposition to the save-the-chapel sentiment.

Ann Hix, chairwoman of the committee charged with recommending a land-use plan for the Navy Hospital land that will revert to the city, said there is “just about unanimous feeling on the committee that the chapel should be saved. It would be a very fitting veterans memorial, and we’re very sensitive to the strong feelings of the thousands of people who have used it over the years.”

Architect Jim Kelley-Markham, who heads the committee’s design committee and favors demolishing most of the buildings in the complex, also wants to retain the chapel. “Everyone we talk to wants to save the chapel. Of all the plans that have been advanced, the sentiment for this idea seems to be the strongest.”

Herb Stoecklein, a retired admiral who served a term as commanding officer of the Naval Hospital base, said the chapel is as important to Navy history as the famous chapel at Annapolis and the memorial to the battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor. “Regardless of the fate of the rest of the property, it should be an ongoing symbol of the Navy’s presence in San Diego,” he said.

“We’ve been trying for years to get San Diego to establish some kind of veterans memorial,” said Bill Fisher, a local Vietnam veteran and artist who has drawn renderings for a proposed memorial. “If this gets turned down, I doubt you’ll ever see one here. And, considering the Navy’s history in San Diego, that just wouldn’t be right.”