Stained Glass Windows for an Air Force Chapel in Iraq 2008

In my last post I promised to tell you the story of how we came to make stained glass panels and paintings for an Air Force Chapel in Iraq.  It started in June of 2008 when our son was sent to Iraq for his second tour of duty there.  He called us shortly after he arrived at the base in Baghdad.  He told us that in his previous time there the chapel met in a tent but since then they had moved into a building.  He said it was windowless for safety reasons and his idea was for Roger to make some stained glass panels that could be back lit and for me to do some paintings to help brighten up the place.  We said "of course we would do that."  This was the beginning of a six month saga.

 I was put in contact with an Assistant Chaplin named Tiffany who became our liaison with those in command.  All our communication was via email.  With her help, subject matter and color choices were decided.  We had to keep the subject of the windows religious neutral because the chapel was used for a variety of different religions. We came up with four ideas that would work.  The chapel name was the Lighthouse Chapel so one would be a lighthouse.  The others were of a rainbow and dove, a butterfly and a lily.  They wanted them to be a colorful as possible so we used a variety of bright colors.

The process took up much of our time in the next months.  The patterns had to be drawn.  Roger and I both worked on this.  I chose the glass colors and he ordered the glass.  While we waited for the glass order to come he worked on getting the pattern ready which takes much time as it must be traced onto mylar and each piece cut out like a jigsaw puzzle.  When the glass arrived I helped lay out the pattern on the glass.  Here is a photo of me doing that.

 From this point on I was done with my part.  Roger did the rest of the job. Here is a photo of him working on one of the panels.

The finished panels were beautiful.  The next photo shows us with three of the windows and the photo after that is of the lighthouse panel.

It took a number of months for Roger to build the windows.  It only took me a few weeks to do four paintings.  I posted a photo of myself and the paintings in  my last post so you can go there to see them.

During the time we were working on this project Brian called and told us he had another idea that maybe we could work on.  He said the chapel ran a coffee bar but that they only served regular coffee and that the troops craved flavored coffee which they could not get in Iraq.  He suggested we have a coffee drive in our community.  We said we would do it and  enlisted the help of our next door neighbors, George and Gloria Magee.  With their help and the contribution of friends and neighbors we were able to collect 400 pounds of every possible flavor of coffee you can think of along with 30 pounds of coffee flavored hard candy and even coco mix.  

 We shipped the coffee in flat rate boxes as we collected it.  Shipping the windows was another story.  At first we were told to take them to the local Air Force Base and they would get them to Iraq so we took them there.  After almost a month we were told they could not do it.  Long story short, we were told that if we could get them to Dover Delaware by a date only a few days away they would be put on a plane to Iraq.  The day we got this call was the day before Thanksgiving.  We quickly picked them up from the local Air Force Base and took them straight to Fedex who got them to Delaware in time to make the plane to Iraq.  I forgot to mention that we also had people contribute money to help with shipping costs of the windows, paintings and coffee.

We held our breath until we heard they arrive safe and undamaged.  As soon as they got there they were given to a young airman who had the skill to build cabinets for the panels and to back light them.  This took almost another month.

They were finally finished and placed in the chapel.  The dedication ceremony took pace just a few days before Brian finished his tour of duty in Iraq.  Here are photos of the staff, and the ceremony.  Brian is in the last photo.

We are proud to have taken part in this project to help brighten the days of our troops and we are even prouder of our son Brian for having suggested we do this.  We are also thankful for all of our Arizona friends who took part in the coffee drive with the their donations of both coffee and money for shipping.

This all happened in 2008.  Since then the Air Force base in Iraq was closed.  A number of years ago I got an email from an Air Force Chaplin telling me that the windows were still blessing the troops in another Chapel but, in his words, "Because of the sensitive nature of the county they were in" he could not tell me where they were.

I hope you enjoyed reading this story about our "Windows for Iraq."