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By Jo Miller
The photographs show the temple engulfed in flames and smoke, the roof completely burned away and rubble lying on the ground.
The Rev. Christine Marr sits inside the now-rebuilt Spokane Buddhist Temple after a recent Sunday morning service turning through photo albums documenting the fire that destroyed the church on April 23, 1992. The photos, along with a movie on the history of the temple, will be on display during the 20th anniversary celebration of its rebuilding on Saturday.
“It was a total wreck,” Marr said of the church after firefighters put out the blaze that had been started by two 10-year-old boys who ignited a cardboard box on the back porch.
Marr, who became a Buddhist as a teenager, had yet to find a temple to attend by the time her kids were in grade school. But she wanted them to grow up with a Buddhist background, so she was elated to find the Spokane Buddhist temple listed in the phone book. She joined just six months before it burned down.
“It was so important to me to have found that temple and then to see it burn was just so painful, so painful,” she said.
When she heard the church was on fire, Marr rushed over and stood by, crying as she watched the firemen work. When the firefighters told the group of members looking on that two of them could put on hard hats, go inside and see if anything could be salvaged, several hands shot up. Soon the two who went in returned, carrying the temple’s sacred objects, ash-covered but intact.
“All of this survived,” Marr said with amazement as she gestured toward the naijin (altar) in the front of the current sanctuary. An ornate table, a wooden Buddha statue, the calling bell that starts the services and the koro (incense burner), among other items — many of which came from Japan — all made it out.
As seen in photos hanging at the back of the sanctuary, the building that used to house a Baptist congregation was constructed in the early 1900s and had stained glass windows with a mass of funky wooden chairs instead of the pews in there today. Two brothers, Eiyu and William Terao started the Buddhist temple in 1945 with other Japanese-Americans who came out of internment camps and at the time of the 1992 fire, the congregation of about 50 members were still predominantly Japanese-American.
After the temple was destroyed, the members started a discussion about whether or not to rebuild and put it to a vote.
“It was a tough decision,” said Marr. “Some of the older members were not sure if we should rebuild.”
Some felt the temple was on its way out and were afraid that the church would be left in debt if they rebuilt and not enough people became members. When the vote happened, the naysayers were loud, but not high in number and those in favor of rebuilding, including Marr, won.
“For me, I think because I made that commitment — ‘Build!’ — then it became my mission that it didn’t go to waste because [the older generation] really emphasized that, ‘We don’t want this building to be built and then it just sits and goes to waste,’” Marr said. “So then that was part of my thing. Let’s not hide.”
After the members raised the money with help from other temples, the new temple was built in the original footprint — this time in a Japanese style — and dedicated in 1994. Most of the first and second-generation members stopped coming after the rebuild, so the congregation declined until only about five people attended the Sunday service. But Marr and others put a sign out and began advertising and saw the membership steadily climb to about 70 people who now attend.
“We ended up with a brand new building from what we thought was a disaster,” she said. “I’m not sure we would have been able to attract any people if we had that old building.”
The ethnic makeup of attendees has completely changed, Marr said, which is unusual because many temples on the west coast have mainly Japanese-American members. The Spokane Buddhist Temple still clings to its Japanese roots, but the pews on Sunday are filled with several ethnicities, ages, families and singles.
“Now that everything is said and done, we’re way better off,” said Marr. “[Those boys] did us a favor, even though it was such a painful favor. Because at our temple now, we’re growing like crazy.”
A short service and dedication of the temple’s new stairs followed by hors d’oeuvres and displays of the temple’s history are open to the public as part of the 20th anniversary celebration on Sept. 27 from 4-6 pm. The temple asks anyone interested in coming to RSVP (534-7954) so they know how much food to make.
On Sept. 28, Rinban Don Castro from the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Temple will give the dharma talk for the Ohigan service at 10:30 am.
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