'Honor the legacy': Summa to close St. Thomas chapel with ties to AA, relocate many items

A section of Thomas Hospital that honors the nation's first hospital-based unit dedicated to the treatment of alcoholism and its strong ties to Alcoholics Anonymous will be closing, but the items inside will have new homes in Akron.

The Sister Ignatia Heritage Center and Chapel at Summa Health’s St. Thomas Hospital in Akron is now open to the public through Sept. 5. The center and chapel have been closed to the public during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic or only open to family members who were visiting patients in the hospital, officials said.

Summa is also hosting several invite-only events for certain groups, including AA.

The chapel is closing in preparation for Summa Health’s move from the St. Thomas facility to its new Juve Family Behavioral Health Pavilion next year.

More:Summa Health to name new behavioral health center for local philanthropists

In a video message sent to hospital supporters, Summa President and CEO Dr. Cliff Deveny said “while there is great excitement about this new facility, we need to take a moment to pause and honor what the St. Thomas campus, particularly the Sister Ignatia Heritage Center and Chapel have meant to Summa, the Greater Akron community and even the world.”

St. Thomas Hospital's ties to Alcoholics Anonymous

St. Thomas Hospital opened in 1928. Eleven years later, the late Sister Ignatia and the late Dr. Robert H. Smith, known as Dr. Bob and the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, together created the first hospital-based unit in the country devoted to the treatment of alcoholism. In its first decade, the detox ward at St. Thomas Hospital treated more than 5,000 individuals, Deveny said in the video.

The Sister Ignatia Heritage Center and Chapel at the hospital opened in June 2006 “to honor the legacy of this visionary nun,” said Deveny. “Since then, visitors have come from all over the world to pay tribute to the work done at St. Thomas.”

Deveny said “extensive thought and care went into how we would handle these important artifacts and honor the legacy of St. Thomas, including a historic preservation committee,” which included community members, former St. Thomas administrators, local historians, AA representatives, St. Thomas School of Nursing alumni, St. Thomas Women’s Auxiliary Board and Sisters of Charity.

The women's board financially supported creating a timeline of St. Thomas that will be included in Summa’s new Heritage Center, an interfaith reflection center with a chapel and an outdoor garden.

Two stained-glass windows from the chapel that have to do with  health care, entitled “To visit the sick” and “To feed the hungry,” have already been removed from the chapel and are undergoing restoration before they will be installed in the new Summa center, said Angela Smith, system director of workforce planning and community programs for Summa.

Four glass display cases full of Sister Ignatia and Dr. Bob memorabilia will also be moved to the new Summa center.

“We are very proud to announce the chapel artifacts will remain in the Greater Akron area,” Deveny said in the video. “Much of the rest of the chapel will be gifted to the St. Vincent St.-Mary High School."

Those items include the Italian marble altar, stations of the cross, the remaining stained-glass windows, statues and pews. Additionally, statues that are outside on the grounds of St. Thomas will be gifted to the high school, said Smith.

The new chapel will be an interfaith chapel since Summa is not a Catholic hospital, she said.

Years of preparation for the move

Dr. David Custodio, president of Summa’s Akron City and St. Thomas hospitals, said a lot of care over the years has gone into preserving the heritage center and chapel at St. Thomas.

In a phone interview Thursday, he said St. Thomas and the chapel have special meaning for a lot of people in Akron, including himself. His father immigrated from the Philippines and was a chief resident at St. Thomas, Custodio said.

When asked why the chapel could not stay intact at St. Thomas, Custodio said: “The most obvious reason is that building is 100 years old. It has served us well. But the community and the hospital and patients have needs that we are addressing with our beautiful new Juve Family Behavioral Health Pavilion.

“While we understand the history and are very much attached to St. Thomas Hospital, in order for us to improve and continue the services that we provide for this community and our access by many throughout the state, we needed to move into the appropriate facilities to do so,” he said.

What is going to be in the new Summa building?

Summa is transitioning its health care from St. Thomas and is building the new Juve Family Behavioral Health Pavilion on the campus of Akron City Hospital. The new center is slated to open in January.

Summa has said the new behavioral health pavilion will offer inpatient treatment, hospital-based outpatient programs for addiction and mental health, the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, Summa Health Medical Group outpatient programs and a renovated 14-bed detox unit on the Akron campus.

No plans have been made for the future of the St. Thomas building, said Custodio.

What is happening to the items in the St. Thomas chapel?

Summa’s committee worked with the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland to find homes in Akron for the artifacts that would not be moving to the new behavioral health pavilion, said Smith.

Typically, when items are returned to the Catholic church, Smith said, they are available for other Catholic parishes around the country, said Smith.

“We communicated to the church that we really wanted for the items to stay in the local community so they could stay together and be enjoyed not only by the local community but by people all over the world,” she said.

The St. Thomas chapel is often a stop during Founder's Day, an annual rite in the summer where members of AA from around the world come to Akron to pay homage to Dr. Bob and the founding.

“We’re so happy that (the church) brought us together with St. Vincent-St. Mary High School to make that happen,” Smith said.

Exact plans for the items going to the high school are not known. Smith said Summa has been told the items would be used around the high school campus and that the high school would be a stop for future Founder’s Days.

Efforts to reach representatives from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and the Catholic diocese about the donation of the artifacts and future plans were not successful by deadline on Friday.

“Summa wanted to preserve this history for years to come,” said Smith.

The national AA office has also been contacted and was pleased with the plans, she said. “It’s a great ending to a wonderful story, but a beautiful beginning to a new chapter.”

Community reaction

Wayne Adams, house manager at Dr. Bob’s Home, a nonprofit that operates the AA co-founder's Akron home as a National Historic Landmark, said the AA community is sad about the closing of the chapel but grateful its contents are not going to the dumpster.

“There’s nobody who was happy about it closing down because it’s a very special room for a lot of people. A lot of people have done their third step in that room,” said Adams, referring to the third step of the 12-step program to “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God.”

“A lot of people have had amazing spiritual experiences in that room,” he said.

Still, Adams said, “people have got to understand that times change. A lot of us are real happy that at least they’re doing something with it at City Hospital.”

But not everyone is happy about the closure and separation of items of the chapel.

Amy Anderson retired from Stow Municipal Court as a probation officer after 18 years. She worked with countless people who benefitted from AA’s programs and sought refuge in the chapel at St. Thomas. Anderson said she was also invited by members to many meetings in the chapel after a year of sobriety.

“I don’t understand why they’re getting rid of it,” said Anderson, who gave birth at the hospital and spent many hours praying in the chapel when her father passed away at the hospital.

Anderson said she wants to wait to see how parts of the chapel are used at the high school and Summa to see if she’ll feel better.

Mary Sobczak is a graduate of the St. Thomas School of Nursing from 1969 and does not want to see the items from the chapel separated.

“No matter how well they think they’ve done it, to see it dismantled is disheartening,” she said. She wished time was taken to "to find someplace to sponsor the reconstruction of it.”

Sobczak spent a lot of time in services in the chapel and found comfort there. She plans to visit one more time.

“It will be so heartbreaking,” she said.

Beacon Journal staff reporter Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @blinfisherABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/BettyLinFisherABJ To see her most recent stories and columns, go to www.tinyurl.com/bettylinfisher

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: St. Thomas Hospital chapel with ties to AA to close, items relocating