John Hooper had been sitting quietly on a pew in Lake Junaluska’s Memorial Chapel for a few minutes when something curious caught his eye. Each of the tall, narrow stained glass windows that illuminated the chapel had strange symbols painted across the panels.
The more he looked, the more symbols revealed themselves. They were tucked into corners, skillfully rendered, unobtrusive until he noticed them. Then he couldn’t help but see them. Here, a collection of curving lines clearly meant to evoke sunshine. There, an abstract, jagged spiral. A squiggle of vines. A mosaic of geometric hashmarks. He’d never seen anything like them.
The year was 2010. Hooper was in Haywood County to attend the birth of his first grandchild. It was a scheduled, cesarean delivery, so Hooper was killing time. He’d wandered into the chapel because he was an Air Force veteran, and members of his family had fought in World War II. Memorial Chapel was built to honor members of the Southeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church who served in that conflict…