From the Ashes
How a long-ago tragedy impacted the arts in Atlanta and the ministry at FPC
Rev. Dr. Harry Fifield, Senior Minister of First Presbyterian Church, was about to pronounce the benediction at the early service on June 3, 1962, when someone rushed in to give him terrible news: upon takeoff at Orly Airfield in Paris, a chartered flight returning home from a European museum tour had crashed and burst into flames. Of the 130 people killed in the crash, 106 were from Atlanta. Twelve were members of First Presbyterian Church, and another 35 were relatives of First Presbyterian families.
The European tour had been sponsored by the Atlanta Art Association, headquartered in a museum home that had been donated by Mrs. Joseph Maddison (Hattie) High at Fifteenth and Peachtree Streets. The trip was intended to grow support for the city’s cultural life and for the establishment of a center for the performing arts.
Located across the street, First Presbyterian has partnered with the Woodruff Arts Center on many programs and events.
The loss to the city was tremendous. Besides First Presbyterian Church, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Christ the King and the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Phillip were especially hard hit. Metropolitan Atlanta was a much smaller place then, with a total population of only about half a million. Travelers on the tour were part of a relatively tight circle of business, civic, cultural, and social leaders. Some Atlantans went to funeral after funeral once remains started to be returned to the city.
With the crash, the push to make Atlanta into a sophisticated center of the arts was severely debilitated. But like Atlanta’s symbol— the mythical phoenix rising from ashes— an arts community grew out of the charred remains of the Boeing 707.
The tragedy sparked a renaissance that elevated a once minor-league arts city into the cultural capital of the Southeast. Midtown burgeoned into a center of music, visual arts, and theater. And from its corner on Sixteenth and Peachtree Streets, First Presbyterian Church was positioned to become a vibrant part of the revival.
But all that was still well in the future on that Sunday morning, when the city seemed to stand still in shock.
Like Atlanta’s symbol—the mythical phoenix rising from ashes— an arts community grew out of the charred remains of the Boeing 707.
A Church Mourns
The morning of the tragedy, Fifield had preached at the early service on Judas Iscariot, part of a series on Jesus’s disciples. He knew that he needed something different for 11:00 a.m., so he went back to his office to pray for guidance. Before he could start a new sermon, however, he had to have a difficult conversation. He had to tell brothers Randy and Chris Berry that their parents, David Randolph and Annie Black Berry, and an aunt Lydia Whitner Black, would not be coming home.
Of the 130 people killed in the crash, 106 were from Atlanta. Many of these were connected to First Presbyterian and other local congregations.
Fifteen-year-old Randy Berry had awoken to a news report about the crash on his clock radio. He and his twelve-year-old brother, Chris, had planned to go to Sunday school even though their parents were traveling. At the breakfast table, he passed on what he had heard to Chris.
“I bet we knew a lot of the people in that crash,” he told his brother.
Beyond that, he said recently, “I gave it little thought.” The boys had misunderstood when their parents were supposed to be back home.
Once he’d delivered the news, Fifield sent staff members out to visit other families who had lost relatives, then sat down to write.
He stood before a stunned congregation and ready the account of Jesus’s Resurrection from the Gospel of Matthew and a few words from the Epistle to the Philippians: “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.”
“When a community confronts the kind of tragedy that has befallen our community,” he said, “taking the lives of so many of our loved ones, friends, and neighbors, we are driven back, it seems to me, to a consideration of the great basic facts at the center of our Christian faith— back to the Resurrection itself.” He went on to ask the congregation to recall the story of Lazarus, whom Jesus restored to life.
There were an interruption to the service, however. The church was set up for its usual Sunday broadcast on WSB radio. Names of the crash victims were still coming in fits and starts, and Aubrey Morris a legendary
Atlanta newsman for WSB, wanted to get them out onto the airwaves as soon as possible. Knowing that his station was broadcasting the First Presbyterian worship service, he rushed to the church, where Fifield let him air information on the crash as it came in.
A Memorial for the Ages
Atlanta’s mayor of only five months, Ivan Allen Jr. — a First Presbyterian Church member— wasn’t in his pew that day. He was spending the weekend at his family’s farm. When he heard the news, he rushed back to city hall in his work clothes and prepared to fly to France.
Allen had entered office with a list of agenda items that he planned to fund with a bond issue, including a major-league stadium, a civic auditorium and convention center, and an appropriate home for the arts. An anonymous donor, later to be revealed as Coca-Cola magnate Robert Woodruff, offered to put up $4 million to be matched by the city for an arts center.
Mayor Ivan Allen Jr., a member of First Presbyterian, stands before The Shade, donated by France’s government to memorialize the dead.
The bond issued failed, but city leaders weren’t ready to give up. They approached Woodruff, who agreed to expand his offer. In 1968, Atlanta opened the Memorial Arts Center — now the Woodruff Arts Center— as a tribute to those who died at Orly. The government of France gave the new arts center a Rodin statue, The Shade, as a memorial.
Since then, a new High Museum has opened between First Presbyterian Church and the building that houses Symphony Hall and the Alliance Theatre.
Next-Door Neighbors
Jens Korndörfer learned about the crash shortly after becoming organist at First Presbyterian Church in 2012, but he already understood that his new position was at the heart of the arts scene in Atlanta. The church sponsored a concert series and had a School of Fine Arts (SFA), which opened in 2003. It also had an Arts Council, which had begun in 2006 as a task force before expanding to sponsor more concerts, tours of private art collections, and lectures featuring experts from the city’s arts organizations.
Korndörfer was eager to build on what was there. He quickly learned that many church members were connected to arts institutions through employment, volunteer activities, or board memberships. “There were personal connections we could build on,” he said. “Whenever I had the opportunity to meet with someone, I went for it.”
Soon, he and the church’s Arts Council were planning even more lectures and concerts to pair with the events and exhibits going on the next door. For instance, when the Alliance Theatre staged a play about the bombing of the Jewish Temple on Peachtree Street, prior to opening, The Temple and First Presbyterian Church — longtime partner congregations— sponsored a discussion with both the director and author. Jimmy Maize, director and playwright, joined Melissa Fay Greene— whose acclaimed The Temple Bombing served as the basis for the play— and Lois Reitzes on WABE-FM’s morning arts show.
When the High Museum of Art opened Habsburg Splendor, an exhibit of masterpieces from Vienna, Korndörfer presented an organ concert of famous waltzes, marches, and symphonies by Strauss, Schubert, Brahms, and Beethoven.
As the School of Fine Arts grew, it became an obvious partner for the Atlanta’s Symphony’s Talent Development Program, which provides twenty-five scholarships to young classical musicians of color each school year. The SFA now gives it own scholarships to outstanding young musicians unable to take part in the symphony program due to limited space.
Extending the Reach
A major relationship with Challange the Stats (CTS) came about when church member Suzanne Shull suggested that Korndörfer find a time for a “brilliant young harpist.” to perform at First Presbyterian Church. The harpist was Angelica Hairston, who had recently returned to Atlanta and founded CTS, “to empower BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) artists and use music as a tool for social justice both inside and outside of the concert hall.”
During the pandemic, the church formed partnerships with a number of Atlanta musicians to lead in worship and perform in concerts, including Angelica Hairston, harpist and Executive Director of Challenge the Stats.
Korndörfer learned that Hairston was looking for a venue where she could host the first performance of CTS musicians in Atlanta. Discussions followed with Senior Pastor Tony Sundermeier, and eventually First Presbyterian Church became the venue for that as well as future concerts.
“Then,” said Korndörfer, “we decided we wanted to do more.” The result was a CTS residency at the church. CTS musicians participated in the music of worship, introduced their instruments to students in the School of Fine Arts, and utilized the church as a regular venue for CTS concerts.
Already gaining a reputation as a venue for music by classical and international musicians, the church was thrust into greater involvement with the city’s arts scene by the COVID pandemic. When classical music venues all over Atlanta went dark during the shutdown, First Presbyterian Church’s sanctuary, with its recently rebuilt organ and brand-new grand piano, became a go-to gig for top musicians around the city. Once they had performed there, many soloists and groups wanted to return.
In 2022, the church hosted a record number of concerts— seventeen— largely as a result of connections made during the pandemic. Korndörfer achieved a personal goal by bringing the full Atlanta Symphony Orchestra into the sanctuary twice to play with him on the church’s newly renovated main organ.
During the pandemic, the church formed partnerships with a number of Atlanta musicians to lead in worship and perform in concerts, including Angelica Hairston, harpist and Executive Director of Challenge the Stats.
Out of Tragedy, Art
On that long-ago Sunday when a city and a church were in depths of despair, Rev. Dr. Fifield assured his congregation that “any tragedy that befalls us, any heartache or sorrow, any cross we bear, placed in His hands somehow, some way, can have meaning and can be used redemptively in God’s eternal scheme of things.”
Perhaps the city and the church have found some redemption through the art and music that have come as a result of this great loss. Throughout millennia, when words seem to fall short, human beings have often responded to tragedy and triumph with great works of music and art. In response to the tragedy at Orly Airfield, Atlantans erected a center where those works could inspire the city and beyond.
Randy Berry, one of the brothers who learned from the Fifield on that Sunday that he had been orphaned, was asked recently what he tells his grandchildren about the crash. His life had been uprooted. An aunt and uncle from Rome, Georgia, had come to get him and his brother. They never spent another night in their Buckhead home, he said. But that’s not his focus.
The stories he tells his descendants are of his childhood: family times at a lake house in Blue Ridge, fond tales of his parents as he remembers them. Berry and his wife, Nancy, who live in Boston, are building a new vacation home in Blue Ridge “for future generations,” he says. “There’s no point in dwelling on the crash or on what might have been. You push on.”
That is what Atlanta did after the Orly crash. Without forgetting those it was meant to memorialize, the city developed a center for the arts that would be a source of inspiration for future generations. From its spot on the corner of Sixteenth and Peachtree Streets, First Presbyterian is a part of that center.
