By Doug Carman, Staff Writer
HIGHTSTOWN — The Rev. Paul Rowley spent 11 months in the Bethany Gospel Mission Home and Chapel from 1977 to 1978. He remembered moving here for his Christian ministry work shortly after meeting his wife, Hightstown native Gloria Mazur Rowley.
More than 33 years later, the pastor of the Hammondsport United Methodist Church, located in central New York’s Finger Lakes region, brought his wife and several volunteers back to the now fire-damaged mission home, hammers and scrapers in hand, to renovate its rooms and help bring it back to a livable shape.
”After the fire, we wanted to come and help out,” Pastor Rowley said. “I thought this would be a good project to help with.”
Pastor Rowley said he and the Rev. Bob Turton of the Gospel Mission Corps, which owns Bethany Home, kept in touch since he moved from Hightstown, so he quickly learned of the Feb. 13, 2002, fire that rendered the mission home in its current uninhabitable shape. His Hammondsport church traveled every year to perform mission work.
This year, Hightstown was its destination.
”Paul mentioned this. … Our entire team embraced it,” Gloria Rowley said.
And this one was personal for the pastor.
”I’m giving back for what I received,” Pastor Rowley said of the work he was performing Monday.
According to a mission statement from the Gospel Mission Corps, the Bethany Home housed certain people in need of temporary housing, such as people brought there by the police or elderly people with limited resources who wished to live in a religious community. Primarily, it was a mission home for people like Pastor Rowley, and not a homeless shelter or rehab center.
The Rev. Turton said a temporary resident violating the home’s rules against smoking there inadvertently started the 2002 fire at the back of the home. The fire burned through the rear of the Stockton Street building, rendering it uninhabitable ever since. The Rev. Turton said the mission had no insurance, so he and his volunteers had done little to restore the house in the nine years since the blaze.
Pastor Rowley said the volunteers from his congregation would continue working through today on the home.
”We hope to get a couple of rooms finished off as well as make some major progress,” he said.
The Rev. Turton anticipated that with Hammondsport’s help, the chapel room should be fully restored by today. However, he, Pastor Rowley and Gloria Rowley acknowledged it would take much more to get the home back to the point where it would pass inspection and become habitable again.

