By Kevin Eigelbach
Post staff reporter
On Good Friday or Easter Sunday, when millions remember the passion of the Christ, wouldn't it be nice to have a little bit of the Holy Land in Northern Kentucky?
The late Rev. Morris Coers thought so. When he visited Palestine for the first time in 1938, Coers conceived the idea of "bringing a bit of the fragrance of that holy place" to America.
Twenty years later on a Covington hillside, he dedicated the Garden of Hope, which features an exact replica of the Jerusalem tomb where Jesus was buried.
"Let this be a place where the songs of the birds and the panorama of the cities will inspire people of every creed to a greater way of life," he said.
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How to get there |
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• Take Covington's 12th Street exit off Interstate 75 and head east on 12th.
• Turn right on Holman Avenue, turn right on 16th Street, turn left when 16th Street ends, take the next right on Edgecliff and proceed uphill.
• The garden is on the left. |
Today -- after years of on-again, off-again management -- the Garden of Hope is a shadow of what Coers envisioned.
Few people even know it's there, at the end of Edgecliff Road, high above Interstate 75, or what a spectacular view of downtown Covington and Cincinnati it affords.
Donald Vogel, the "Garden minister" at Immanuel Baptist Church in Covington, which owns the garden, sees a lot of potential.
"The Garden is a ministry that just needs a little push to reach out and pull some people into knowledge of Christ, while there's still time," he said.
Unfortunately for the Garden, it has needed that little push for a very long time.
The prime mover, Coers, came to Immanuel Baptist from Indiana, where he had pastored several churches and preached the funeral service for John Dillinger in 1934.
Coers announced the garden project on Easter 1956. According to the Cincinnati Times-Star, he said a light would be placed inside the tomb to symbolize the light of the world, Jesus.
Coers used his popular television program, "The Chapel of Dreams," to help raise money for construction.
He also enlisted the help of Solomon Mattar, the warden of the real garden tomb in Jerusalem. Mattar hired an architect to get the exact measurements of the tomb and sent them to Coers.
Mattar also sent over large stones from the River Jordan -- where Jesus was baptized -- and the Good Samaritan Inn, plus a boulder from the Wailing Wall.
They were secured in iron cages painted black and set in various places along the walkways and steps of the garden.
Mattar's son, Samuel, helped Coers with the construction.
Samuel -- now 66 and living in Cincinnati -- remembers making the tomb out of metal mesh and blown concrete.
According to a contemporary account in The Post, seven tons of steel and 10 tons of concrete made it sturdier than a bank vault or an Army pillbox.
It was positioned so that the rising sun hits it every morning.
Samuel Mattar painted a red cross inside the tomb, just like the one in Jerusalem. He was surprised to learn this week that it was still there.
Coers created the garden with three major features -- the tomb, a small replica of a Spanish chapel and a carpenter shop like the one Joseph worked in.
One of the paving stones for the chapel, which Coers named after his television program, is a pink limestone from the Horns of Hattin, the traditional spot where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount.
From the last passenger trains that ran through Cincinnati, the L & N Railroad donated the three bells in the chapel wall that are rung for weddings.
Samuel Mattar married his wife, Vivien, there in 1959.
The carpenter's shop, built from Kentucky stone, still features authentic tools hundreds of years old from the Holy Land.
Former Gov. A.B. "Happy" Chandler, a friend of Coers, contributed a 2,000-year-old table lamp.
"I shall call the brow of this hill Inspiration Point," Coers told a reporter, referring to the highest point of the garden, where a statue of Jesus imported from Milan still stands.
The hillside below the tomb presented Coers with his most difficult construction problem. The land kept sliding and taking the patio in front of the tomb with it.
The solution has become one of the legends of the Garden.
According to the legend, a huge man wearing bib overalls came out of nowhere and told Coers what he needed to do. It involved building a kind of wall, like railroads use, to retain hillsides.
No one knew where that man came from, and no one could find him after the job was done. But the retaining wall solved the problem.
Samuel Mattar didn't think there was anything miraculous about it, however, or about another legend that no one knows how a 30-foot tall wooden cross was erected on Inspiration Point.
"I think we used some hoists and tied it to the trees," he said.
The completed garden opened in 1958.
Coers died less than two years later and was buried in the garden. His remains were later moved to Highland Cemetery in Fort Mitchell.
With him died much of the will to keep the garden going, as well as the revenue from the television program to provide for its continuation.
"He had a lot of fantastic ideas, and whenever he got ideas, he would follow up on it," Samuel Mattar said. "You could count on the fact that it would be done."
After his death, the garden went through a repeated pattern of neglect and repeated attempts to restore its former glory.
By 1967, Immanuel Baptist members were leaving for suburban churches and paying the $300 monthly payments on the $55,000 the church owed for the project was proving a burden.
By 1967, Immanuel Baptist members were leaving for suburban churches and paying the $300 monthly payments on the $55,000 the church owed for the project was proving a burden.
The tomb itself had cost $40,000 in 1958 dollars, which would amount to about $250,000 today. The Post reported in 1967 that the entire garden represented an investment of about $250,000, or $1.3 million in today's dollars.
The garden's out-of-the-way location prompted the first of many acts of vandalism, an estimated $7,000 loss in the 1960s from broken statues, broken concrete benches, and broken stained glass windows in the chapel.
The Rev. Clel Rodgers, the new church pastor, talked with Gov. Ned Breathitt about making the park a state project, without success.
Solomon Mattar had wanted to leave Jerusalem and manage the project himself, but he was killed during the Six Day War in 1967.
A group of Northern Kentucky residents chaired by former Covington Mayor Bernie Eichholz came to the rescue. His non-profit group signed a lease for $1 with the church in 1967. The group made plans to install a curator and start guided tours.
Former Kentucky Post Business Manager John Feldman, a member of the corporation's board of directors, talked of erecting a huge reflector cross that would shine across the Ohio River.
He said the garden had million-dollar potential.
Newspaper accounts said a reopening of the garden was planned for May 1968, but it wasn't reported whether it happened or not or what happened to Eichholz's group.
Samuel Mattar himself stepped in in 1970. He formed the Garden of Hope of Kentucky, a not-for-profit corporation.
He planned to restore the garden and reopen it, and have his mother, Minerva Mattar, stay in the apartment above the carpenter's shop.
The corporation bought the property from the church on a land contract, but it reverted back to the church in 1971 when Samuel Mattar couldn't raise the $50,000 needed to pay it off.
He was working full-time for Procter & Gamble and had a family to support.
"It just was a heartbreaker," he said. "We could not do what we wanted to. We didn't have the cash or the time."
He doesn't go to the garden anymore.
"Every time I go there it just upsets me. It's so run down and there's nobody there to open the doors for you," he said.
Interest in the garden waxed and waned in the 1970s and 1980s. Vandals stole the boulder from the Wailing Wall, which weighs several hundred pounds, and the rock from the Jordan River, but both were recovered, said church member Roxie Jacoby.
She became involved in the garden in 1987 when she joined Immanuel Baptist.
It was very much neglected at the time, she said.
In 1996, the family of Fort Wright resident Ted Padgett and an interdenominational prayer group they belonged to put on a Christmas festival there.
They strung 22,000 lights and organized 60 volunteers from St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church in Florence to portray Christmas celebrations from around the world.
About 7,000 people saw the festival over the six nights it was presented, Padgett said.
One night, condensation formed a pattern on the outside of the tomb that some said looked like a pregnant Madonna standing by a cross, Padgett said.
The group never did the festival again because it was too much for nine people to handle, he said.
"We thought maybe it would catch on and get some support from some of the churches, but it didn't happen," he said.
Two years later, Padgett and his family opened a gift shop on the second floor of the carpenter's shop, which they called The Upper Room.
They sold handmade goods imported from Israel. Even though they volunteered their time, they didn't make enough money to make it worthwhile, and shut it down a year later.
Last December, Vogel took over the garden management and changed the locks on all the doors.
He, too, wants to restore the garden to its former glory.
He wants to revive Coers' old "Chapel of Dreams" television show and already has broadcast one program on a local cable access channel.
He said the corporation that now runs the garden has about $1,500 left in its treasury.
Vogel would like to beef that up by reopening the gift shop and officiating at more weddings, for which the corporation gets about $200.
"If we had a real nice, white gazebo somewhere, it would be booked solid," he said.
He has recruited Erlanger resident Steve Cummins as the garden tour guide.
The former Covington resident said he remembers the glory days, when actors dressed as Roman soldiers and carrying torches lit up the hillside.
"In full bloom, this is one of the most beautiful places in Northern Kentucky," Cummins said.
The garden has enough parking spaces for about 60 cars or several tour buses. But it needs more bathrooms, Vogel said, to handle more visitors. The garden has only two toilets, both of them in the carpenter's shop.
He won't welcome back, however, visitors who watch the Cincinnati Riverfest fireworks from the garden.
They typically leave beer bottles and other trash, he said.
"This is holy ground. We're not going to let anyone deface God's temple or anything that belongs to him," he said.
He's also adamant about not allowing anything that conflicts with Southern Baptist doctrine.
"We don't work on the pretext of any miraculous happenings at the garden," he said. "There's nothing mysterious about the tomb. There's no magic there.
"That's the reality of it, that there's nothing there. It's an empty tomb, just like the one in Jerusalem."
Or as a simple plaque inside the tomb reads: "He is not here. He is risen."
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Events in the life
of the Garden of Hope |
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• 1938 -- The Rev. Morris Coers, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Covington, makes his first visit to the Holy Land and conceives of bringing a "bit of the fragrance of that holy place" to America.
• Easter 1956 -- Coers announces the campaign to build the garden.
• Fall 1956 -- Construction begins.
• Palm Sunday 1958 -- Garden of Hope opens on 2.5-acre site above Covington.
• Feb. 24, 1960 -- Coers dies at age 52 and is buried in the Garden.
• April 1, 1960 -- Garden of Hope incorporated as a for-profit corporation under Kentucky law. Initial officers include Coers' wife, Vernice.
• 1967 -- Non-profit group, chaired by former Covington Mayor Bernie Eichholz, is created to maintain and operate the garden, signs lease with church for $1, plans to install curator, and start guided tours.
• 1968 -- Formal reopening May 19.
• 1970 -- Another non-profit, led by Samuel Mattar, son of the real garden tomb's curator, incorporated in Kentucky as Garden of Hope of Kentucky. Buys the Garden on a land contract. Formal dedication planned for June.
• February 1971 -- Possession of Garden reverts to Immanuel Baptist Church.
• 1972 -- Deacon Dan Meyers and the Rev. Walter Isley revitalize the Garden.
• August 1979 -- Burglars take two candlesticks more than 100 years old from chapel, each worth more than $500.
• 1996 -- Interdenominational Prayer Group holds "The Festival of Light -- Jesus" Christmas program in the Garden.
• Palm Sunday 1998 -- Garden rededicated in a service with sermons and musical selections from St. Patrick Catholic Church choir in Taylor Mill. Upper Room gift shop opens above the carpenter's shop.
• 1999 -- Gift shop closes.
• March 2000 -- Garden of Hope of Immanuel incorporated in Kentucky.
• December 2003 -- Don Vogel becomes "garden minister" for Immanuel Baptist Church, takes over control of garden.
-- Source: Newspaper accounts, interviews |
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