Just in case you missed this the first time!

John Beale, Post-Gazette photos
Dick Marshall and his dog, Woof, sit in the chapel in Marshall has built inside his home in Crafton.
Click photo for larger image.
As the plaster saints, stained glass and carved oak disappeared from Catholic churches, Dick Marshall watched sorrowfully.
"These things brought you closer to God. They're part of our culture, our history," said Marshall, 60. "You used to walk into church and something special happened. It rarely happens anymore."
Marshall now gets that feeling in his own home in Crafton, in the chapel he added three years ago.
The 12-by-29-foot- vaulted space contains eight large statues, seven stained-glass windows, four small pews and nearly two dozen smaller statues, candelabras, fixtures and other items, including holy water receptacles, Communion bells and two wrought-iron votive candle racks.
Adding to the contemplative mood is a stereo playing traditional hymns and Gregorian chants. Overlooking it all is a tiny loft that holds a 1950s Hammond organ. Marshall has been a part-time church organist since he was a teenager and has sung in choirs since age 10. He currently sings in the men's choir at Epiphany Church, Uptown.
"All of this was soothing for me as a kid," he said, looking around the chapel. "I have always loved it and collected it."
One of his first purchases was the organ he had played while growing up in Green Tree. St. Margaret of Scotland Church sold the organ, which is now in Marshall's library, after building a new church in the 1950s.
Few shared his interest in religious items.
"People think it's beautiful, but they don't want it in their homes," he said. "It's been a rescue mission, saving this stuff from people's basements, antique shops, auctions."
The Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese used to auction or sell stained-glass windows and other items when churches closed. Marshall bought one ornate votive candle rack from a Braddock church at an auction about 20 years ago. But for the past 15 years, the diocese has tried to make sure that religious images are sold or donated to other Catholic churches. Still, some items end up on the market anyway.

Marshall noted that many windows and statues bear the names of parishioners who paid for them. He wondered why the diocese doesn't try to give them to the patrons' families.
"These are sacred things that people loved. I'm sure they would love to have them."
People who know of Marshall's chapel sometimes give him items. A large hand-carved crucifix has on its back the name and photo of the nun it once belonged to, from the Sisters of Divine Providence in Ross. Marshall was a driver for the nuns as a teenager.
"They said she had died and had no family. 'Can you give it a home?' " he recalled.
The nuns also have given him two statues, both of which stand in his large, meandering garden. It's filled with a variety of lilies -- his favorite -- and dozens of plants that he brings back by the carload from spring vacations in Florida. Because many are not winter-hardy here, he digs them up in the fall and stores them in his basement.
Marshall has also restored his 1898 brick house in Victorian style. Many of the religious pieces were displayed in the house until he built the chapel three years ago.
"It's really sacred space. Next to the garden, it's my favorite place to be," he said, adding that he comes regularly to meditate. Three Masses have been held there.
"I needed this on 9/11. The church was locked."
Marshall said he decided to build the chapel when he acquired a large altarpiece from a Lutheran church that was too big for any other room. On a friend's recommendation, he hired Rich Riberich of Riberich & Sons in Forest Hills. They had no blueprints, only a small mock-up Marshall had made from cardboard and Scotch tape.
"I had the whole thing in my head my whole life," he said.
His cousin, Jack Repine of Rosslyn Farms, laid the marble tile that was bought by friends as a birthday present for Marshall. His boxer, Woof, likes the tiles' cool surface in the summer and the radiant heat beneath it in winter.
Marshall said only one person has ever reacted negatively to his home chapel: a Christmas party guest who was offended that people were drinking wine while viewing it. But generally, both Catholics and non-Catholics seem to appreciate it, he said.
"People gasp when they walk in the door. One non-Catholic friend said: 'I can't believe your courage, to do something that most people would never do or understand.'
"When some people hear about it, they have this idea that I play priest, that I'm making fun. It's not that at all."
Older Catholics seem to understand best, he said.
"It reminds them of something that in many ways is lost."


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