Columbarium & Memorial Garden | St. Matthew's Episcopal Church Fairbanks

St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church is building a memorial space to include a columbarium and memorial garden to house the interred cremains (ashes) of parishioners and to serve as a space of prayer and reflection for all. A columbarium is a structure with niches (small vaults) and a central vault for storage of funeral urns, holding one or two urns in a single niche. The names of those interred will be engraved on granite tiles surrounding the niches and central vault. Names of loved one’s ashes interred in the memorial garden will be engraved on granite tiles on a memorial wall. The columbarium and memorial wall will be surrounded by a memorial garden with paths and benches placed to allow easy access and a place for quiet reflection.

We have installed a new concrete slab and received and installed the columbarium in September 2024. The columbarium delivery included the granite tiles and rails needed for us to construct the memorial wall. This spring we will complete installation of the memorial wall along with initial landscaping of the site. The site will include a grass lawn with paths and perennials typical of Interior Alaska.

After this initial phase is complete, as funds are available, we will continue to develop the space. In particular, we would like to develop plans for a memorial to commemorate the hospital and rectory that stood on the land where the columbarium and memorial garden will be placed and incorporate other elements to reflect our Alaskan culture and heritage.

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St. Matthew’s has been part of the life of Fairbanks since 1904, and is housed in a historic log building, near downtown Fairbanks, just across from the Chena River.

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We are grateful, at St. Matthew’s, to have parishioners who speak languages other than English.

Some of our Indigenous members have volunteered through the years to lead the Lord’s Prayer or the Nicene Creed, for example, in the language of their hearts – perhaps the first language they learned as babies…the language spoken in their homes…

We invite parishioners to pray in the ‘language of their hearts’ – which may be English, or Koyukon, or Gwich’in, or French, or Spanish, or... Hearing the familiar words prayed in a language other than our own, simultaneously, brings a sense of fullness, that enhances our worship.

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