The Bangor Nursing Facility dedicated its first chapel and gained a chaplain last week. The Rev. Fred Dickinson will continue custodial duties at the city facility at Texas Avenue, and will be chaplain, a job he has done unofficially for nearly eight years.

Almost every hospital in the nation has a room set aside for spiritual needs of patients, families and friends, and staff. But few long-term care facilities have rooms reserved for worship, said Anne Marston, acting administrator of BNF.

Similar facilities use a common meeting or dining room for Protestant worship services led on a rotating basis by area pastors.

“A nursing home is no different in many respects than a hospital,” Dickinson said at the Feb. 9 dedication of the chapel, formerly a meeting room. “It is a place of healing, and a place we go for care when it becomes difficult or impossible to care for ourselves. It is a place where we, or those we love, find ourselves placed into the hands of others; and find others doing for us what we have spend a lifetime doing for ourselves. …

“We would be amiss as caregivers if we offered the highest quality of physical care, while neglecting that of the spiritual. For we exist spiritually as well as physically; and when the spirit suffers, the body suffers as well. For those who visit their loved ones here, and for those here who cannot visit their church or synagogue, it is hoped that this chapel will become for them a place of spiritual care and renewing; a continuing of their faith journey; a place of continuity and stability in their changing world.”

Valerie Marshman, in the facility’s business office, made imitation “stained glass” windows that fit inside the institutional-style windows. Dickinson, a Congregational minister, is seeking donations from churches and synagogues so that a cross, crucifix and Star of David may be displayed alternately, depending on the service. Abe and Frieda Miller, longtime supporters of the facility, are helping to raise funds to carpet the tile floor and make the room quieter.

Francis Goodridge, one of 50 residents at the 60-bed facility, attended the dedication and the first chapel service on Sunday, Feb. 14. “This chapel is a good idea, I think,” she said, after the service. “It helps put happiness in our lives.”

That pleased Dickinson, 57, who did not begin studying for the ministry until the mid-1980s. Born and raised in Charleston, Mass., a rural community next to Worcester, Dickinson was forced to leave high school before graduation to work on the family farm. He considered pursuing the ministry when he was in his early 20s, but did not think it financially feasible. He and his family moved to Maine during the blizzard of 1978, and Dickinson worked as a carpenter until he injured his back in 1984.

“Whenever I would get together with friends, the talk invariably turned to religion,” he recalled. “I couldn’t go back to doing what I had been doing, so my wife Cathy said, `Why not do what you’ve always wanted to do? Be a minister.’ I applied to Bangor Theological Seminary two days before classes started — with no money. They called me the day classes started and asked me if I was ready to start. They told me that if I was meant to be there, the money would come. And it did.”

Dickinson graduated in 1990 and began working part time at the nursing facility the next year. He has been in his current full-time custodial job for two years. In addition to his chaplaincy work, he leads the East Bangor Community Church.

“I had seen this little church, badly in need of repairs, on the Pushaw Road for years,” he said. “It had no water, no septic system, no plumbing, and the heating system was ancient. I came up with a five-year plan along with the committee that oversees it. We accomplished those goals in three years. But the ice storm hit us real hard and the heating system can’t get the place above 43 degrees. We build the congregation up nicely in the summer. It’s not a problem getting them in, the trouble is keeping them warm.”

He and other church members plan more repairs to the church this spring and summer. Dickinson said he hopes that members of the church which will be 150 years old this year will attend services at the nursing facility chapel this winter, instead of at his home. If his first service at the chapel is any indication, they will be family affairs. His wife operated the electronic music for the hymns, while his three young daughters helped residents turn pages in their hymnals on Valentine’s Day.