MEDWAY – She’s 83 now, but Lora Emery of Kingman can recall from childhood how the Old Medway Church was the center of the community’s religious and scholastic life, with the town’s eight grades of children fitting in one room.

“This building,” Emery said last week, “is about all the history that this town has left.”

Town officials are trying to preserve that history. RH Lax Contracting of Millinocket just finished a three-week job of replastering, repainting and restoring walls, ceilings, an entryway, foyer and stairwell in the church for $10,650, town Administrative Assistant Kathy Lee said.

Crawford Plastering of Belfast handled the replastering, reporting to RH Lax as the project’s general contractor, said Rick Lax, owner of RH Lax, a commercial construction company with more than 25 years’ experience as a general contractor, construction manager and design builder.

Crawford did good work, he said.

“Plastering is not anything like drywall,” Lax said. “It’s almost an art form. You get some hack in there trying to do the work and they can really destroy it.

“I think we did a very good job considering what we had to work with. It was very significantly deteriorated in there because of the water damage and the age of the structure,” he added.

Since its erection by Bangor Congregational Church members in 1874, the church has been a herald of home for Medway residents, and as the town’s oldest remaining landmark, their most powerful reminder of the town’s past.

Deeded to the town in the 1980s, the church has a new roof thanks to a $7,500 town allocation last year but still lacks indoor plumbing and needs a new central heating unit, among other things, Lee said.

Town officials want the church fully restored as a historical landmark, but the road to full restoration will be long and difficult, Lee has said.

An engineering survey done in the late 1990s indicated that it would cost more than $100,000 to fully restore the church and make it compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, she said.

The town has nowhere near that kind of money to spend on the church, so volunteers have raised money and worked on it whenever they could, gradually improving the building, Lee said.

Volunteers and town workers insulated church walls and painted its exterior in 2005.

Keith B. Hale, 83, of Medway, who took Emery on a tour of the church, said the old building needs a benefactor who could pay for new heating and plumbing in the building.

Spotlights brilliantly illuminate the church at night, making it visible from Interstate 95 at the Medway exit.

Anyone interested in donating time or money to the church restoration is asked to call Lee at 746-9531.

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