Threads of the Chapel

Walk into Wickenden Chapel and let your eyes drift past the pews. Hanging on the backs of the wooden benches, you'll find them: small puffy rectangles of needlepoint in deep reds, blues, and golds, each one stitched by hand. Some carry crosses or doves; others show sailboats, athletic fields, or the initials of a graduate. Together, they form a record of more than half a century of Tabor life, stitched one cushion at a time.

The story of Tabor's kneelers begins in Paris.

In the summer of 1967, as the final planning details for the new Chapel were being completed, then-Headmaster Jim Wickenden traveled overseas. While in Paris, he stepped inside the American Cathedral and noticed the needlepoint pew cushions and kneeling stools that filled it—pieces depicting U.S. state flowers and flags, notable Americans, and other distinctly national subjects. The work was beautiful, and it was personal. Wickenden carried the idea home.

Back at Tabor, several mothers of the classes of 1968 and 1969 took up the project. Their stated purpose was to "provide a visual sign of their interest in the spiritual challenge and growth in their boys at Tabor," and their first contribution was a set of large altar rail cushions, each depicting a Christian parable. The subject matter aligned with the Chapel's Christian but non-denominational character. Parents and friends did the needlework themselves, with student initials and class years stitched into the side strips before an upholsterer assembled the finished pieces. Those original altar rail cushions were eventually retired during a later remodeling and enlargement of the altar, but the tradition they started had already taken root.

The following year, mothers of the classes of 1969 and 1970 oversaw the design and execution of twelve smaller pew cushions, this time with Christian symbols chosen to signify Christian development. The year after that, more designs were added—simpler ones—and kits became available for purchase. A finished piece could be framed, sewn into a pillow, or upholstered as a cushion and donated back to the Chapel.

For a while, the imagery stayed close to its devotional origins. But kneeling is not a universal practice in Christian worship, and it isn't part of many other faith traditions at all. As the Chapel's focus and programming broadened over the decades, the cushions' purpose broadened with it.

In the 1980s, the design policies relaxed.

Cushions no longer needed to draw exclusively from Christian iconography. Families and graduates could now commission designs that reflected personal symbols, school memories, secular interests, and a wider range of faith traditions. In a way, this brought the project full circle—closer to the American Cathedral that had inspired it, where local subjects and national emblems had always shared space with sacred ones.

The pew backs began to fill in. A cushion celebrating a sport. One marking a graduation year. Jewish imagery stitched alongside Christian symbols. A dove carrying a laurel branch—an image at home in the story of Noah's Ark, recognizable as a Christian sign of the Holy Spirit, and a universal symbol of peace besides. An Egyptian ankh, the hieroglyph for life. One cushion shows hands of different skin tones joined together, encircled by the words parents, students, administration—a visual statement about the school's whole community.

Today, Tabor's kneelers still do what they were originally made to do. They cushion the knees of mourners at funerals and witnesses at weddings. They are a welcome visual distraction for fidgeting children of all ages, who study the stitched sailboats and crosses while seated. Alumni returning to campus seek out their own cushion, or a parent's, or a sibling's. The cushions have been present at community memorial services and weddings held in the Chapel.

What began as a single inspired idea—Christian parables stitched by a few devoted mothers—has become something richer: a record of the community itself, in needlepoint. Not every cushion has survived the decades, but the collection that remains is a robust one. The collective presence of the cushions represents the people who gather in this Chapel across generations. The Christian imagery that started it all is still there, joined now by Jewish imagery, the ankh of life, athletic emblems, personal tributes, and many individual graduates. Not every part of Tabor life is stitched into a cushion—but most of it is.

So, the next time you slide into a Chapel pew, look at the cushions around you. Check the side strips for the initials and class years of Tabor graduates—students who once processed in and out of this Chapel to the same organ music, settled into these same seats, and sang the same alma mater. 

Their stitches are still here.