A fiery January night burns in her memory

Twenty years have passed since I watched St. Ambrose Church burn down.

I will never forget that chilly January night in Dorchester, when crowds of parishioners sobbed in the streets as the cathedral came crashing down before our eyes.

Back then my family lived on Dickens Street in Fields Corner, directly across from the church and facing the back of St. Ambrose School.

Plenty of young families rented apartments on Dickens Street, and most of the children attended the parochial school. The MBTA tracks cut through our backyards, and the Red Line trains would make our houses shake every 10 minutes, right on the nose. Most of our neighbors went to church every Sunday.

With its two huge towers, St. Ambrose was the jewel of our neighborhood.

It was a massive brick Gothic structure, built around the turn of the century to serve the area's Irish Catholic immigrants. Mahogany arches stretched across the roof of the cavernous church, and two floors provided enough space to hold two Masses at the same time.

But that all changed on Jan. 24, 1984.

On that night, around 8 p.m., my mother heard fire engine sirens screaming up the street. She peered out the windows from our parlor and saw flames coming out from the church.

My mother put a winter coat on my 4-year-old brother, Charlie, and I grabbed my red-white-and-blue puffy nylon coat. She put a knit winter hat on Charlie's head and instructed me to put one on, too.

We ran downstairs from our apartment and stood with our neighbors, watching as fire engulfed our church.

Parishioners were dashing inside the burning building, rescuing chalices and statues of Mary and the saints, piling the sacred items on the sidewalk in front of our house.

People were shocked, seeing flames shooting up 100 feet and embers floating in the air. Then countless slate shingles came smashing down as the roof collapsed, followed by the brick chimneys.

My mother started walking us a few houses down Dickens Street toward her sister's home. We walked upstairs to my Aunt Cece and Uncle Pat's apartment. Usually we only visited to play with our cousins Patrick and Laura, but this time was for an emergency.

My aunt asked if we were OK. My lip quivered and I tried to laugh, fighting back tears. I pretended to jokingly pull my hat over my eyes and face.

It was a nine-alarm fire. The following day The Globe reported that 225 firefighters from Boston, Revere, Quincy, Milton, Brookline, and Chelsea battled the blaze, which was brought under control around 10:30 p.m. The fire was deemed suspicious but its cause remains a mystery. A suspect was arrested a week after the fire but the charge -- of arson --was dropped.

The next morning we all looked at the charred walls and rubble that was once our huge church.

It had not been a figment of my 7-year-old imagination; we had actually witnessed the place our teachers called "God's House" burn down the night before.

Before the rubble was cleared away, neighbors and members of St. Ambrose Parish sifted through the remnants of the church, taking bits of stained glass and bricks as keepsakes.

My father commissioned my brother and me to help him look for complete bricks and unscathed pieces of slate. He carried them across Dickens Street in wheelbarrow and piled them at the side of our driveway. Later he used them to build a fireplace and mantle in our parlor.

For more than a year after the blaze, we celebrated Mass every Sunday in the tiny gym of St. Ambrose School until ground was broken to build a church.

An editorial in The Globe a year after the fire summed it up well:

"Much of the neighborhood is Dickensian, with the MBTA rattling overhead and industrial acreage a few blocks away. Yet the devotion that built St. Ambrose is more impressive than the temples of commerce downtown. In the intangibles of faith, neighborhood and family, Fields Corner is about to inherit a cathedral of gold, a basilica of silver and a tower of determination."

The new St. Ambrose was dedicated in 1987. It has only one tower, 35 feet shorter than the original. But it's still standing.

And I am sure whoever lives in our old house on Dickens Street today does not realize that the living-room fireplace -- if it still there -- was built from the remains of a beloved church now passed into history.

Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com.