Four Chaplains Day celebrated by American Legion Post 202 members

   Four Chaplains Day was celebrated on Sunday, February 5th at St.Paul’s Lutheran Church in Hackensack during their regular service. Four Chaplains Day is celebrated every year in recognition of four Army chaplains who acted in the spirit of heroic sacrifice and humanitarianism onboard a sinking ship. 

   On February 3, 1943, four Army chaplains- Father John P. Washington, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, and the Revs. George L. Fox and Clark V. Poling- gave up their life jackets so that others might live on the sinking U.S.A.T. Dorchester in the North Atlantic, after a German submarine fired a torpedo at the ship. 

   Of the 902 people onboard the Dorchester, only 230 survived. Many witnesses told us of the chaplains’ efforts to restore calm in a hopeless and chaotic situation, and how they were last seen at the ship’s stern, arms linked in prayer. 

   The survivors’ testimony and the chaplains’ bravery are preserved at the Chapel of Four Chaplains in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.