‘A spiritual connection’

LIHUE — When Suzanne Cameron-Stover heard the Notre Dame cathedral was on fire, she cried.

As she watched the updates flash across the television, she saw the flames grow bigger and brighter, and then witnessed the spire collapse. Tears ensued.

“My heart felt like it was breaking,” the Kauai woman said.

That’s because the Notre Dame cathedral was a place she loved.

Cameron-Stover spent much of her youth, from the ages of 7 to 14 in the 1950s, living in Paris with her parents, Roderic and Margaret Edwards.

Her father held a high-level position with Trans World Airlines, while her mom was an artist, model and dance teacher. They were, Cameron-Stover said, movers and shakers who moved often and lived in places like Portugal and Egypt.

But it’s those seven years in Paris she treasures.

“It was such an exciting place,” Cameron-Stover said. “It was a very exciting life. We knew all kind of exiting people living in Paris.”

The place they visited the most was Notre Dame cathedral. Her mother insisted the family experience is what made Paris so very special — places like the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Pathéon and, of course, the cathedral.

“My mother loved music. She was very spiritual. She would drag my father and I to museums and cathedrals. That’s how we ended up a lot at Notre Dame,” Cameron-Stover said. “Every square inch of that place, there’s a history, there’s beauty, there’s splendor.”

The Notre Dame cathedral was where they admired the architecture, listened to music and looked at awe at the menacing gargoyles. She remembers sitting through requiem masses and listening to Gregorian chants.

It was where Cameron-Stover found peace.

“It was a safe place. It was a place of refuge,” she said. “There was hardly a week we weren’t there. A lot of people don’t like old, dark cathedrals, but there was so much beauty.”

The cathedral, built in 1163, has stood the test of time. It outlasted the French Revolution. It survived protests. Over the years it was vilified, attacked, ransacked and looted.

But, as Cameron-Stover points out, it recovered, was restored, and took its place as a symbol of beauty and majesty in one of the world’s most stunning sites.

“I felt a really great connection to it, a spiritual connection,” said Cameron-Stover, who is an ordained minister.

Cameron-Stover left Paris as a teenager, but returned years later to live with a French family and study at Paris-Sorbonne University.

It was still the wonderfully cultural place she experienced earlier. And the cathedral still had that same magnetic pull as she experienced as a youth.

She will always look back at those years with fondness.

“It was like a second home,” she said.

So last week’s fire brought back all those memories. It brought all those emotions to the surface.

She felt a shock and “profound sadness” as she watched the cathedral burn Monday.

“Everywhere you look, there’s the perception our world is disintegrating,” she said.

But it’s not, she said.

For proof, she points to the overwhelming response of donation pledges that have topped $1 billion to rebuild the cathedral.

“It’s that spirit, that community. It’s a lot like the aloha spirit,” said Cameron-Stover, who with husband Ron has called Kauai home nearly 20 years.

“There’s an inspiring aloha spirit that takes over and kind of brings the world together,” she said.

In another cathedral connection, close family friend Isaac Dubey has the lead role in the Kauai Performing Arts Center’s upcoming production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” The cathedral is the setting for Victor Hugo’s classic novel published in 1831.

Cameron-Stover will be in the Kauai War Memorial Convention Hall seats to watch Dubey play Quasimodo, a deformed bell-ringer who takes pride in his work, has a big imagination, an even bigger heart and plenty of courage, turns out, too.

“It says lofty things about the human spirit overcoming challenges,” Cameron-Stove said.

It’s that same spirit, she believes, that will lead to the next life of the Notre Dame cathedral. Perhaps, she said, even some good could come from the fire that shook the world.

“Maybe some of that old stuff does have to die out so the good can be revealed,” she said.

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Bill Buley, editor-in-chief, can be reached at 245-0457 or bbuley@thegardenisland.com.