By Noah Bond
A historic 110-year-old Brigham Young Academy stained glass window now sits in its original resting place after two BYU students took it in 1989 to protect it from vandals.
This west-facing window was put into place on the third floor of the building in downtown Provo during the late 1800''s.
For almost a century, this window sat in the same place until the structure was abandoned in the early 1980s.
After the building was sold to private owners in 1975, the BYA building fell into a bad state of repair, said Merrill Bingham, the director of public works for Provo City.
The masonry work was crumbling, vandals were common and pigeons lined the floors with up to six inches of waste in some areas of the building, Bingham said.
Two BYU students, Scott Creer and Ed Creer, noticed the dilapidation of the Academy building in the late 1980''s, Bingham said.
Scott Creer had a hobby of preserving antiques and said if the stained glass window was damaged, he would take it, Bingham said.
About a year later a panel of the antique window was shattered, he said.
With the help of some scaffolding, the two BYU students removed the window during the early morning hours on January 1, 1989, Bingham said.
Since that time, Scott Creer moved to California and took the window with him.
While there, he replaced the broken panel with some glass he obtained from Europe, said Chris Allen, the events coordinator for the remodeled BYA structure.
No one related to the BYA building knew what had happened to the window, Bingham said.
During the renovation of the building, architects did not know what to do with the empty space that was once occupied by the stain glass window, said Terry Howard, the executive assistant for the Provo Library.
When Bingham was appointed as a member of the Library construction oversight committee, he happened to walk into the sheet metal business of Ed Creer, the friend who helped Scott Creer remove the window.
As Ed Creer and Bingham talked with each other, their conversation turned toward the BYA building.
''Oh, by the way, I know where the stained-glass window is,'' Ed Creer said.
Ed Creer even gave Bingham Scott Creer''s phone number and address in California.
Bingham contacted Scott Creer and made arrangements to have the window transported back to its original resting place.
Today the window can be seen in its original location on the third floor of the Provo Library at Academy Square.