I moved to Martha’s Vineyard May 1, 1972, spending that summer doing odd jobs, painting houses and teaching myself to do stained glass from a book.

Barney Zeitz's latest project enlarges—literally—the themes of community and inclusiveness that appear in his earlier works.

For four years Barney Zeitz has been working on a series of stained glass windows for a church in Germany that was once a synagogue. In two weeks, the last windows head overseas.

Barney Zeitz is working on a series of eight-foot-tall stained glass windows, destined for a small Evangelical parish in Flieden, Germany.

Up the stairs to Barney Zeitz’s bedroom, light peeks in from the stained glass pieces on the wall, leaving purple and blue shadows on the wood. The railing on the right, welded by Mr. Zeitz, curves alongside the stairs until it meets his and his wife’s bedroom door.

“That’s one of the first windows I actually saved, it was a keeper,” Mr. Zeitz said of the leaded stained glass window in his room, depicting winter trees with a glowing red sun. He made it when he was 22 years old.

In the nearly 10 years that one Island war memorial has been mothballed in the artist’s backyard, tens of thousands of American soldiers have been killed or wounded in controversial wars being fought far away. Veterans hospitals have been overrun, new names have been given to the traumas of those returning from foreign fronts, protest groups have formed, a President was elected promising to bring troops home, promising hope and healing. And still the memorial has stayed away from the Vineyard public.