Removal of a telomere from yeast chromosome VII in a strain having two copies of this chromosome often results in its loss. Here we show that there are three pathways that can stabilize this broken chromosome: homologous recombination, nonhomologous end joining, and de novo telomere addition. Both in a wild-type and a recombination deficient rad52 strain, most stabilization events were due to homologous recombination, whereas nonhomologous end joining was exceptionally rare. De novo telomere addition was relatively rare, stabilizing