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IV
Our First Resident Pastor, Father William
Neligan.
arishioners
petitioned Father Manley for their own priest. Monsignor Leo McCormick
would remember being ordained in Rome, being assigned to St.
Dominic’s and spending much of the week seeing to the needs of the
burgeoning parish to the south, where he celebrated Mass on Sundays and
Holydays, and returned on Wednesdays for devotions and on Saturdays for
confession. Finally, after seven years as a mission of St. Dominic’s,
in 1934 St. Francis of Assisi was assigned its first resident pastor,
Father William Neligan, and a rectory was built on the parish grounds. Petr
remembers that the first “local” altar boys were instructed by
“Mr. Andrew Hecht, who lived on the corner of Pelham and
Norman.” While the Great Depression was in force and the financial
giving of parishioners was restricted, they gave their time and hearts. A
building fund began with a variety of fund-raisers, some of which remain
dates to circle on the parish calendar. Before there was a hall with a
fully appointed kitchen, there was a turkey dinner, as families prepared
birds with all the trimmings in their own homes, and then transported the
food to the old church. 
“Dinners were served in the rear of the
church,” said Jimmy Winter, a parishioner since the early 1940s.
“We served 100 dinners each hour. As each diner finished, their china
and silverware were washed in the utility room, then put out for the next
diner.”
A carnival, complete with a Ferris wheel and pony
rides, was held on the church property. That festival carries considerable
resonance with one parish family.
“The parish has been so much a part of my life,
I can’t see myself ever leaving,” said Gerald J. Curran, a
long-time resident of Lauraville. “I live in the house I grew up in,
my parents moved there in 1942. My mother was the president of the
Sodality, and my father was vice chairman of fund-raising. When I was a
teenager, in the early 1950s, there were well attended CYO (Catholic Youth
Organization) nights, and I’ll never forget the Carnival.
That’s where I met my wife Jeannette, she was working one of the
stands. We celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary this year.”
The carnival and other fund-raising traditions fell
by the wayside as eras changed.
“Card parties were held every Friday,”
Petr reminisced. “Bridge, Pinochle, 500, Bingo and Poker were played.
Bridge, Pinochle and 500 were considered the elite games because people
thought that the upper crust of society played those. Poker and Bingo were
of lesser status. After the rectory was built, the Bingo group was shuttled
off to the rectory basement and the Poker group was pushed into the small
church kitchen. Altar boys had the ‘honor’ of being busboys and
markers for the card players . The parties netted between $250 and $450,
which was good money in the 1930s. Another money-maker was the rental of
front pews for the moneyed people of the parish. The church would be
packed, but the rental pews remained empty for many masses. After three
years of that nonsense, the parishioners rebelled and climbed over the
chains of the unoccupied pews.”
Father Edward J.A. Nestor succeeded Father Neligan as
pastor, and in 1944 he organized the Builders’ Guild. The all-male
organization was charged with raising funds, studying the feasibility of an
expansion and allocating the resources that would make it a reality, but it
would be another decade before the still one-floor “basement”
church would grow. Space was cramped and worshippers made do, as did the
choir. After he was discharged from the U.S. Army, Charles Devaud became an
adopted third son of the Petr family in 1947. He joined the parish and its
choir, and fifty-five years later, remains a member of both. A folk group
would come much later, as there was only one way to worship and sing praise
then – in Latin. When Latin was left behind in the 1960s, the change
caused unrest in older parishioners and led to the formation of a folk
group, but Devaud remembers a time when the “adult” choir was
just fortunate to gather.
“I remember Mae Moran being the choir’s
director when I joined in 1947,” Devaud said. “The only chance
we had to practice was before High Mass, and it was difficult because we
weren’t all that well prepared, and we had to sing all different
parts of the Mass in Latin. The organ in the old church was situated in
what would now be the school’s multi-purpose room. The altar was on
the wall closest to Harford Road, and there was a walkway behind
it.”
Henry and Marie Ercole, parishioners since 1950,
remember taking their infant son Albert to Mass and sitting near the rear,
“close to the back door, in case we had to leave early.” Space
was becoming more of an issue, as Devaud and other veterans of the armed
forces started families. There were decisions to be made. More than two
decades after its inception, original plans to add a larger church onto the
existing one were found to be obsolete when the needs of the parish’s
booming population were considered.
“Preliminary surveys and measurements revealed
that the plan for a superstructure atop the shrine was impractical,”
the 1977 history recounted. “The entrance steps would be so high and
steep as to be dangerous. Much more practical would it be to build a
completely new church and complete the existing building for use as a
school.