southerncross.diosav.org - Features

Georgia’s new Catholic college: a parent’s perspective

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:49:55 -0500

The new freshman class at SCC, includes three students from the Diocese of Savannah: Nathan Gillmore,
Helen Patterson, and Elijah Thigpen.
(John Seibel Photography.)

By Paul Thigpen

When General James Edward Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia in 1733, the new colonial charter included four prohibitions: There were to be no slaves, no rum, no lawyers—and no Catholics.

We’ve come a long way.
Today Catholics in our state are multiplying more rapidly than ever. And one happy indicator of the Church’s growth is that Georgia college students seeking a Catholic education no longer have to leave the state.

In the little town of Dawsonville, about an hour north of Atlanta, Georgia’s first residential Catholic college is entering its third year of operation. Southern Catholic College (known to its friends as SCC) is a co-educational liberal arts college with a challenging faith-based curriculum, a firm commitment to the Church, and a dynamic spiritual life.

The school’s ties to our diocese continue to strengthen. Dr. Frank Rossiter and Sister Lourdes Sheehan, both of Savannah, serve on its Board of Directors and Board of Fellows, respectively. And several students from our diocese are now enrolled there.

Eighty-three members of the new freshman class have brought the total enrollment to 191, from 20 states and abroad. That’s a remarkable number for a private college that’s still so young. But it doesn’t come as a surprise to those of us who are acquainted with the SCC community.

My son, Elijah, is one of those new freshmen. What our family witnessed during a recent orientation weekend left us thinking: When the word gets out about what’s happening here, Catholic students all across Georgia and beyond will be mobbing the admissions office to get in.

As we approached the campus, off a winding rural road, we were first struck by the natural beauty and serenity of its setting. Nestled in the hills with mountains on the horizon, the campus was once a golf resort. Former golf villas are now dorms, overlooking a peaceful lake beside an expansive green. The state’s tallest artificial waterfall feeds an impressive swimming pool, near the clubhouse now converted into a chapel. Deer, rabbits, an occasional wildcat, and other wildlife sometimes venture close.

Yet even more striking than the school’s physical beauty is its spiritual focus. Every administrator, faculty member, staff person and returning student we met during the orientation weekend—from the founder to the janitor—was enthusiastically, unabashedly Christ-centered.

Pope John Paul II once spoke of how the mind must seek truth by soaring on the wings of faith and reason. SCC’s “integrated core curriculum,” as they call it, invites students to do just that. Study in every academic discipline there is rooted in the principles of the intellectual life set forth by Church documents such as Fides et ratio and Ex corde ecclesiae.

At Southern Catholic, one speaker commented, “Christ is the unseen teacher in every classroom.” Assisting Him is an engaging, faith-filled faculty. They are also well-credentialed: All fulltime professors at SCC have a Ph.D., a claim that few colleges and universities, private or public, can make.
The chapel serves as the heart of an active sacramental life on the Southern Catholic campus. Father Brian Higgins is the newly appointed chaplain—the former vocations director for the Archdiocese of Atlanta and a spiritual dynamo with a heart to pastor students. Mass is celebrated daily and confessions are heard several times a week. Eucharistic Adoration, Rosaries, Stations of the Cross, spiritual retreats and Church feast days are frequent events on the campus calendar.

For me, the high point of the orientation weekend came with the New Student Investiture ceremony. After a public statement of their intent to glorify God in all their endeavors as students, the young people prayed together a blessing on their families, expressing their gratitude for their parents’ model of faith and love. In their turn, the families prayed together a blessing on the students before heading home without them.

It left me all choked up and misty-eyed.
As a former university professor, I’ve witnessed firsthand how many young adults fall away from the Church during their college years. It’s every Catholic parent’s worst nightmare: Go deeply in debt to provide your children with a decent education, only to find that the tens of thousands of dollars were spent to turn them into pagans.

If ever there was a school where Catholic families can be confident that the campus culture will support rather than undermine spiritual growth, this is it. In one of his homilies, Father Higgins summarized the situation well.
“How often do we hear someone say, ‘In college, I lost my faith.’ At Southern Catholic, we want to hear you say, ‘In college, I fell in love with Christ!’”

My son, I can rest assured, is in good hands.

Paul Thigpen, Ph.D., is editor of The Catholic Answer, a national bimonthly magazine, and director of The Stella Maris Center for Faith and Culture in Savannah.

For more information about Southern Catholic College, call the Admissions Office toll-free at 866-722-2003; e-mail admission@southerncatholic.org; or go online to www.southerncatholic.org.

Dorothea Elizabeth Orem made nursing theory “exciting, realistic and usable”

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:25:02 -0500

When Dr. Dorothea Orem, Savannah resident and Saint James parishioner, passed away on June 22, 2007, she was almost 93 and had lived in Savannah for over 20 years. Although Orem’s low-key obituary hinted at her outstanding contribution to the field of nursing, it required the responses of nurses throughout the country who signed her “Guest Book” in the Savannah Morning News to flesh out this hint.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1914, Dorothea Elizabeth Orem arrived on the scene when the image of nurses still lacked major definition. Outstanding in times of war, they were often relegated to a seemingly less vital role in peacetime. Orem’s chances of changing this situation seemed remote even though two of her aunts—both Daughters of Charity—were nurses; one, a pharmacist. From time to time, Orem took the rapid transit from Baltimore to Washington to visit one of the aunts who was stationed at Providence Hospital.
Orem attended high school in Baltimore. Following graduation, she debated whether to have a career in dietetics or in nursing. Nursing won out, and Orem entered nurse’s training at Providence Hospital where her aunt supervised the operating room. Orem’s experiences in nursing school were pivotal. It was while in training, she later explained, that she knew “nursing as nursing.” Citing two instances in particular, Orem first recalled the diligent care a head nurse had taken of a young seminarian who had contracted typhoid and suffered a hemorrhage. The other instance, she recalled, was when she witnessed another head nurse’s determined effort to relieve a woman’s discomfort after surgery.
In 1934, in possession of her nursing diploma, Orem became an operating room nurse, an experience she termed “a post-graduate course in operating room”. In a story written by Susan G. Taylor for the November 1998 issue of The International Orem Society Newsletter, Dorothea Orem is quoted as crediting her experiences in the operating room with enabling her “to see the whole picture” in terms of organization and administration in the nursing field.
Enhancing her career
Orem enhanced her nursing career with a BSN Ed. degree in 1939 from Catholic University of America and a MSN Ed. degree from the same university in 1945. While studying for her degrees, Orem worked as a private duty nurse and as a staff nurse in pediatrics and adult medical and surgical units. As evening supervisor in the emergency room, she was able to observe the manner in which doctors and nurses worked together under stressful conditions.
From 1940 until 1949, Dorothea Orem was director of the nursing school and the department of nursing at Providence Hospital in Detroit. Meanwhile, her older sister Monica had become a Medical Mission Sister. Monica would spend many years in India, working as business manager at a hospital in Kurji, and teaching science in its nursing school. (The Monica Orem Collection, now part of the Dorothea Orem Collection housed in the archives of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, honors Orem’s sister.)
Dr. Orem worked for the Division of Hospital and Institutional Services of the Indiana State Board of Health (1949-1957). Starting in 1958, she served with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, facilitating publication of “Guidelines for Developing Curricula for the Education of Practical Nurses” (1959). She returned to Catholic University in 1959 to become acting dean of the School of Nursing and assistant professor of nursing education.
Publication
Dorothea Orem’s concept of nursing and self-care continued to evolve, eventually resulting in publication of her book, Nursing: Concept of Practice (1971). This groundbreaking work was revised and republished in further editions in 1980, 1985, 1991, 1995 and 2001. Prominent in Orem’s work was her Self-Care Deficit Theory in which she cited patients’ need and desire to be independent and to provide for their daily activities. Orem theorized that, when patients were unable to do this because of circumstances, the nurse should recognize these “deficits to self-care,” make proper adjustments, and move the patient back toward self-care as much as possible. Orem submitted that self-care and the resulting independence meant happiness—and better health—for the patient.
Orem amassed honors and awards throughout her seventy years in nursing. In 1976, Georgetown University dubbed her an honorary Doctor of Science, as did Incarnate Word College of San Antonio, Texas, in 1980. She received Catholic University’s Alumni Association’s Award for Nursing Theory in 1980, Doctor of Humane Letters from Illinois Wesleyan University (1988), an honorary fellowship from the American Academy of Nursing (1992) and the Doctor of Nursing honoris causa from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1998). In the mid-1980s, she moved to Savannah, commencing a busy “retirement” of independent consulting, occasional lecturing and working on new editions of her book.
Impact
The impact of Dr. Orem’s thinking and teaching is discernable in scores of online responses that appeared in her Savannah Morning News “Guest Book” following her death. Stephanie Unger, Ph.D., RN (Mont Alto, Pennsylvania) wrote in one entry: “Dr. Orem was a major inspiration for me to advance my education to a doctorate in nursing after I was introduced to her theory in my MSN study. Orem’s Self-Care Deficit Nursing Theory provided theoretical framework for my master thesis in 1990.”
Another nursing professional, Carolyn Steadman of Long Beach California, wrote: “Orem’s theory was the backbone of my graduate nursing education and has been a guide for my practice ever since. Dorothea Orem helped us to carve out the piece of patient care that belongs exclusively to Nursing. She will be revered by professional nurses for all the decades to come.” Daniel McBride, a Savannahian who received his nursing degree in 1992 and now lives in Thomaston, recalled that Dr. Orem’s theory of moving the client toward self-care was the basis of his nursing program, adding: “Her name and her theory of nursing formed the first memories I have of my nursing education.”
Most revealing of these “Guest Book” responses may be that of Kathleen Jones, MSN, APRN, BC (Johnson City, Tennessee), who wrote: “I met Dr. Orem many years ago in Miami at a Nurse Theorist conference. She made nursing theory exciting, realistic and usable in practice. She will live on through her work.”

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

When the Red Cross called, Savannah’s Catholic women lined up for service

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 13:46:59 -0500

Elise Howkins is hard to miss in the group photo probably taken on the steps inside Saint Vincent Academy’s courtyard. Her bouffant hairdo alone would be enough to identify her even if she did not have some sort of insignia and a tassel of rank on her dress. She was, after all, the leader of the ladies in the picture—all but one of them dressed in immaculate white from head to toe, a red cross faintly marking the veils they wore.

Anyone wishing to check the length of hemlines of women’s clothes of the 1917-1918 era could instantly observe that they were just above the ankle, not far from the tops of the incredibly white shoes (with one notable exception). Not as obvious was the reason the women in the picture were dressed as they were. The group, the Catholic Woman’s Club of Savannah, had come a long way under the leadership of the charismatic Howkins, former Grand Regent of Savannah Court No.10 of the Daughters of Isabella.

In 1916, having kissed the Daughters of Isabella goodbye because they allowed for no local say-so, this new group of Catholic women was organized with Howkins’ help and with Bishop Benjamin J. Keiley’s blessing. In a letter to Mrs. Howkins dated April 30, 1916, Bishop Keiley sanctioned the wisdom of breaking with the Daughters of Isabella and forming a new group, tactfully adding: “I am confident that your new society, by whatever name you may call it, will be of great practical good to the Catholic women of Savannah and will help every good cause in the city.”

Nominated chairman, Elise Howkins led a special meeting called to accept the constitution and by-laws of the new club and to elect officers. At this gathering of over a hundred women, Chairman Howkins presided, as local papers noted, “with her usual charm and grace.” She expressed her pleasure that the Catholic Woman’s Club was being formally organized on May 19, her birthday. To no one’s surprise, in the informal election which followed, Mrs. John Howkins was unanimously chosen to be president of the group.
The constitution and by-laws of the Catholic Woman’s Club of Savannah were elaborated on at length in a pamphlet produced at its founding. The club’s motto, “For God—for the true, the beautiful and the good of human existence,” reflected the goals of women who did not yet have the franchise, but were determined to have their say. Bishop Keiley was designated honorary president of the club. Club colors were to be blue and white.

Meetings were scheduled to take place on the second Tuesday of each month in rooms on the Jones Street side of the Knights of Columbus Building, then located on Jones and Bull Streets.

Flawless timing
As it turned out, the timing of the group’s founding was flawless. By 1917, the scope of World War I had broadened to include the United States among the Allies fighting Germany. With its members clamoring to be involved, the Catholic Woman’s Club soon added the wartime effort to its agenda. Members of the group attended Red Cross classes where they learned how to make surgical dressings, how to knit woolen garments needed for the troops, and how to construct “comfort kits” for those in the service.

The Savannah Morning News of July 15, 1917, noted women’s involvement in the war, observing: “Women whose time is occupied by day are not to be classed as shirkers in the splendid work, and besides the evening class at the suffrage headquarters, the rooms of the Catholic Woman’s Club are to be opened every Wednesday evening for the benefit of those who cannot give their services during the day. Members of this club will wear the apron and veil, and the supplies will be donated by the members, the club having appropriated $50 for this purpose.” The allusion to the “apron and veil” is apropos, because the Red Cross veil and apron is probably what each Catholic Woman’s Club member is wearing in the photo taken at Saint Vincent’s.

The Catholic Woman’s Club rooms were already open every afternoon for wartime work, with friends of members invited to join them there. About 20 women soon signed up for evening sessions. Though some of these workers had not yet taken the Red Cross class, they were to take it shortly. Meanwhile, a member who had passed the training class guided them in making, as the Savannah Morning News article related, “only the simpler dressings.”

Once the First World War was over and women were granted the vote via the 19th Amendment, Howkins remained prominent in the affairs of the Catholic Woman’s Club of Savannah. Though affiliated with the National Council of Catholic Women from its inception, the local organization was looking toward a state Catholic Women’s group. In a piece written for the July 1921 issue of The Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association, Howkins expressed her approval of this move.

Firm believer in organization
Vowing that she was “a firm believer in organization,” Howkins observed, “The power of the ballot is ours, woman’s influence is always for the highest and the best, her intuition dependable, in fact she makes a splendid citizen, and I do not see how men ever accomplished half they did for good in this world without her side by side to help, guide and counsel.” Howkins declared that women’s clubs through federation were already doing excellent work for education, child welfare, public health and reform legislation. “What is expected and what they can do,” Elise Howkins wrote, sounding for all the world like the confident person she was, “is unlimited.”

So, the ladies of the Catholic Woman’s Club of Savannah moved off the steps at Saint Vincent’s, and on to other needs of society. The Southern Cross recently noted some latter day “descendants” of the movement the Savannah women were allied to back in 1917. News of the Diocesan Council of Catholic Women featured in this year’s June 7 issue included an account of the 67th Annual convention of the DCCW held in Richmond Hill and hosted by the Savannah Deanery. Prominent in the same issue of the paper was a photo of the installation of new officers of the Elizabeth Ann Seton Council, Albany Deanery, at Cairo.

On a countrywide level, the Web site of the National Council of Catholic Women currently notes that the group’s founding on March 4, 1920, was in response to the call of the Catholic bishops of the United States. An “umbrella group,” the NCCW seeks to aid women in fulfilling their roles in the Church. It also seeks to empower Catholic women by giving them “a common voice and an instrument for united action affecting Church or national welfare.”

Elise Heyward Howkins would approve.

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

Stewardship Conference encounters competition

Thu, 10 May 2007 12:18:25 -0500

Right: Roxie Bryant of Our Lady of Lourdes, Port Wentworth (right), talks with Sister Kieran Williams, ihm (left) of Holy Trinity Parish, Williamston,
North Carolina, who spoke about “Stewardship in the Small Parish,”
as Linda Davis looks on.

The team of Stewardship and Development directors from Atlanta, Charleston, Charlotte, Raleigh and Savannah spent months planning their annual Stewardship Conference held in Charleston on April 28.

On the eve of the event they arrive at the Convention Center in North Charleston to take care of the last-minute details: set up projectors, check the seating, put up directional signs, make airport runs to pick up speakers, etc. Meanwhile, a large contingent of “body builders” is arriving for their convention which is being held concurrently with the Stewardship Conference. “Oh no,” say the Stewardship leaders. “What is God doing to us? Is this a test? Will pecs win out over prayer? Will stewardship succumb to sinew? Will muscle master ministry?”

The answer, happily, is “No.” No one “defected.” All 320 registrants dutifully filed into the Convention Center Auditorium on Saturday morning for the opening prayer service. As body muscles flexed in one part of the building, vocal cords flexed in another…singing, ironically, “We are All One Body.” God, indeed, has a sense of humor.

As the prayer ended, Bishop Robert Baker of Charleston spoke briefly on the progress being made by the Bishop’s Committee on Stewardship which he chairs. The future focus of the committee will be to integrate stewardship and catechesis, particularly for high school students.

Following Bishop Baker’s remarks, the keynote speaker, Charles Zech, author, speaker and professor at Villanova University in Philadelphia began his presentation with a True or False quiz.
Statements such as the following drew various responses from the audience; sometimes correct and sometimes not:

1) Catholics contribute to their parish at about the same rate as Protestants.

2) Catholics who disagree with official Church teachings on various matters give less than those who agree with the Church.

3) Parishioners who are members of large parishes contribute less to their parish. (For the answers, see below.)

Years of research into “Why Catholics Don’t Give…and What Can be Done about it” has prompted Zech to conclude that the first and foremost thing we should be about as good stewards is building community.

A breakout session on “Hospitality in a Smaller Parish” was presented by Joe and Monica Bahm from Saint Boniface Parish in Springfield. Joe and Monica gave numerous examples of the importance of hospitality. They said they may not have become members of their current parish had not one special person seen them as “new,” welcomed them, introduced them to other parishioners and had them sign a registration form before they left the church that Sunday morning.

Dolly and Joe Esposito from Sacred Heart Parish in Warner Robins attended the conference for the first time. Dolly said, in an e-mail to Pat Signs, director of stewardship for the Savannah Diocese and one of the planners of the conference, “Joe and I thought the conference was great! We saw stewardship in a totally new way. Both of us being on the financial side, saw stewardship mainly as giving of money although we always knew it is important to share more than money… we just never saw it as ‘stewardship’. We were truly blessed by this experience. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. We hope to go again next year. We will also share this experience and hope to get more involved in the stewardship ministry.”

Over 50 participants from the Diocese of Savannah attended the conference and a number of those said how much they appreciated the opportunity to talk with people form other dioceses about stewardship in their parishes. Signs sees this opportunity to share and network as priceless. She said there is a “fair amount” of work involved in putting such an event together, but that it is well worth the effort when she sees how it invigorates those who attend such meetings. Next year’s conference will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina. The date will be announced when it is finalized. The Planning Committee will also inquire as to what other conferences may be occurring at the same time. Knowing the “competition” is important!

Note: The answers to the three True-False questions are: 1) False; 2) False; 3) It depends! See more in the book by Charles Zech mentioned above.

Wildfire rages in south Georgia

Thu, 03 May 2007 11:58:22 -0500

Above: Smoke billows from the wildfire in Ware County.

Photo by Daniel Morris.

Waycross, GA April 30 - The largest wildfire in Georgia’s history is raging in Ware County (Waycross) and has affected Charlton and other counties.
The fire began on April 16 when a tree fell across live power lines. Some 830 firefighters from around Georgia and neighboring states battled the fire, which has consumed 82,000 acres (125 square miles) of heavily forested land.

Although no one has been killed in the inferno, officials stated that 22 homes have been destroyed, leaving their occupants homeless.

The Loaves and Fishes ministry of Saint Joseph Parish in Waycross directed its resources to the residents who have been displaced by the wildfires in Ware County and to delivering toiletries such as soap, wash clothes, eye drops, shampoo, towels, toothbrushes and toothpaste, to the firefighters battling the blaze. Loaves and Fishes is also anticipating the need that will come after people are able to return to their homes, staying well stocked with a wide variety of supplies to help assist the community when families begin to rebuild.

The Diocese of Savannah has contributed $1,500 to assist with the disaster relief. To make a contribution to assist those affected by the fires, contact Jennifer Bunger, adminstrative assistant to Sr. Jackie Griffith, Director of Catholic Social Services at 912-201-4068 or jrbunger@diosav.org.

A 19th century priest exhorts, advises and informs his people: The lost notebook of Father James Kirsch

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:59:41 -0500

The announcement book was long forgotten until Monsignor William O’Neill, then pastor of Holy Family Church, Columbus, found its pages scattered on the floor of the furnace room in the basement of the rectory. Humble as they were, the loose pages held the aspirations and exhortations of a German expatriate priest, Father James Kirsch. As it turned out, Father Kirsch proved to be almost as overlooked as his notebook.

Father Kirsch first appears on diocesan priest rolls in1878, serving at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Savannah. His route from Savannah to Columbus included service in the Milledgeville area before his official arrival on December 24, 1878, at what was then the Church of Saint Philip and James.

While stationed at this church, later named for the Holy Family, Father Kirsch started to write a weekly record of the spiritual and temporal affairs of his parish to be read at Sunday Mass.

Although the priest’s handwriting is neat, it is sometimes small and hard to read. What he wrote about, however, is well worth the risk of eye strain. A strict and conscientious cleric, typical of the time period during which he worked, Father Kirsch was never one to mince words. His account begins on Palm Sunday 1882 and continues through 1883. A few later entries in the notebook in the 1890s do not appear to have been written by him.
Sunday reflections

His Dom. Palmarum (Palm Sunday) notation begins with a description of “the reception the Jews gave to our Savior a few days previous to His death when they cut off boughs from the trees and strewed them on the streets and laid their garments where he was to walk.” The pastor explains the significance of Holy Week to his congregation, and commences what will become the leit motif of succeeding entries: the importance of fulfilling one’s Easter duties, i.e., reception of the sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist during the Easter time. He announces generous hours for hearing confessions and cautions his parishioners: “I hope there will not be a rush on Saturday.”

On Dom. II Post Dom. Resurrectionis (Second Sunday after Easter), Father Kirsch announces that “the Rt. Rev. Bishop will be present on May 7th, two weeks from today, when the children will make their first Holy Communion and will be confirmed.” The following Sunday, Father Kirsch is unable to say Mass because he is unwell, though the announcement is made that “the children will have their instruction and vespers will be chanted as usually.” Sick or not, Kirsch makes it known that three pews on the middle aisle of the church on both sides must be left free for the First Communicants on the following Sunday.

Father Kirsch’s further announcements concern the upcoming First Communion of the children, the collection to be taken up for the pope, and the monthly “door collection” on the following Sunday. He reminds parishioners that pew rent is due and deplores well-to-do members of the congregation who do not rent pews, “but crowd into other people’s pews.” The pastor’s feeling for such people is “that of contempt.” He adds, that “If they are not generous enough to pay their share toward the expenses of the church, they should be contented with the few last pews which are unrented and should not disturb other people in their enjoyment of their rights for which they pay.”

Lacking a printed bulletin, Father Kirsch reads weekly announcements of banns of marriage, Masses to be said for deceased parishioners, and meeting times of parish organizations. He urges church members to be sure to send their children to Catholic school when it starts on September 11 and says they will find the school much improved. Both late enrollment and daily tardiness are things he promises to hold parents accountable for.
Father Kirsch tells parishioners on Don. XXI p. P. (twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost) that “for the sake of good order in the church I desire that all parents keep their children with them in their pew. I mean more big children than little children. Children, especially grown ones, are rarely as good as parents think. The parents of those whose conduct in and around church I reprimanded last Sunday would hardly believe me, if I would tell them, that I mention their children.”

Other matters taken up in subsequent entries in Father Kirsch’s notebook include the rules of fast and abstinence on the Fridays of Advent, his plan to obtain new carpet for the sacristy—and how much the carpet will cost. He announces that he will shortly send someone around for a contribution for the carpet, a “Christmas gift which we make for God and His holy house.”

Financial challenges
This pastor’s continual mention of pew rent throughout the journal is not surprising; he needed income from rentals to keep the parish going. In 1883, when Sunday collections amounted to $333.30, pew rent totaled $1,253.70. After paying out $1,561.15 for expenses of the church, Father Kirsch was left with $25.85 on hand. Keeping everything up, whether it was his congregation’s spiritual life or his church’s interior, constituted a challenge.
Father Kirsch was pastor of Holy Family Church when it was completed in 1880 and kept a notable account of its construction in another extant record. In this journal, he describes the worries and triumphs involved in building the new church: subscriptions that did not always pan out, people who were not satisfied with the proposed location of the church; uptown people who called the proposed location “a mud hole”; downtown parishioners who said “if we could not go further we should remain where we were.” Yet preparations for the new church continued as contracts were made for land and the services of architect Daniel Matthew Foley.

When trustees for the old church properties were elected, there was, observed Father Kirsch, “hard fussing in the church.” Nevertheless, the pastor laid the first brick of the church on December 15,1879. After that, work stopped when the 4,000 bricks needed for its foundation could not be obtained. More trouble ensued as “discontented parties took revenge by refusing to pay their subscriptions, and by giving up their pews in order to starve out the pastor.” Father Kirsch warned those who followed him that they, too, would face such problems and see “how a priest is treated by his ‘friends’ as soon as he undertakes a work which crosses their own plans and financial interests.”

After dedication of Holy Family Church on May 12,1880, Father Kirsch continued as pastor until1884 when he was “promoted” to the pastorate of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Atlanta. In 1886, he was summoned back to his parent diocese of Treves (Trier) in Germany, a fact missing from his dossier. Besides architect Foley’s stellar Church of the Holy Family in Columbus, Kirsch should be remembered for his rediscovered journal and his other accounts, all written in impeccable English.

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

Diocesan stage of Georgia Martyrs cause completed

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:41:34 -0500

A simple ceremony at the Catholic Pastoral Center in Savannah on March 16 marked a significant step in the process that may lead to the beatification of the five Franciscan friars who bore witness to their Christian faith with their blood on the Georgia coast in September 1597.

Bishop J. Kevin Boland officially closed the Diocesan Process, ordering the sealing of the records for preservation in the archives, and the transmission of notarized and authenticated copies to the Congregation of the Causes of Saints in Rome.
The five friars, Pedro de Corpa, Blas Rodríguez, Antonio de Badajoz, Miguel de Añon, and Francisco de Veráscola, all Spanish missionaries among the Guale nation, died because they would not sanction bigamous marriages among baptized Christians. The final decision concerning the genuineness of their martyrdom and beatification is reserved to Pope Benedict XVI.

In the March 16 ceremony, Bishop Boland officially closed the diocesan investigation of the circumstances of their death and the reputation for martyrdom which has endured for 510 years. Although continually mentioned in lists of martyrs and in histories, the movement asking the Holy See to proclaim them blessed and eventually saints began only in the last century.
In 1936 the Franciscans in the United States urged such recognition for a large group of missionary martyrs from the period of discovery and exploration. The Franciscans have appointed Vice Postulators for the Georgia Martyrs since 1950. Pope John Paul II established new norms governing causes of canonization in 1983, and accordingly, the cause of the Georgia Martyrs was officially opened in the Savannah Diocese on February 22, 1984 by Bishop Raymond W. Lessard.

Years of historical research and canonical investigation preceded the decision of the diocese to forward the cause to Rome. An historical commission headed by Father Francisco Morales, ofm, of Mexico City, and Georgia historians Edward J.Cashin and F. Lamar Pearson, completed its investigations in 2002. Monsignor Francis J. Nelson, vg, as Episcopal Delegate and Father Jeremiah J. McCarthy, jcl, as Promoter of Justice supervised the canonical aspects of the process. Contemporary witnesses concerning the endurance of the reputation for martyrdom gave testimony in the Savannah Diocese, as well as in the Dioceses of Saint Augustine and Steubenville, Ohio, where there has been considerable interest in the cause.

For Father Conrad Harkins, ofm, the most recent Vice Postulator, Friday’s closing session marked the end of many years of involvement in the cause. He had first become involved in 1985 while working as a volunteer on the archeological project of David Hurst Thomas of the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Thomas uncovered the mission on Saint Catherines Island where Antonio de Badajoz and Miguel de Añon died. For the past eleven years Father Harkins has represented the Franciscans’ interest in the cause.

Georgia playwright Anne Nichols wrote in “the spirit of tolerance”

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:31:45 -0600

When Anne Nichols was born on November 26, 1891, in Dales Mill—a Wayne County town in southeast Georgia—what were the odds on her becoming a successful playwright? Again, having been born into a strict Baptist family, what were the odds on her conversion to Catholicism?

Nichols was evidently born to defy odds. At 16, she left obscure Dales Mill for Philadelphia to try acting and writing for the theater. Her first role was as a member of the chorus of a Biblical play, The Shepherd King. She went on from there to write vaudeville skits and to appear in early films, such as The Immortal Alamo (1911) and In the Hot Lands (1911). In 1915, Nichols married producer-actor Henry Duffy, an Irish Catholic. It was while married to Duffy that Anne Nichols wrote the three-act play, Abie’s Irish Rose, which constitutes her claim to fame. Produced by Oliver Morosco in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the play proved popular, a fact which encouraged Nichols in her desire to take it to Broadway.
When Morosco would not agree to producing Abie’s Irish Rose in New York, reasoning that Broadway audiences were too sophisticated for its thin plot and sentimental theme, Nichols took it there herself. Selling her home and taking out a loan, she took Abie’s Irish Rose to New York, producing it at a time when women had only recently received the vote. Though humorist and sophisticate Robert Benchley and other New York “high brows” panned it, the play was a phenomenal success, breaking Broadway records with its long run, 2,427 performances: from May 23, 1922 until October 1, 1927.
In 1928, the June 9 issue of The Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association featured a news article from New York headed “Abie’s Irish Rose Author, Georgian, Becomes Catholic.” Anne Nichols, the story related “made her first Holy Communion, April 15, at the Madison Avenue Convent of the Sacred Heart here (NY). Her young son already had joined the Church some months before.” At the time when the story of her conversion appeared in the Bulletin, Nichols and her husband, Henry Duffy, had been divorced four years and he had remarried shortly afterward.
The 1928 Bulletin article went on to outline the plot of Anne Nichols’ play, noting that “the play involves a religious theme—a romance between an Irish Catholic girl and a Jewish youth. Two of its main characters are a priest and a rabbi.” Simplistic as it may have seemed to New York critics, the play had hidden merits. When asked about the success of Abie’s Irish Rose, Nichols said she had “written from the heart” and that she thought the play was so popular because of its “spirit of tolerance.” Her answer made sense in a 1920s setting. At the time when its cast members were taking curtain calls every night, the play’s light, easily-accessed theme seems to have provided a needed antidote for volatile issues like prohibition, evolution, and ethnicity then plaguing the country.
By the time Anne Nichols’ play was breaking records, the Ku Klux Klan, already a force in Georgia, had crested the five million mark in its national membership. Americans had begun focusing on multiculturalism and the country’s first immigration laws were enacted. Nichols’ play depicting two successful families: one staunchly Jewish; the other, staunchly Irish-Catholic, arrived on Broadway when the need for societal changes was becoming more obvious. In his book, In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture, author Ted Merwin, professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life at Dickinson College, defines the 1920s as a pivotal period for Jews. Specifically citing Abie’s Irish Rose, Merwin observed: “Jewish theater in particular was so popular that a Broadway comedy about a Jewish family, Anne Nichols’s Abie’s Irish Rose, was not just the longest-running play of the decade, but one of the most successful Broadway plays of all time.”
Though Nichols wrote other plays as well as scripts for movie and radio versions of Abie‘s Irish Rose, she was never as successful again and was unable to recoup financially following the New York Stock Market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. Known to be “a soft touch” when she was making a fortune, Nichols donated generously to causes such as the Actors’ Fund of America as well as to personal charities in which she was interested. (In 1927 she settled an endowment on destitute, eighty-eight-year-old Edward Payson Welles, considered the champion marathon walker of all times.)
On September 15, 1966, Anne Nichols suffered a heart attack and died in a New Jersey nursing home at the age of 75, one Internet source intimating that her stay at the nursing home had been underwritten by the same Actors’ Fund she had earlier contributed to.
A Requiem Mass was said for Nichols at Saint Malachy’s Catholic Church in New York and she was buried, like her son Henry who had died many years earlier, at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
Nichols’s greatest satisfaction may have come from the knowledge that so many people saw and loved her play and recognized its premise that, despite their differences, those of different faiths and nationalities should try to get along. Though disdained by many critics and meant for a different era, the play’s message of tolerance still holds true. “Sure, we’re all trying to get to the same place,” said Father Whalen, one of the characters in Abie’s Irish Rose. By dramatizing this insight, Georgia playwright Anne Nichols made a unique contribution to the arts and to humanity—against the odds.

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

Founded on faith: Holy Family Mission, Willacoochee

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 12:29:58 -0600

Anyone who looked closely at the grainy photograph of Barney and Elizabeth Nugent that appeared in a 1974 edition of The Douglas Enterprise would have noticed a significant item in Bernard (Barney) Nugent’s hand: a crucifix. The man holding the crucifix was later described by Father James Carroll, sm, a priest who visited the Willacoochee Catholic church in which Nugent worshiped, as “a man of strong character, even temper, strong faith, and full to the brim with common sense,” Barney Nugent evidently possessed all these fine traits and more.

An Irishman who arrived in Clinch County in the early 1850s and worked hard until he had enough money to marry Elizabeth Daughtrey of Tennessee in 1862, Nugent was to become patriarch of a large family which still boasts Catholic descendants in southwest Georgia’s Atkinson County. Though outnumbered by those of other religions in the mission territory where he lived, Nugent never quit his Catholic faith. Far from it, he conscientiously did everything he could to foster it. Reminiscing in retirement, Father Carroll recalled that Barney Nugent was willing to take the visiting priest by horse and buggy to any mission. If a mission was lacking in funds, he was willing to contribute to its support.

Faith of early settlers
It was the faith of early settlers like Barney Nugent that formed the bedrock of the Catholic Church in Willacoochee and surrounding areas. Recently, while in Willacoochee attending a family reunion, Paul Nugent—a descendant of Barney Nugent—spoke with Bishop J. Kevin Boland about his Nugent ancestors. Walking through the cemetery adjacent to Holy Family Church, Nugent pointed out tombstones of his great-grandfather and great-grandmother, Barney and Elizabeth Nugent. Buried originally on family land, the Nugents were later interred in the church cemetery when Holy Family Church was relocated at McGovern’s Settlement.

“The name is spelled differently on the tombstones (Neugent) from the way I spell my name,” Paul Nugent said, “because that’s the way the branch of the family responsible for putting up the stones spelled theirs.” Seeking church records of earlier Nugents, Nugent later sent Bishop Boland a copy of the 1974 Douglas Enterprise story about his ancestor, Barney.

Several sources identify early Irish Catholics in the region as railroad workers recruited in New York who stayed on after construction engineer Abbott Brisbane’s plan to extend the railroad failed. A story in the Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia (June 23, 1934) refers to the Nugent family as one of those which received land as payment from Brisbane. Conversely, the Douglas Enterprise newspaper story, relying on Nugent family sources, states that Irish-Catholic Barney Nugent, ancestor of the Nugents in the area, did not come to the south to work on the Brisbane Railroad. This makes sense since the railroad went off the tracks financially in 1844, probably before Barney Nugent’s arrival in the U.S.

Early priests
As early as the1880s, Father Charles Prendergast, pastor at Albany, was visiting the mission church at Willacoochee. Following Father Prendergast on the mission trail were Marist priests at Brunswick, including Father James Carroll. Father William A. Meriwether, sj, also served the area for a time. It was in 1913 that the early Holy Family Church at Willacoochee was dismantled and moved to McGovern’s Settlement. Under Bishop Keiley, the missions at Willacoochee and Alapaha were returned to the Albany parish. Later, both missions were formed into one parish with Father Joseph R. Smith of Albany as pastor.
Mc’s and O’s

About 1929, Father Smith wrote a letter of appeal concerning the Willacoochee mission. In this letter the priest observed that “all of these Mc’s and O’s (meaning many of his parishioners) are very poor farmers owing to repeated crop failures since 1919. These people are generous at heart but very, very poor. The entire amount contributed last year was $187.45. This modest amount represents many real sacrifices.” Father Smith added that in 1926 a Catholic school had opened at the Willacoochee Mission and that the children in the school were “otherwise bereft of school advantages.” Eventually, insufficient funding forced the closing of the school.

Yet, once the economic downturn of the 1920s waned, brighter days were ahead for Willacoochee Catholics. When Saint Paul’s Church was established in Douglas, the Willacoochee mission was placed under the care of the Oblate Fathers of Mary Immaculate who continued to care for Douglas and its missions until 1991. Holy Family Church, Willacoochee, remains a mission of Douglas with Father Daniel O’Connell, pastor of Saint Paul Church, Douglas, as its pastor.

“Immigrant boom town”
Described in a recent article in the New York Times as “this immigrant boomtown in Atkinson County, about 45 miles north of the Florida border,” Willacoochee has witnessed strong demographic changes in recent times. When Barney Nugent married Elizabeth Daughtrey in1862 and established his family, he was setting down roots not in today’s “boom town”, but in what he considered a land of promise. There, he and Elizabeth raised six children, three girls and three boys. Their children were baptized in the Catholic faith. As early as 1879, Nugent’s name and those of his wife and children appear on the Brunswick Parish Record. Though his faith never faltered, Barney Nugent realized that the presence of the persevering priests who came to say Mass in the humble Willacoochee church was vital.

In 1915, a year before Barney Nugent’s death, the Douglas Enterprise carried this article in its “Uncle Jim’s Notebook” column: “Barney Nugent, Sr., was 84 years old last Tuesday week, May 5. He was in Coffee (later Atkinson) County when I came here 38 years ago. He has a fine farm and home near Willacoochee.” A man of principle and strong religious convictions, Nugent enriched his adopted home and helped provide a Catholic presence at a time and in a place where it was needed. The crucifix he held in the early photograph of him and his wife was patently not just “for show.”

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

Dying teen raises over $65,000 for hospital

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:01:01 -0500

Andrew Joseph "AJ" Donohue

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By Marisol Soler
Brunswick
Andrew Joseph Donohue, better known as AJDonohue912 on his CarePages site, died in Brunswick on September 23. He was 18 years old. He was best known for his magnetic smile, love for life, generous spirit, and a strong faith in his Creator.
AJ was the son of Terrilyn and Bill Donohue. His mother is Children’s Religious Education Coordinator for Saint Francis Xavier Church, and his father is Jekyll Island Executive Director. AJ was an active member of the Teen Band and Catholic Youth Ministry, and assisted in teaching parish Religious Education classes. He loved music, theater, and golf.
AJ had started his journey over two years ago when he was diagnosed with bone cancer. He had undergone various treatments at the Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. His condition seemed hopeful until June of this year, when he began complaining of pain in his lungs. He and his mother had gone down to the hospital to see his doctor, who gave him a choice: to do more invasive treatments that had no guarantee of success or to let the cancer run its course. A.J. made his choice.
His mother told the Southern Cross that AJ’s open spirit touched many lives. For example, on a simple trip to Wal-Mart to pick up supplies for a Fourth of July party, AJ took the opportunity to share his faith. While moving through the aisles AJ dropped a few of the supplies and a stranger bent over to help him pick them up. The casual conversation led to the stranger’s accepting AJ’s invitation to the party. Sharing in the food and fellowship at the party led to the stranger’s participation in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults after deciding to convert to Catholicism.
But this story is not about his suffering or the failure of the treatments to accomplish wonders. It is about the spirit of AJDonohue9l2 that just refused to give up the fight. He refused to be beaten by the cancer that was slowly ravaging his youthful body. He was not ready to lie around and wait for death to come knocking at his door. He intended to live his life to the fullest in the short time given to him. Part of his plan was to pay back Wolfson Children’s Hospital. He was so appreciative of the staff and the hospital that had nurtured him during the time when he was most in need. In his gratitude, he decided to raise $50,000 for the hospital’s cancer floor.
He began with the idea of selling stickers with a picture of a vintage plane and a rider dressed in vintage clothing with AJD912 printed on it. AJ had taken flying lessons and had actually flown such a vintage plane. At two dollars apiece, it seemed as if it would take forever to reach the goal. Nevertheless, he rallied all his friends, family, and friends of friends, acquaintances and people he never even met to help him reach his goal. When word got around town that AJ was trying to raise $50,000 for the Wolfson Children’s Hospital, the sticker sales took off. Slowly but surely the stickers were being requested and distributed not only locally but also nationally and internationally as well. The challenge to have an AJD912 sticker in every state escalated to having one in as many countries as they could get one to. Others just donated towards the fund without asking for anything in return.
AJ was always thinking of ways to meet the goal faster. Thus, T-shirt sales began. AJ’s postings on the Carepages kept everyone abreast with his day-to-day condition. He offered his aches, pains and the deterioration of his condition to God. He had a clear understanding that he was going to meet his Creator very soon. During his last three months under hospice care, there was never a time that he had just given up the fight. He did everything he wanted to do. He made a trip to the Atlanta Aquarium with his family at a time when his condition was already fragile. He would join his family for dinner at the table to be able to join in on the fun and conversation. Family members would come at intervals to help with the day-to-day chores and upkeep of the house. Friends would come to visit and bring meals to the family. For all this support, AJ was very grateful. First always on his mind was the goal of raising money for the Wolfson Children’s Hospital.
Through the message board of Carepages, people from different parts of the state and of the country were drawn together in support of a courageous boy whose main thought in his dying days was just being able to fulfill his goal. Towards the end of his days, medications to keep him comfortable and pain free were given at shorter intervals. Through his parent’s updates on the Carepages, TEAM AJ members found out how he was doing. Messages of encouragement and prayers on the message board of Carepages were a testimony to the many young lives that were touched by AJ’s selflessness.
The funds for the Children’s Hospital grew and grew. A local bank on Jekyll Island managed it. The last biggest event put together by TEAM AJ was a bowling day sponsored by one of the local bowling alleys, Strike Zone. On the evening of September 22, AJ learned that they had finally reached his goal of raising $50,000 for the Wolfson Children’s Hospital. This was what he was waiting for. His desire not to give up on life until his goal would be met was what sustained him all those days since June. AJ found his strength in his belief that he would soon meet his Creator.
Andrew Joseph Donohue was a very admirable young man. His firm and unwavering faith was also the source of strength and hope for those suffering a debilitating illness like his. For someone so young he had a deep and clear understanding of life and death and life after death, something that even grown-ups have a difficult time comprehending.
His death on September 23 brought mixed reactions from those who knew him: a sigh of relief that he was no longer suffering, mixed with many tears, for he would surely be missed. His death also united a community that rallied him on during his fundraiser.
The Brunswick community celebrated AJ’s life with a Funeral Mass at Saint Francis Xavier Church on September 27, with his uncle, Father Pat Donohue, and Father Cletus Pifher, parochial vicar, concelebrating. The Mass was attended by more than 750 people. The church can accommodate only 500. The overflow crowd was accommodated in the Parish Hall where the ceremony from the church was projected by a closed circuit camera. AJ had managed to bring together Christians and non-Christians, Catholics and non-Catholics to work towards a common goal, the Wolfson Children’s Hospital.
AJ is survived by his parents, his brothers Luke and Will, his sister Grace and two international siblings, Martin and Lucy Obiajulu from Nigeria—exchange students who were hosted by AJ’s family through the Rotary Club.
The fund that AJ started with a goal of $50,000 has now surpassed $65,000. Contributions may be sent to Amerisbank, 18B Beachview Ave., Jekyll Island, GA 31527.

Marisol Soler is Family and Youth Coordinator of Saint Francis Xavier Parish, Brunswick.

“It’s true! They don’t have legs!”

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:59:58 -0500

Some reminiscences of IHM Sisters’ Fifty Years at Saint James School

Three generations of a family is a long time. That’s how long Marilyn Coleman Kelly has been associated with Saint James Catholic School on Montgomery Crossroads. Kelly’s devotion to the school probably peaked when she and her husband, Larry, were living in Atlanta and had two small children. “I told my husband we just had to move back to Savannah so our children could attend Saint James School when they got old enough,” Marilyn Kelly says.

Kelly herself got into Saint James “on the ground floor,” starting there when the school just had four grades. The school year began that year in the chapel as students and teachers awaited the school’s completion. Marilyn Kelly was a member of the first First Communion class at Saint James School. “I can’t remember my teacher’s name that year,” she says, “though I do recall that Sister Gratia taught fourth grade at the time.”

Besides recalling the May Processions and Fall and Spring Festivals that highlighted her early years at Saint James, Kelly passes along a family anecdote concerning her sister, Maureen, who was several years behind her in school. “When Maureen was in the first grade, she went running down the hall of the school and ran right into Sister Mary Jacinta, who taught first grade. When she got home that day, Maureen told my mother: “It’s true. They (the sisters) don’t have legs!”

“They knew how to keep unruly kids in line”
Ethereal as the sisters may have seemed, garbed in the habits they wore at that time, they were quite realistic in their expectations for their students which included learning a lot and behaving properly. “They knew how to keep unruly kids in line,” Kelly says. “They didn’t let them get away with anything.”

Marilyn and Larry Kelly were married in what has since become the school cafeteria as Saint James has continued to grow over the years. All three Kelly offspring attended Saint James and two grandchildren are now among its students. “We got a good education there and so did our children,” Kelly comments. “One of our daughters (Jennifer Kelly Duclos) teaches math at Benedictine. Another one, Rebecca Kelly Yi, is an executive at Walt Disney World.” The Kellys’ son, Patrick, is enrolled at Armstrong but still keeps up his allegiance to Saint James as he assists his father who has coached at the Savannah school for over 25 years.

This year marks another type of anniversary—the 50th—for Saint James School.

Beginnings

Preliminary to its founding were preparations in Savannah and in Pennsylvania. In July of 1956, Mother Maria Alma, IHM, was writing Auxiliary Bishop of the Savannah-Atlanta Diocese, Francis E. Hyland, seeking approval for two members of the Council of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to visit Saint James Parish during the first week of August. Mother General Maria Alma wrote that the schedule of assignments for the coming school year was being drawn up and that “these assignments, God willing,” would become effective on August 6. “May we ask your Episcopal blessing on this new venture and on all the works of our congregation,” Mother Maria Alma went on. “We are confident that the prayers and good wishes of Your Excellency will obtain the graces necessary for success.”

On August 14, 1956, Bishop Hyland wrote to Father Terence Kernan, osb, regarding the establishment of the new parish of Saint James the Less at Montgomery Crossroads and described progress in the building of Saint James’s school. “An eight-room school and a convent to house ten sisters are nearing completion at Montgomery Crossroads,” the bishop wrote. “The parochial school of Saint James the Less will open next month under the direction of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, of West Chester, Pennsylvania.” (The order’s Motherhouse was later relocated at Immaculata, Pennsylvania.)

So it was, that on August 28, 1965, four IHM Sisters arrived in Savannah ready to take on the responsibility of Saint James School, their order’s first mission in Georgia. The Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary later opened two other missions in the state, Saints Peter and Paul in Decatur and Saint Joseph in Athens, both in the Atlanta Archdiocese.

By 1960, the new school, which had been built to relieve crowded conditions at Sacred Heart and Blessed Sacrament Schools in Savannah, was itself feeling the pinch.

Accordingly, arrangements were made for construction of an addition to the school and a cafeteria, with architect Ben Ritzert, AIA, providing the plans. Once completed, the cafeteria saw temporary use as a church pending building of a permanent church structure.
In 1983, two more classrooms were added, as was a fine arts room. More construction ensued in 1994 as the new Saint James Church was completed, and the administrative area and cafeteria of the school were revamped. In addition, a science lab, computer lab and bathrooms were added in the annex. The library of Saint James School was expanded in 2001 to include a media center and was named for Kay Blanton, librarian at the school from 1970 until her retirement in May 2000.

Continued diligence

Behind all of this growth and achievement lay parish and diocesan support and the continued diligence of the IHM Sisters at Saint James. The curriculum as expounded on the Saint James Web site is formidable. “The core of the academic program is oral and written language, reading and mathematics in the primary grades, with science and social studies taking on greater importance beginning in grade three. Physical education, fine arts, technology, foreign language and library classes are also integral to the weekly curriculum for grades K–8.” An advanced math program is available for those meeting criteria for it. Religion instruction and prayer, says the same source, is “a way of life, not merely one other subject.”

Twenty Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary order who have helped implement the high standards of the school over the years plan to be present in Savannah at Saint James’s 50th Anniversary Mass to be celebrated by Bishop J. Kevin Boland on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. IHM Sisters on the faculty of Saint James Catholic School include: Sister Cecelia DiDonato (principal), Sister Janet Regina (Sacraments / Admin.), Sister Regina Copple (Religion), Sister Carolyn Bennett (5A teacher), and Sister Judith Geschke (7A instructor). Father Mark J. Ross is pastor of Saint James Parish.
With a current enrollment of 456, the school continues to fulfill its mission handsomely. Today’s students have reason to feel as Marian Kelly does, looking back over three generations of her family at Saint James, that they “are truly blessed to have the IHM Sisters all these years.”

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

Marie Conway Oemler: Irish, Catholic and famous… for a while

Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:40:39 -0500

A Savannahian, she wrote numerous books and published numbers of short stories. One of her books, Slippy McGee: sometimes known as the Butterfly Man, was made into a movie in 1923 and, again, in 1948. When she died in 1932, Publishers Weekly ran her obituary. Anybody know her name? Probably not. Yet, in the opening decades of the twentieth century her prolific literary output warranted publication by prominent New York publishing houses, her poems found their way into poetry collections, and her prize-winning short stories frequently appeared in Ladies Home Journal, The Century, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Mary Virginia Conway (later, Marie Conway Oemler) was born on March 29, 1875, in Savannah and was baptized by Father Edward Cafferty on June 12 of the same year at Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church. Both her father, Richard Hoban Conway, and her mother, Helena Mary Brown, were offspring of Irish immigrants. Father Charles C. Prendergast had officiated at their marriage in 1872. At the time of the 1880 Chatham County Federal Census, five-year-old Mary had a little sister, Leonora, then two years old. A son later joined the Conway family. The children’s father, Richard, was a Central of Georgia Railroad clerk, a position he still held in the 1890s when a young man named John Oemler was employed by the railroad as a draughtsman.
Different backgrounds
Living on Jefferson Street, Mary (now Marie) Conway—who had attended Saint Vincent’s Academy—was a clerk at the Mutual Co-op Association. She might have met John Oemler, who resided at 142 Habersham Street with his parents, by chance. It is more likely that she met him through her father when both men worked for the Central of Georgia Railway. The Conway and Oemler family backgrounds were somewhat dissimilar. John Oemler’s father, Augustus, was superintendent of the family’s business, Oemler Oyster Company. Oemler’s grandfather, Dr. Armenius Oemler, was a scientist of note and owned property on the Shad River on Wilmington Island. At his death in 1897, Dr. Oemler was buried from Saint John’s Episcopal Church and interred in the family plot on Wilmington Island.
Different backgrounds or not, Marie Conway and John Norton Oemler were married at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist by Father R. F. Kennedy on July 31, 1901. Augustus Oemler and Helena Conway were witnesses of the marriage, with no notation on the marriage record of the religion of the groom or of his father, Augustus.
Slippy McGee
During the first years of the 20th century Marie Oemler took on the duties of wife and mother. The birth of her daughter, Elizabeth, in 1902 was followed by the birth of a son, Alan, in 1904. By 1914, Oemler was publishing poetry and short stories. Her most successful book, Slippy McGee, was published in 1917 by Century Publishing Company and republished during the same year by the Grosset & Dunlap Company. In 1919, her novel, A Woman Named Smith, was published by both Century Company and Grosset & Dunlap.
Oemler frequently found inspiration for her work in her home life, and often dedicated her books to those closest to her. Her 1920 novel, Purple Heights, was dedicated to her husband with the inscription: “To John Norton Oemler from the Lady His Son Used to Call Mrs. Daddy.” Her novel, A Woman Named Smith, was dedicated to her daughter, “Elizabeth Heyward Oemler—Sometimes my Little Girl” and included a poem about Elizabeth or “Bitsybet”.
Reviews of Oemler’s works that appeared in Book Review Digest in 1919, 1920 and 1921 provide clues to her writing ability and to the stories themselves. Where the Young Child Was (1921), was described in the Review as a collection of six short stories that took place in varied settings but which shared Christmas as a common theme. The Literary Review writer considered Oemler’s style fittingly “simple.” A New York Times critic quoted in the Review noted that the stories were “modern in setting, are narrated in a gracious manner” and that “together with the ingenious plots, Mrs. Oemler adds the felicity of rhythmical prose.”
“Miz Scarlett”
Oemler’s 1919 offering, A Woman Named Smith—a mystery novel set in the fictional town of Hyndsville, South Carolina—involves the memory of a character named Sophronisba Scarlett. When the character is referred to as “Miz Scarlett” in this book, today’s reader is eerily reminded of a later southern heroine addressed the same way. The New York Times reviewer thought the author of A Woman Named Smith should have settled for either a mystery story or a love story rather than combining both, but noted that “the brightness of the dialogue suggests that Mrs. Oemler might succeed with a comedy for the stage.”
In 1923, the movie version of Marie Conway Oemler’s Slippy McGee became one of the first films in which future film star Colleen Moore appeared. Described on Answers.com as a “heartwarming drama,” this movie told the story of reformed safecracker Slippy McGee who rescued the heroine of the piece from a man trying to force her into marriage through the threat of forged letters. Twenty-five years later, in 1948, Slippy McGee was the inspiration for a later movie starring Donald Barry.
A rapid writer
Oemler continued to write at an energetic clip throughout the 1920s, most of her books being published by Century House of New York. Her literary productivity, one newspaper columnist observed, resulted from her ability as “a rapid writer” whose “novels appeared almost one a year.” A year after publication of Flower of Thorn (1931), Marie Conway Oemler died in Charleston, South Carolina, after returning to her native south from Delaware in an effort to restore her failing health.
Twenty years later, her husband, John, died in Savannah. The Social Security Death Index lists his burial place as the family cemetery on Wilmington Island. Marie Oemler’s daughter, Elizabeth, died in Virginia in 1942. The author’s son, Alan Norton Oemler, a university professor, retired with his wife, Mary, to Savannah and lived in the old Oemler House on Wilmington Island until his death in 1977.
Although Marie Conway Oemler’s writing appears dated by today’s standards, it was outstanding in its time. Hardly in the same literary class as the spectacularly successful Margaret Mitchell or the more talented and respected Flannery O’Connor, Oemler was descended from the same Irish Catholic tradition that yielded those two later Georgia authors. As such, remembering her today seems an appropriate thing to do.

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

The legacy of Black Catholic schools lives on

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:28:52 -0500

By Ormonde E. Lewis
The opening of school makes many of us think back to our days in the classroom. Though it has been nearly 50 years since my first day at Catholic school, I have vivid memories of that simpler time when our classroom consisted of, for the most part, a nun (usually of Irish descent), 25-30 students, a chalk board, books, chairs, desks, a flag, a crucifix and not much else. A lot of learning went on in those seemingly bare classrooms and parents worked hard to send their children to these schools, which during my time were segregated according to race. Catholic schools provided the only option to public schools for black children during that era because the only other private schools for blacks were boarding schools in distant cities.
In exploring this topic, I discovered the 1958-59 “Report on Diocesan Schools” in the Diocesan Archives which indicated that six elementary schools and two high schools serving black students had a combined enrollment of 1,657 students in that school year. In 2005-2006, the Catholic Schools Office reported that there was a total enrollment of 883 students of African-American descent in our diocesan schools. Of course, much has happened in the nearly 50 years between these reports. Did those all-black schools meet special needs? Are Catholic schools still viable to the Black community? I sought opinions from various members of the local community:
Father Robert Chaney, pastor of Resurrection of Our Lord Church and director of the diocese’s Office of African-American Ministry:
Southern Cross: Why do you think black parents sent their children to Catholic schools in the 50s and the 60s?
Father Chaney: I think the quality of education was better in the black Catholic schools than in the public schools at that time. Parents themselves attended the same Catholic schools. Religious instruction was offered and there was strong discipline. Segregation made Catholic schools a viable option.
Southern Cross: Why do you think there are fewer black students enrolled in Catholic schools today compared with the 50s and 60s?
Father Chaney:. In Savannah, the Catholic schools (Saint Anthony of Padua, Saint Benedict the Moor, Saint Mary’s and Saint Pius) in the Black community are all closed now for thirty years or more, with the exception of Saint Mary’s School, 29 years. Therefore, the Catholic schools’ traditional presence in the Savannah black community has been lost for a generation or more. Since the traditional black Catholic schools have been closed for thirty years or more, many parents today did not attend Catholic schools themselves. Therefore, they may be reluctant to send their children to Catholic schools, especially to the Catholic schools where their child may be the only black in the class.
Other reasons are the increase in tuition and the fact that. public schools have improved their curriculum by offering magnet/specialty schools. Many parents are opting to place their children in those schools.
Also, there are very few religious in the schools like in years past. The religious presence in the schools was a visible sign that the schools were Catholic.
Dr. Charles J. Elmore, historian, author and chairman of the Department of Mass Communications, Savannah State University:
Southern Cross: You and your four siblings attended Catholic schools. Why did your parents choose Catholic schools for the Elmore children?
Dr. Elmore: My parents chose Catholic schools for the five Elmore children because it was a tradition in my family, as my mother’s family was Catholic for at least one hundred years. My mother and uncle also attended Catholic schools in New York and in Savannah.
Glynn County State Court Judge Orion Douglass. Douglass is a past president of the Council of State Court Judges and a Fellow of the Lawyers Foundation of Georgia. He was a member of the Georgia Supreme Court’s Commission on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts and a member of the Governor’s Special Advisory Panel for the Handicapped. Douglass and other prominent African-Americans formed the Fourteen Black Men of Glynn, a mentorship program.
Southern Cross: Your family was Presbyterian, but your parents sent you and your sister to Catholic schools. Why do you think they chose Catholic schools?
Douglass: My parents were both educators in the public schools of Savannah. Their decision to send me and my sister to Catholic schools was based on the belief that given the presence of Jim Crow laws at that time, Catholic schools offered the African-American student a glimpse of a world untainted by racism. My parents also believed that Catholic schools were less likely to be influenced by nepotism or professional retaliation sometimes arising among co-professionals.
Southern Cross: Your children attended Catholic school in Brunswick. Was that decision based on your experiences?
Douglass: Yes, from my experience in high school and college I determined that Catholic education prepared all students to compete on a national basis regardless of their regional origins. Because of its uniformity of curriculum and most importantly its commitment to teaching each student regardless of social status, the shackles of inferiority fostered by a Jim Crow society on its minorities were broken.
Life in the South has indeed changed dramatically in the past 50 years. Dual school systems are, as they should be, a thing of the past. One thing has not changed: parents still want the best possible education for their children. Now, there are more choices for all parents. John Stossel of ABC’s 20/20 believes that when schools compete, parents win. Some schools offer special programs for meeting special needs. Perhaps one of the biggest decisions a modern day parent will make will be choosing the school his/her child attends.
In 2006, Catholic schools are still a viable option. Our schools continue to offer religious education, a nurturing environment, discipline, and a strong curriculum. Yes, Catholic schools are still here, still serving and still making a difference in the lives of young people.

Ormonde E. Lewis is staff assistant of the Southern Cross and an alumnus of Saint Mary’s School and Saint Pius X High School, Savannah.

No rocking chair for hospital chaplain

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:32:59 -0500

Sister Clara Vincent has been in Augusta for 37 years. The Sister of Saint Joseph of Carondelet is chaplain at Saint Joseph Hospital in Augusta. Her days and rounds of hospital units start early in the morning. From there, she may visit with 20-30 patients before day’s end. Or she may spend hours in an intensive care unit with a distressed family. It’s enough to wear down someone years her junior, but Sister Clara Vincent minimizes the effort. “As long as my health is good, I know God wants me to do something besides sit in a rocking chair!” she jests.
Growing up in Sedalia, Missouri, Sister Clara and her three siblings knew the harsh winters and hot, dry summers of the Midwest. Totally acclimated to the southeast, she says she wouldn’t want to back peddle: “I love the people here as well as the climate. ” Sister entered the Sisters of Saint Joseph after high school and made her final profession in 1953. For 27 years, her ministry was nursing in hospitals in Missouri and Michigan. Then she was assigned to Saint Joseph Hospital in Augusta, where she has now been for 37 years. She gave up nursing—“I could still outrun the young ones, but they were catching up with me,” and transitioned into chaplaincy at the hospital. Even now, she takes her turns at night work, being on-call for emergencies and critical situations. Since she lives next door to the hospital with her cat, Tigger, it is a quick commute for these middle-of-the-night patient visits.
Besides being available for patients and their families, Sister Clara has lots of interaction with hospital staff. “Sometimes, personnel want some counsel, or just need someone to talk to about a difficulty or personal issue,” Sister Clara says.
“Because Saint Joseph is a smaller facility, there is a real ‘homey’ atmosphere. We consider each other as family and take a personal interest in one another. ” Staff recognize Sister Clara’s voice on the public address system each morning at 7:30 when she begins the day with a prayer—“some units don’t start work until that prayer is said.”
Sister Clara enjoys listening to music when at home. She learned to play the piano and organ years ago, and sometimes does organ accompaniment in the hospital chapel for services. Her stamina may come from the regular routine of walking exercise she practices. Each evening, she makes the circuit of her neighborhood, getting in about two miles a day. On trips to the beach, as on a early spring trip to Fripp Island, she walks five to six miles a day. “It is relaxing exercise. I enjoy meeting people on the way, seeing their dogs, and being connected to nature. One way she expresses her love for children is to be available to some for baby-sitting. “I’m known as Nana,” she says. She doesn’t watch television, except for a Braves or Bulldogs game.
Of all the changes she’s seen in her many years in religious life, Sister Clara thinks that the change from the sisters living together, maybe twenty or thirty of them, in a convent to living alone in apartments or private residences was the hardest transition for her. “Because of declining numbers, it was a necessity. ” Asked “who will replace the sisters in years to come?” Sister Clara refers to the growing affiliation in her own community with “associate” members. These women and men share the common vision and diverse ministries of the sisters, and make commitments to live out the charism of the Saint Joseph community while staying in place in their own respective careers and lifestyles. “We lean on the associates, hoping they will carry on our mission,” she says.
An unfulfilled dream Sister has for her senior years is “to get in the car with someone and drive across the United States. She has taken a cruise to Alaska and enjoyed it, but the lure of the open road beckons to her, too. Meantime, she keeps on keeping on, referring to herself as the “Energizer bunny.”
Father Miguel Grave de Peralta, also a chaplain at Saint Joseph, says Sister Clara reminds him of Saint John the Baptist—she is so clear and direct in what she says and means. “She has a way of cutting through the less important issues and going to the heart of the matter,”Father says, “which is why in the midst of a complicated discussion, Sister Clara can bring everyone to focus with her saying, ‘what does that have to do with the price of peanut butter, anyway?’”

Hazardous journeying through the Southwest Georgia Missions

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 09:37:40 -0500

Richard Reid, publicity director of the Georgia Catholic Laymen’s Association and editor of The Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association, knew that Father Leo M. Keenan and his assistant Father Leonard Van der Zon, stationed in Rome, Georgia, were covering a parish larger than the combined areas of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, but it took a trip with Father Keenan to make Reid fully appreciate the situation.

Archive of Rita Delorme articles.

In February, 1922, Reid and Father Keenan, riding in a Buick nicknamed “January,“ set out from Albany for Moultrie. Though Moultrie was a mere 35 miles away, Reid soon learned there were variables involved in the calculation of this distance. Father Keenan’s planned route was 40 miles from Moultrie. The route he was forced to take turned out to be 60.
At first, things went smoothly, with “January” purring along at a good clip until a “detour” sign suddenly popped up ahead with the information that a bridge was under repair, and it was necessary to take another road. Traveling this road, Reid wrote in a story that appeared in The Bulletin not long afterwards, was like “riding on a trolley with four square wheels.” Father Keenan, unruffled by these events, was whistling a tune the whole time. When FatherKeenan and Reid stopped several times to ask directions they were always told the distance back to the main road was “’Bout a mile.”
Elastic miles
After traveling a total of five of these “elastic” miles, the Buick was finally headed back to the main road and was once again on a smooth highway. “We’ll have easy sailing now,” Father Keenan commented. Five miles later, they drew up to a large sign that announced: “Bridge closed. Detour”. Plastered across that sign was another large sign that announced triumphantly that the detour was closed. “Guess we’ll have to turn back,” Father Keenan said, pointing “January” in the direction from which they had just come.
Once again, the priest and his passenger arrived at the start of the branch road they had left nearly an hour earlier. “The shadows of evening were falling and we were on a strange road, but after repeated directions, exasperations and supper hour, we reached Moultrie,” wrote Reid. That evening, Father Keenan heard confessions at Moultrie’s little church. The following morning, he said Mass at eight o’clock. After Mass, the CLA publicity director sat down to breakfast, but Father Keenan did not. He had to oversee formation of a local branch of the Catholic Laymen’s Association that morning, after which he was to visit the sick.
When Father Keenan had taken care of these duties, the Buick took off for Thomasville, 30 miles away, with Richard Reid and a very hungry Father Keenan inside. (Father Keenan was still fasting in preparation for the Mass he would say at 11:00 a.m. in Thomasville.) A meeting with another forming CLA group was to follow this Mass. Next came dinner, Reid noted, “at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Gribben—the first food Father Keenan had tasted since the night before.” After that, it was time to move on to Fitzgerald, 90 miles from Thomasville.
A very dry Sunday
“January” glided on, encountering just one small problem: “a detour that forced the Buick to plough a stream which threatened to flood the engine.” Reid wrote that the trip would have been more comfortable as they traveled “through six counties and many times that many towns” if they could have bought cold drinks. It was Sunday and (wrote Reid): “It is a very wicked thing to sell soft drinks on Sunday. However, had we desired moonshine, we would have had no difficulty in getting it.”
The travelers had supper at the Aldine Hotel in Fitzgerald operated by George Davis—a member of the Fitzgerald congregation—before holding an organizational CLA meeting. They stayed at the Aldine that night as guests of Mr. Davis. The following morning Father Keenan said Mass at 7:30 with Reid serving. Reid noted that Sunday seemed to be “merely an incident in the life of a Georgia missionary, and usually a very pleasant one. He must say Mass in two widely separated places, and perhaps visit a third. He must work hard all morning from sunrise or earlier, and fast until well after noon. But on Sunday, he usually is in a community of some size.”
With Sunday over, the missionary priest would travel on weekdays to distant places where food was poor, modern conveniences few and opportunities for self-sacrifice plentiful. After seeing the publicity director safely aboard a train headed homeward, Father Keenan was soon on his way to say Mass and bring the sacraments to Catholics in more remote places in Georgia. “But for the missionary priests of Georgia, such people as these would lose the faith and drift away from the Church,” Reid commented in his Bulletin story summarizing the trip.
A tragic Easter
Not long afterwards, an article appeared in The Bulletin which disclosed that Father Leonard Van der Zon, Father Leo Keenan’s assistant, had died Easter Sunday morning in an auto accident while on his way to Thomasville to say Mass.
Accompanying the priest, who did not drive, were: Mrs. George Davis, who was driving; Mr. and Mrs. George Kratzer, George Kratzer, Jr., Miss Daisy Moye and an unidentified servant. When the vehicle hit a sand bed near Ocilla, Father Van der Zon and Mrs. Davis were killed, Mrs. Kratzer was seriously injured, and Miss Moye sustained a broken collar bone.
In the same issue of the Bulletin, an editorial probably written by Richard Reid, recalled “Father Van” as a “saintly, zealous priest,” who left his native Holland because of World War I and was incardinated for the Diocese of Savannah by Bishop Benjamin J. Keiley. Sacrifices made by Fathers Van der Zon and Keenan as they ministered to 1,000 Catholics spread over 15,000 square miles of Georgia territory were movingly described. A note of sympathy to Mrs. Davis’ family, including her husband, George, who had hosted Keenan and Reid at Fitzgerald, and to her two young children, accompanied the editorial.
The Very Reverend Leo M. Keenan, vf, died in March 1943, 21 years after the journey he and Richard Reid set out on in 1922. In the course of his long and fruitful career as a priest, Father Keenan built many churches throughout the mission area, including those at Valdosta, Cordele and Moultrie. He had been pastor of Saint Patrick’s Church (Most Holy Trinity) in Augusta for 13 years at the time of his death.
Richard Reid, Father Keenan’s traveling companion that balmy February in 1922, continued to serve the Diocese of Savannah as editor of The Bulletin until 1939 when he became editor of The Catholic News of the Archdiocese of New York. Reid went on to a distinguished, international career as a Catholic journalist. He was named a Knight of Saint Gregory in 1939 and a Knight Grand Cross of the Holy Sepulchre in 1961. He died in 1965.

Columnist Rita H. DeLorme
is a volunteer in the Diocesan
Archives. She can be reached
at rhdelorme@diosav.org.

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