SS Peter and Paul Festival

SS Peter and Paul parish, at 728 South St. Clair Street, in Toledo's Old South End will have its annual festival this weekend. The hours will be from 3:00 PM to midnight on Saturday, August 2, and from 1:00 PM to 11:00 PM on Sunday, August 3.

Immaculate Conception, Old South End

As it was meant to be, in Edward Fallis' original design. The spires were never built.
As it was, before the fire of 1920.
As it was meant to be, in Joseph Huber's post-fire plan. Notice the statues over the doors.
And as it is, with the final reworking of the towers, by Willfred Holtzmann.

Maj. General John W. Leonard

The general and his wife at Immaculate Conception in August, 1945. In addition to a Mass, his return from the war was celebrated with a parade down Broadway to Walbridge Park.
Gen. Leonard was a son of Dennis and Anastasia Leonard, of the Old South End, and a brother of Sr. M. Marguerite of Mercy Hospital. His mother, shown here, died in 1943, while he was military attache in London.
Gen. Leonard was a classmate of Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley at West Point.

Immaculate Conception Parish in World War I

I had a Howard Carter experience yesterday. My pastor, the parish secretary, and I went up to the rectory attic in search of a spare bookcase for my new apartment. We found one, but that's far from all we found. There's such a treasure trove up there that I unilaterally proclaimed myself parish archivist. No one seemed to think it a bad idea, so the appointment passed by acclamation. Suffice it to say that there's going to be a lot of work ahead, sorting, cleaning, identifying, cataloguing, and bringing order out of chaos. This is one parish that never made a habit of tossing anything into the rubbish tip. ( Deo Gratias! )

Among the few items we brough downstairs were a few copies of a booklet published in 1922, called "During the War". It's a brief account of the parish's contribution to World War I. One hundred seventy seven parishioners served in the armed forces and seven in the Nursing Corps. Two, James Flanigan and Thomas F. Mullen, lost their lives.

The booklet includes several interesting pictures, mostly chaplains, which I've scanned. The one above is Bishop Stritch.

This gentleman was Fr. George Barry O'Toole, a son of the parish. He later served as the first president of the Catholic University of Peking. I posted more about him, HERE.
Fr. Arthur Sawkins looks awfully young in this picture. Another son of the parish, he went on to serve as pastor of Immaculate Conception for more than forty years.
This one has me curious. Fr. M.J. Smith was assistant pastor in the early 1920's. He went on to serve as pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Toledo, and St. Michael, in Findlay. Oddly, he was a chaplain in the Australian army, until suffering the effects of poison gas at the Battle of the Somme. ( Nasty business, that. One of my uncles died from the effects of a gas attack in the Argonne. ) Fr. Smith left the Australian forces with the rank of major. He died in 1949.
Finally, we have Lt. Col. John W. Leonard, a layman who was raised in the parish. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and, during the course of the war, was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the Distinguished Service Medal, and the Legion of Honor. He was second in command of the regiment that represented the United States in the Allied Victory Celebration. Col. Leonard served as a major general in World War II and was present at the crossing of the Rhine at Remagen. I have pictures of him attending Mass at Immaculate Conception, with his mother, in the late 1940's. I'll post them some other time.

MIA

Yeah...i have been MIA for a while...and i will continue to be. I have been in Minnesota the past week...also, my hard drive with all my pictures (all 15,000 or so) has decided to malfunction, thus greatly threatening the survival of all my data, and continued posting. So i will definitely be out of this for awhile yet. I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth.

Immaculate Conception

Between discussing the move and the usual impromptu post-Mass parish picnic, I knew I wouldn't have time for a full shoot, so I just looked for interesting details.

Update

I finally got this infernal apparatus back online, but my posts will still be spotty for another week. I'm moving to the Old West End this week. ( I'm not changing parishes, however. )

St. Michael's, Findlay

A fine slide show online at the Findlay Courier:

http://www.thecourier.com/multimedia/fatherjeff/publish_to_web/index.html

Our Lady of Consolation ... in Texas

In 1867, while serving as pastor at St. Michael's in Findlay, Fr. Edward Vattmann started a mission parish in Carey. First known as St. Edward's, it eventually became Our Lady of Consolation shrine. Many years later, in 1907, Fr. Vattmann was involved with the Catholic Colonization Society of America, helping develop a town in Texas named, naturally, Vattmann. The parish in Vattmann was named after Our Lady of Consolation.

When the new shrine church at Carey was dedicated in 1914, Fr. Vattmann was present:

The church in Texas was destroyed by a hurricane in 1916, and only a bell survived, so the painting donated by the Carey church must have been ruined as well. But Our Lady of Consolation in Texas was rebuilt, and looks like this today:

Parish website:

http://ourladyatriviera.com/id4.html

Bell Concert

This Sunday, 3:00pm @ St. Mary's in Norwalk, there will be a free public concert featuring our new Digital Carillon. The Performance should be about a half hour, and you can even sit in your car and listen!

Prayer for Deceased Priests

From Diocesan Yearbooks of the 1940s.

Gesu School

I got these from one of my online storage accounts and realized I'd never got around to posting them.

Gesu

Elsewhere in Ohio

Check out Cincinnati's Catholic Telegraph Photography Project blog:

http://tctphotos.blogspot.com/

And in Columbus, there's the Catholic Record Society:

http://catholicrecordsociety.org/

St. Benedict's Mission, 1939

From the Catholic Chronicle, 1939.

Vacation Time, 1939

From a 1939 Catholic Chronicle. (Click for detail.)

St. Alphonsus Parish Festival

for the full size version, please go to St. Alphonsus's Website. www.stalphonsusperu.org

Cardinal Stritch Returns, 1946

Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago returned to Toledo to celebrate the feast of Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, on October 2, 1946. He had served as the second bishop of Toledo.

Sacred Heart, Rosary Cathedral

Sketch from 1932 Diocesan Yearbook.

See the completed work here (second photo):
http://catholictoledo.blogspot.com/2008/05/sacred-heart.html

Cathedral Sketch

From 1930 Diocesan Yearbook.

Just a bit outside

Sacred Heart, Oberlin Ohio

Our Lady of Lourdes, Genoa

There's a good article in the Fremont paper about restoration of the Grotto at Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Genoa.

http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080710/NEWS01/807100301&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

Above photo is from the 1934 Diocesan Yearbook.