1/15/21 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: Our Pastor, Father Dooley, interviewing 8^th Graders in preparation for Confirmation.

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family:

This weekend we begin the celebration of the founding of Our Lady of Peace Parish of which our school is an important part. Bishop Brennan will be celebrating Mass with us at the 4:30 Mass on Saturday, January 16.

Here is a short summary of the beginning of our Parish from the Parish website:

“Few members of our parish can recall with much clarity the northeast corner of Dominion Blvd. and north High Street as it existed on January 17, 1946.

This was the date the late Bishop Michael J. Ready decreed the boundaries of a new parish to be called Our Lady of Peace. Fr. George H. Foley was named first pastor. The new pastor actually launched the parish when he moved into an apartment at 4217 N. High Street, near Cooke Rd., a few days after his appointment. Weekday Masses were said in the apartment. Sunday Mass first was held in the Beechwold Theater and later in the A. A. Schroyer Funeral Home (now Weir Arend). Meanwhile, the site of the present church and school was purchased. It contained two buildings; one was an old farm house at the corner which was torn down and the second became the first rectory and, later, the first convent. Behind these buildings thrived a vegetable garden, trees, weeds and a mass of just plain mud.

The first church on the property consisted of a barracks obtained from the Army Supply Depot at Marion. It was located at the northwest edge of the parish property, facing High Street. Kneelers and benches were constructed by prisoners of war. The date of the first Mass in the church is in dispute; some say Easter Sunday, 1946, while others contend it was June 1.”

The present church is actually the third permanent church to be called Our Lady of Peace. The barracks, which many refer to as an old quansot hut is mentioned above. Did you know, however, that the second church was actually our gymnasium, complete with stained glass windows and altar? Many older parishioners remember the construction and completion of our present church building 1966-1967.

Do you know that DeSantis Drive and our own field  is so named because DeSantis Florists had its greenhouses on our present field. Father Foley, our first Pastor made it a requirement and sometimes a punishment for misdeeds of school students to remove the rocks from the grounds of the parish and broken shards of glass from the renmants of the greenhouses.

The Dominican Sisters, now known as the Dominican Sisters of Peace, were the order of nuns who staffed our parish school from the beginning. They maintained a presence in our school for many years. Mrs. Carol Folian was the first lay principal of our school and the presence of these wonderful sisters is still felt on a daily basis with our own Sister Barbara Kolesar who does many, many things for both the parish and school.

In 75 years the neighborhood has changed, the Church has changed, the world has changed. What has not changed is that at the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy the Living Christ continues to be real to us both in His Word in Scripture as well as in the transubstantiated bread and wine into the body and blood of our Savior. With the addition of Father Sean Dooley in 2019 as Pastor of our Parish and Parish membership full of people of all ages we pray that this little piece of Beechwold will continue to be a beacon of God’s presence to our community for many years to come.



Jim Silcott