Meridian St. Joseph celebrates 100th
Published 8:30 am Saturday, September 25, 2010
- Father Frank Cosgrove, pastor of the Catholic Community of Meridian, prepares for Communion at the 100th anniversary Mass at St. Joseph Parish.
MERIDIAN — As you drive up to St. Joseph Church, which sits on a hill at 1914 18th St., a blue and white carousel horse on a red pole stands on the lawn.
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In white letters painted on the horse are the words: St. Joseph, Sisters of the Holy Ghost, 1910, SVD, St. Katherine Drexel, diligence, devotion, determination and dedication.
An image of St. Katherine Drexel with a young black girl and boy is painted on the chest of the horse.
Painted on one hip is the convent of the Holy Ghost Sisters, who later changed their name to Sisters of the Holy Spirit. On the other hip is St. Joseph School.
Both buildings are long gone, but their legacies of faith and education live on, as evidenced by St. Joseph’s celebration of its centennial Friday – Sunday, Sept. 10-12.
“I came back to celebrate 100 years of St. Joseph school and parish,” said Albert “Billy” Jones, a member of the class of 1946 who lives in Washington D.C.
During the centennial weekend he and two of his classmates, Doris Ramsey, who lives in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Annie Ramsey of Meridian, visited another classmate, Ruth Holton, who is in a nursing home.
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“I grew up in Meridian and I’ve been coming back somewhat frequently over the years,” said Jones. “I started out at St. Joseph in 1932. This whole weekend, the book-signing, banquet, Mass, everything, has just been wonderful.”
The theme of the centennial celebration was “Honoring our Past, Celebrating our Present, Securing our Future.” It began Friday evening with a Welcoming and Hospitality reception at Drury Inn.
At St. Joseph on Saturday afternoon there was a book-signing and discussion of “African American Children and Missionary Nuns and Priests in Mississippi” by Ethel Young (1960) and Jerome Wilson (1961), alumni of St. Joseph, followed that evening by a banquet in St. Patrick’s Family Life Center.
On Sunday, Bishop Joseph Latino was principal celebrant and Father Frank Cosgrove, pastor, concelebrated the bilingual anniversary Mass at 8:30 a.m. Brunch followed in St. Joseph’s parish center.
In his homily, Bishop Latino said the St. Joseph community was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the gifts of faith and education passed on to them by their parents, the Holy Spirit sisters and Society of Divine Word (SVD) priests.
Founded by SVD priests, Mount St. Joseph, a mission for blacks, was dedicated Sept. 18, 1910. The day before, four Holy Spirit sisters arrived from Techny, Ill., to teach at the school.
Mount St. Joseph Mission consisted of a two-story brick building — the upper floor housing the sisters and the lower story a chapel and classrooms.
“As Dr. (Marie) Davidson said last night at the banquet, it was not an easy beginning,” said Bishop Latino, referring to the racial climate at the time.
He said there was fear and anxiety but also hope, faith and hard work on everyone’s part to make the mission a success. “They did not throw in the towel … and today we are celebrating the harvest of the seeds planted 100 years ago.”
Painted on the legs of the carousel horse are four words — diligence, devotion, dedication, and determination, said Bishop Latino. Those are the qualities exhibited by the priests, sisters, and parents from the beginning of the mission and which made it a success.
After graduation many of the school’s alumni moved to other parts of the country, he said. “Because of your faith you were drawn back here, because this is where your roots began.”
Dr. Davidson, keynote speaker at the banquet, retired 10 years ago as chief of staff to the president of the University of Maryland.
“I am a very proud graduate (1955) of St. Joseph and it is amazing how things were then and how they are now,” she said. “One of reasons we are in better positions today is because we had the guidance, care, love and support of the Holy Spirit sisters and SVD priests.”
“How things were then” is reflected in the book, “African American Children and Missionary Nuns and Priests in Mississippi,” by Young and Wilson. Their book reflects their experiences growing up as St. Joseph students.
“We would meet new people and in our conversations they would ask about our education,” said Dr. Wilson, a retired epidemiologist.
“We would describe St. Joe and a lot of them, both black and white, found it an anomaly that we were taught by white nuns in an all-black school in Mississippi. They would then say our story needed to be written down, that people needed to know it.”
Dr. Young, a professor of special education literacy at Kean University in Basking Ridge, N.J., said the students didn’t think of the sisters as white people.
“We thought of them as holy, as sisters,” she said. “Being white wasn’t the focus for us because they treated us with humanity, whereas the local whites did not respect African Americans.”
In researching the book, among the places the two visited was the Provincial Motherhouse of the Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters in Techny, Ill.
Five sisters attended the celebration, including the provincial, Sister Carol Welp.
“We are so happy we could come down,” she said. “This has been an unbelievably wonderful celebration. We wanted to represent our sisters who have been here at St. Joseph over the last 100 years.
“The wonderful Catholic life in Meridian just touches me. It is an honor to be a part of this community and we are so happy our sisters have been a part of it. It is a real blessing.”
Also attending were Sisters Betty Tranel, Marie Sheehy, Maryellen Drasler and former Holy Spirit Sister Carmelita Stinn, who is now a Sister for Christian Community (SFCC) .
SVD Father Malcolm O’Leary attended the banquet on Saturday. He is administrator of Vicksburg St. Mary Parish.
Father Cosgrove is pastor of the Catholic Community of Meridian, which consists of St. Joseph, St. Patrick, the Naval Air Station, and area Hispanics.
“This has been a wonderful celebration,” he said. “There was lots of teamwork and planning and I am very, very proud of the celebration and I am proud to be pastor of the entire Catholic community here in Meridian.”
Edgar Hernandez, pastoral associate, said planning for the celebration began over a year ago.
“Teamwork is the one word I would use to describe how everything went,” he said. “We had a lot of support, a lot of great ideas from people. We banded together, put our heads together to see how this was going to work and we pulled it off.”
Every event was well-attended, he said. “At the banquet there were about 290 people. There is just a great love for the school and the church here. A lot of memories were passed along this weekend. This has just been an amazing time.”
In recognition of its centennial St. Joseph received a papal blessing from Pope Benedict XVI.