THE OLD ERA
But before the beautiful church had been built - before it had seen both prosperity, depression and its latest transfiguration as a well spring of affection for the neighborhood that had not expected any - there was the first era, the old era, and the First Mass in the Roadhouse Church.
In May of 1921, quite near the site of the present St. Cecilia's at Grand River and Livernois Avenues, stood a wooden tavern. It's siding, front porch and porch railing indicate that it once may have been a house. Closed by Prohibition, the building had stood tenantless since 1919. It was on Friday, May 13th, 1921, that a brief notice appeared in the Detroit newspapers telling how the tavern had been converted into a church. But the story, as vividly reconstructed by the writer of the Silver Jubilee booklet published by St. Cecilia's in 1946, really had begun a few days before.
On a May afternoon, a tired, disheveled, slightly dusty priest trudged down Livernois Avenue on a discouraging errand. Detroit was then in an earlier postwar building and housing shortage and this traveler was looking for housing. Not for himself but for Almighty God; a building where he could say Mass, hear confessions and conduct all of the other activities to which Catholicism is minister.
This was 1921. Warren G. Harding was new in the White House; Ty Cobb was managing the Detroit Tigers... and Henry Ford was building thousands of "Tin Lizzies" a day in a factory in Highland Park, Michigan. It was a day of revolutionary changes in thinking and living... even of morals. Into this era of discord, material progress, monoxide fumes and flaming youth the Church was electing to thrust its presence, represented in the figure of the dusty priest in his worn black suit. In the weary lines of his face the passerby might have recognized the mixture of Father Patrick J. Dwan's birthplace, Tipperary, Ireland, and his home village, rustic Gagetown, Michigan.
Continued
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 Next 11-20 >>
Home Contact Us Information Schedule Bulletin
