The Catholic News & Herald 1
October 12, 2001
October 12, 2001 Volume 1 1 t Number 5
Inside Foundation supports
Charlotte parish celebrates history, forges new path
... Page 5
Local News CCHD official visits Charlotte Diocese ... Page 9
Deacon, wife provide mutual support through faith
... Page 16
Every Week Entertainment ...Pages 10-11
Editorials & Columns ...Pages 12-13 “Take care, then, that the light in you not become darkness. If your whole body is full of light, and no part of it is in darkness, then it will be as full of light as a lamp illuminating you with its brightness.” — Luke 11:35-36
S e r v i n g C a t h o l i c s in Western North Carolina in the Diocese of Charlotte
Waynesville parish celebrates 75th anniversary By JOANITA M. NELLENBACH Correspondent WAYNESVILLE — St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church and church hall were packed on the evening of Oct. 6 for the special Mass and dinner highlighting the parish’s year-long celebration of its 75th anniversary. Bishop William G. Curlin celebrated the Mass honoring the oldest North Carolina Catholic parish west of Asheville. Concelebrating were former St. John’s pastors Father Gabriel Meehan and Father Thomas Walsh; Augustinian Father Dennis McGowan, current pastor; Augustinian Father Francis Doyle, pastor of St. Margaret Catholic Church in Maggie Valley; Augustinian Brother William Harkin, St. Margaret pastoral associate; and Augustinian Father Terrance Hyland, director of Living Waters Catholic Reflection Center. Other events planned for the celebratory year include a St. John’s School reunion Thanksgiving weekend, and “Come Home for Christmas” Dec. 16, with a parish dinner, and an evening of lessons and carols. The year will close with a parish picnic on Pentecost, May 19. According to a St. John’s Church history prepared by parishioner Ann Rollman, “Long before 1900, Mass was offered in private homes by priests from Asheville, often traveling on horseback. By 1920, Mass was offered in the ballroom of the Gordon Hotel located on Main Street, where Main Street Square is today. Outside the tourist season, early parishioners took the train to Asheville to attend Mass.” By 1925, the need for a parish west of Asheville had become clear. Bishop William Joseph Hafey of Raleigh established the parish in 1926 and appointed Father Bernard McDevitt as the first pastor. In her history, Rollman says that, “Miss Sally McDowell’s home on Church Street (site of the present church parking lot) was purchased and converted into a chapel, rectory and meeting place. The first Mass was offered in May of 1926 with 27 persons present. The parish embraced the eight western counties of North Carolina — an area of 3,471 square miles.” Half the parish’s Catholics attended that first Mass. Rollman says there were only 50 Catholics in all of western North Carolina at the time. Later, other parishes would spring up in Murphy, Sylva, Maggie Valley and elsewhere in the eight counties. Now St. John has 234 registered households; its mission church, Immaculate Conception in Canton, has 34. Ann Rollman was 23-year-old Ann Kramer when she journeyed from Jordan College in Menominee, Mich., in 1939 to work as secretary and housekeeper for Father Ambrose Rorhbacher, who was pastor at the time. He had
met her at Jordan College and wrote asking her to fill the dual position. “I couldn’t live at the rectory with the priest,” Rollman said, “so I lived with a Catholic family.” The family occupied an unheated house in Waynesville during the summer, but they and Rollman moved into the heated rectory during the winters. She remembers that people in Waynesville were very kind and that those who couldn’t remember her last name called her “Ann Catholic.” After eight years at St. John, Rollman went back north to work in the Northwestern University business office. Eventually
she returned to Waynesville, where she met and married Walter Rollman. The year Rollman arrived in Waynesville, 1939, was also the year that the first nuns, Sisters of St. Francis of Milwaukee, Wisc., opened St. John’s School in the Victorian-era house that is now St. John’s rectory, she said. Later Sisters of St. Francis of Tiffin, Ohio, taught at the school, followed by Daughters of Charity. Eventually the church built a separate school building that accommodated grades K through 12; it closed in 1980.
See Waynesville, page 8
Church dedicated
Photo by Jimmy Rostar
Singing in praise and thanksgiving “El Coro de Niños Hispanos” (the Hispanic children’s choir) of St. Joseph Church in Kannapolis sings the offertory hymn during the dedication of the new church building Oct. 6. See story, page 7.