Fifty Years with a Future: Salt Lake's Guadalupe Mission and Parish

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 40, 1972, No. 3

Fifty Years with a Future: Salt Lake's Guadalupe Mission and Parish

BY JERALD H.MERRILL

Father Collins and his "kids" at Guadalupe Mission in the 1930s.

FIFTY YEARS OF HISTORY have not brought fifty years of progress to the Mexican American in Salt Lake City. Isolated from the larger community by his language, culture, religion, and pattern of employment, he has felt the alienation of the city's institutions and the denial of its opportunities. His church — while attempting to give meaning to his life, family, and community — has hesitated to take a strong position relating to his social development and to his goal of social justice. For him the Catholic Church has been a father not an advocate, and his parish has been an agency relating to him as a client rather than a friend who would join in his struggle for dignity, opportunity, and equality.

Yet, the service role of the parish cannot be ignored. Emergency need and tragedies must find a caring response within the parish community as within a family. Nevertheless, a balance must be sought between the church's service role and its advocacy role. Service attempts to relieve the symptoms of alienation and poverty, while advocacy would root out their causes. As advocate, the parish has traditionally dealt with problems on an individual and family basis instead of mobilizing the parish people and resources toward definite social goals.

Guadalupe Parish has a unique potential for dealing with the causes of poverty. Many poor people are members of the parish, and many more of the poor live in the surrounding area. Of these poor families, most are Mexican American, yet a significant number of Black and Caucasian families are living in poverty. The plight of these urban poor has not gone unnoticed by middle-income families, and a strong group of these "advocates" is already relating with the poor in the areas of worship, education, and service activities. A core group, cutting across ethnic and socio-economic lines, can work toward developing a strong advocacy role for the parish. By studying the issues and gathering the necessary resources, this group can produce the changes most beneficial to the poor. As a multiethnic parish with great socio-economic and educational diversity, Guadalupe may become a catalyst in a restless and polarizing city, turning ferment into progress toward dignity, opportunity, and equality.

This paper examines the Mexican American within a historical framework, detailing his migration to Utah in the early part of this century, the building of Guadalupe Mission, and the work of Guadalupe Center. The history of Guadalupe in Westside Salt Lake City is in a sense a microcosm of the minority experience in other urban areas. A look at the first fifty years of this community's history gives some indication of its potential and of the course its future development may take.

BEGINNINGS OF A MEXICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY

Mexican Americans form Utah's largest minority, yet they have only recently begun to receive much attention from the state. Almost all of Utah's more than forty thousand Mexican Americans are native sons and daughters whose forebears became Americans in 1848 when the United States annexed the Southwest, including Utah, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Although natives, they have remained, as their biographers have noted, strangers in their own land, an invisible minority. Those who came with the conquered lands were regarded by other Americans as a conquered people. Their land and rights were soon usurped. Others who came north from Mexico beginning about 1900 were equally victimized by attitudes generated by the Mexican-American War. Robbed of hope by such ethnic prejudice, they have subsisted far below national norms both socio-economically and educationally.

Mexican Americans and, to a lesser degree, Mexicans began migrating slowly into Utah only after 1900. Five Spanish surnames appear in the Salt Lake City directories between 1900 and 1910, including a cafe proprietor, Abraham Mejia, who advertised "Genuine Mexican Dishes" as well as short orders and sandwiches. "Mexicans," as they are listed, first appear as coal miners in 1913-14.

The great strike of 1912 at Bingham Canyon gave a surge to immigration when Utah Copper brought in a reported five thousand Mexicans and Mexican Americans as strikebreakers. Some of these men were recent immigrants to the Southwest from Mexico, having fled the revolution; others came from neighboring states. Although relatively few of these men remained in Utah after the strike, those who did stay became the beginning of a new labor force in the state. Wounded by their defeat during the strike, the Greek immigrant miners began to move into small businesses of their own and out of the mining and railroad labor force. Filling these jobs were the Italians — who had come to Utah twenty years before the Greeks — and, gradually, the Mexican immigrant and the Mexican American.

Interviews conducted by the author over a period of thirteen years from 1958 to 1971 point up a variety of reasons for Mexican and Mexican American immigration. One couple left Mexico because of the revolution. After working for the railroad for a few years, the man moved his family to Utah in 1916 where he found work in the mines. A woman recalled that her family had left Mexico about 1914 and settled in a Utah mining town. Encountering prejudice in one of its hardest forms — nothing was done by local authorities when four town boys raped her at age twelve — the family moved to Salt Lake City as soon as they could. Another woman recounted that her husband who had been herding sheep in central Utah was shot to death by a posse in 1926 following a bank robbery. "He could not have robbed the bank," she said, "but he was blamed because he was a Mexican." The woman and her children moved to Salt Lake City where she supported her family with whatever work she could find. Ten years later she married a man who worked for the railroad. While mines and the railroads brought many to Utah, other immigrants found work here as janitors, handymen, and construction laborers. Seasonal farm workers sometimes took up permanent residence in the city and sought other types of employment. Mexican American farmers found Depression era farming as unprofitable as some of their fellow citizens. As one farm wife put it, "It was hard to make a living on our farm in New Mexico, so in 1930 we moved to Salt Lake. We had relatives here who said we could find work. My husband found a job as a janitor." Another family joined the migrant stream from Texas for several years but decided in 1953 to stay in Salt Lake City. "We did not have much in Texas," explained the interviewee. "My husband got a job here as a laborer in construction work."

Catholic Church records pick up another strand of the story of the first Mexican American immigrants. Begun in 1870, the book of baptism for all of Utah and eastern Nevada records the baptism of the first Spanish-surnamed child as follows (from the Latin) : "A.D. 1902, on the 26th day of October. I baptized Guadalupe Chavez, a girl born on the 10th of August this year to Miguel Chavez and Ann Thornberg. The godparents were Secundio Carpintero and Jennie Geary." The entry was signed by W. F. Morrissey. Further baptisms of Spanish-surnamed children are recorded: in 1906, Vigil and Lemos; in 1907, Salazar; in 1908, Mejia, Trujillo, and Lopez; in 1913, Martinez; in 1914, Delamora; in 1916, Montoya in Magna, Jaramillo and Gonzalez in Monticello, and Mejia in Salt Lake City. But even among their fellow Catholics, the Spanish-speaking were not yet a significant group. The few names listed above are almost lost in a list of the children of Irish, Austrian, Italian, and German immigrants to Salt Lake City.

Then, in the December 1920 issue of Catholic Monthly appeared a story of major importance in the history of Guadalupe Mission.

During the past summer an Italian mission was established on Rio Grande Avenue to meet the needs of the Italian people in the western part of the city. The Rev. M. Raimondo is in charge of the Mission where he maintains an office and has evening classes for some of the Italian children and others interested. Father Raimondo has been holding Mass for his people in the Chapel of St. Mary's Academy on First West Street, founded in 1875, each Sunday morning at 9:30 o'clock.

It was this effort by Father Raimondo that evolved — as the Mexican American population in the area increased — into Guadalupe Mission.

Much earlier the second Catholic parish in Salt Lake City had been located in this area. In 1892 Bishop Lawrence Scanlan dedicated St. Patrick's Church, a remodeled frame house at the comer of Fourth West and Fifth South streets. Sixteen years later, in 1908, this lot and building were purchased for railroad expansion, and the church was moved to a newly-acquired home on Fourth South, east of Fifth West. The foundation was placed and the cornerstone laid for a new church on Fourth South just west of the future Guadalupe Mission in 1914, but no more work on the structure was done. As Father Fries explained:

Nothing further was done toward building the church. Work had to be stopped during the winter months and the sudden death of Father Ryan in April, 1915 . . . and the death of Bishop Scanlan in May, 1915, prevented the continuation of construction in the spring. The old foundation still remains in place.

The present St. Patrick's Church was completed in November 1916 at 1072 West Fourth South.

Following Father Raimondo's death in May 1921, the Italian Mission was moved to a building opposite the future mission on Fourth South between Fourth and Fifth West. The Very Reverend Monsignor Michael F. Sheehan, pastor of St. Patrick's Church, offered the Mass and held Sunday school classes for the children of the neighborhood who were principally of Italian, Mexican, Syrian, and Armenian descent. Finally, in 1924, the Italian Mission, still a part of St. Patrick's Parish, was moved to the site at 524 West Fourth South.

For about two months in 1927, the mission was served by the first of four Mexican priests, Padre Perfecto Arellano. His assignment as assistant pastor at St. Patrick's with "special duties for the Mexican people" lasted until November 26, 1927. Following in his footsteps came Padre Antonio Galaviz who served the mission from December 26, 1927, until July 26, 1929, with the assistance, from time to time, of his brother, Padre Turibio Galaviz. These two "Padres Mexicanos," who lived in quarters at the rear of the chapel, started a Spanish school and offered music lessons. Both were accomplished guitarists and singers, and Padre Antonio was an excellent pianist and organist as well. They returned to Mexico when they were assured that their work there could be conducted with greater freedom. Then, on December 19, 1929, Padre Inocencio Martin, from Plaza Church in Los Angeles, began a brief, two-month period of service at the mission, residing at St. Patrick's.

Responding to an invitation from Bishop John J. Mitty extended through Bishop John Joseph Cantwell of Los Angeles, six Sisters of Perpetual Adoration arrived in Salt Lake City on November 11, 1927. Their twelve years of service to the people of the mission has become legendary. A former residence west of the chapel at 528 West Fourth South was purchased for a convent, and the combination convent-chapel was given the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe, although it remained a part of St. Patrick's Parish. During the fall of 1929 the rear wing between convent and chapel was constructed, and, finally, in 1933, the front was completed, making one building of the two former houses.

On April 5, 1930, Father James Earl Collins, who was also assistant pastor at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, was appointed "Administrator of the Mexican Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe" by Bishop Mitty. At that time an important turning point in the life of the Mexican American community was reached when the mission was given a status separate from St. Patrick's Parish. The beginning phase had ended. Having achieved a new identity, the mission went on in the Depression and war years to increase its religious, educational, and social services to the area's children.

MEXICAN SISTERS AND FATHER COLLINS'S "KIDS"

Sister Rosario was superior of the band of six Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration who arrived in Salt Lake City from Mexico in November 1927. These sisters were dedicated by the spirit and rule of their religious congregation to a twenty-four-hour vigil before the Blessed Sacrament each day. Two sisters in successive one-hour turns knelt in prayer before the altar upon which Jesus Christ, sacramentally present, was loved and honored. The scapular of their maroon religious habit bore the figures of a gold chalice and a white altar bread in expression of their religious vocation. As the variety of programs and the number of children increased at the mission, the sisters were forced to curtail their vigil of adoration to night and early morning hours. Such a departure from their commitment met with stem disapproval from the supervisor-general, Sister Maria del Socorro del Sagrado Corazon, who came to visit the convent in 1931 and again in 1938.

During their twelve-year stay the sisters taught the children of the mission religion and arts and crafts. Twenty-six children attended the first communion class held in 1928. In October of the following year, the sisters inaugurated a three-hour kindergarten class which met each weekday afternoon. Beginning with ten children, the classes doubled in size during their three-year existence. Religion classes, in addition to Sunday school, were attended by children following the regular school day. A summer school was started in 1928. Besides religion, the sisters taught the boys printing, glass painting, woodwork, and carving, while the girls learned crocheting, sewing, and needlepoint. The Salt Lake Tribune of August 11, 1933, carried a picture of the mission children displaying their sewing, glass painting, and model building.

The mission's programs for children received added impetus with the appointment in 1930 of Father Collins as administrator. A native of Salem, New York, Father Collins had studied at Fordham University, at St. Mary's in Baltimore, and in Rome. His youth — he was thirty-one when he arrived in Salt Lake — energy, and resourcefulness were what the mission needed as it developed and grew toward eventual parish status. Using Father Collins's own notes, an article he wrote for the Intermountain Catholic, and the statements of many people, a story can be reconstructed.

For twenty-seven years the people of the mission, and later the parish, saw in the figure of Father Collins their church in action and their "Lord among them." Living in poverty — his only extravagance was the mission — Father Collins patched his suits and glued composition soles to his shoes. His salary was shared with his people. Each year, in order to visit his mother in Albany, New York, he borrowed on his insurance and repaid the loan month-by-month in the following year. He bore in silence much infuriation with the "good Catholic ladies" who tried to help but who betrayed snobbish and condescending attitudes toward the poor Spanish-speaking women with their ever-present babies and small children. Working by the motto that any system is better than none, Father Collins recorded everything he had to remember in a little black notebook. Classes, time, and leaders and teachers were organized as systematically as circumstances permitted.

It was to his "kids" that Father Collins gave his greatest attention, to the extent even of practicing games with the sisters before they played them with the children. From mid-June to mid-August each year, summer school was the major mission effort. By the second week of summer school, after the word had spread, children of every faith came streaming in to the 150-foot front area at 524-528 West Fourth South. A single day's attendance rose as high as two hundred fifty. Father Collins reported that

the vacation school of 1934 had an average daily attendance of 175 and included a large number of Greek Orthodox and LDS children. A parade with motorcycle escort made a fifteen-block march on July 9. It has now become a custom to have a grand celebration on the closing evening of the school.

Commenting on the same event, one newspaper wrote:

Father Collins in charge of the Vacation school explained it was not a new NRA idea but that the 150 kiddies of every faith and nationality come each morning to the free summer school . . . Mexican, Greek, Italian, Syrian, Armenian, English, Scandinavian, Irish and American children. Father Collins explained that 61 per cent were of Mexican parentage and for this reason Mexican sisters are in charge.

The summer school day started at nine o'clock with instructions from Father Collins and assignment to softball and volleyball teams. After forty-five minutes of religious training, classes dispersed in every direction, inside the building and out. The ball games followed with sisters and teachers playing along with the children. Handicrafts were next. The day's activities closed with a two-reeler featuring Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Cops, or William S. Hart and a snack treat.

An auction system was inaugurated in 1931 for all children's activities. Tokens were given for attendance and lessons. Friends of the mission saved small articles that would serve as prizes for the children. Four times each year the children brought all their tokens to bid for the articles.

In addition to the summer school, the mission was a center for many other children's activities. In 1934 a Boy Scout troop was formed under the leadership of "Uncle Ben" Ivory. Two years later this group evolved into a boys club which met for two-and-a-half hours twice a week. After a forty-minute religion class, the boys played checkers or Monopoly, listened to "Gang Busters," or watched an old-time movie, usually twice.

Father Collins and the sisters sought to teach a love for prayer and the liturgical services to the children. Both individuals and groups were instructed in the Latin responses and learned songs for the Mass and for feast days. A Daily Mass Society, which included thirty-six children, attended seven o'clock mass each morning followed by religion class, games, and refreshments. The Girls Sodality, begun in 1935 for girls fourteen to eighteen, met weekly at the mission and took all the prizes at the Diocesan Sodality picnic at Murray in 1936. In May and October, the rosary was recited each evening, and vespers were prayed on Sunday afternoons. The devotions and processions of Corpus Christi, Forty Hours, Holy Thursday, and Las Posadas at Christmas were celebrated with preparation and participation. Choirs were developed to sing the liturgy and to entertain at parish and civic functions.

On December 27, 1939, the Mexican Sisters said goodbye to the mission and its people to go to new assignments in California, Texas, and Mexico. Father Collins staged a farewell party for them at which the children did more crying than entertaining. "Las Madres" are remembered with nostalgia for their unwearying love for the children and the people of the mission, for their valiant efforts to learn English and to understand American ways — particularly American cooking — and for their artistic and sewing talents.

The day after the Mexican sisters' departure, four women of the Society of Missionary Catechists arrived at the convent. Coming from an American religious congregation founded by Father John J. Sigstein, a Chicago priest, and Bishop John Francis Noll of Fort Wayne, Indiana, these women were known as catechists until 1946 when a revision in their statutes changed their name to sisters.

Father Collins's notes for 1939 mention "the Mission has a parish song." To the music of a Mexican Marian hymn, the first verse was:

We're down on Fourth South, far from luxury, Down where the viaduct spans the D&RG, Most unpretentious, but somewhat quaint With Guadalupe as our patron Saint.

On January 17, 1944, the mission became a parish with Father Collins as its pastor. A temporary territory of one block was soon expanded and boundaries established from West Temple to Fifth West and from First South to Sixth South. Father Ramon Gerras was appointed assistant pastor for a short time. The parish list now included 1,813 persons.

Father John LaBranche, who assisted Father Collins for several summers while a student and seminarian, wrote:

Father Collins was not talented in the expression of his feelings in private or in public. He had to express them in action, sacrifice and untiring work. What he tried to tell the people of the Mission was that he loved them. He placed no conditions on his devotion. Good and bad, responsive or indifferent, young or old received his love and everything he was to bring them to God and to each other.

BUILDING UP THE NEW PARISH

During and following World War II the railroads were busy and employment was abundant. This was a period of great growth, building, and change in the new Guadalupe Parish. People, too, were on the move, and many Mexican American families came to the Westside from Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Loans insured by the Veterans Administration funded Rose Park subdivision in the northwest section of the city. As growth continued, church facilities became cramped. Not without a smile, Father Collins noted: "Chancery office ranks us 4th parish in the City in ability to save money and 2nd in the Diocese in number of souls registered."

On April 14, 1947, the first payment of $3,000 was made on a 165- foot square lot at Sixth West and Second North. A final payment of $3,000 was made on June 26, and on December 9 a surplus chapel was purchased from Camp Kearns for $2,400. The following spring, on May 16, the chapel was dedicated at the new site. Father Collins moved into quarters above the rear of the chapel, and Father Ignatius Strancar, a priest displaced from Yugoslavia, moved into the mission as assistant pastor on November 2.

Several social service activities and experiments were begun in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Guadalupe Parish. A duplex at 736-740 West Second North, across the street from die parish church, was purchased on February 19, 1949, for $5,800. After remodeling, it opened to the public on October 12 as the Westside Clinic under the sponsorship of Holy Cross Hospital. The following year the east half of the clinic was remodeled as a rectory for the pastor.

The Brothers of Social Service, an experimental effort by Bishop Duane G. Hunt to train men to assist priests in their work, began in April 1953 with the arrival of Brothers Peter and Michael. On September 10 they accepted their first postulants whose training was directed successively by Fathers Collins, Verdi, Fagiolo, and Harman at the mission. The group slowly dwindled away in the next five years.

New building construction was in the air again in 1953. Money had been raised in a citywide drive for a Catholic elementary school on the Westside. Father Collinshad purchased three lots at 850 West Sixth North as a possible site. When, much to his disappointment, the new Bishop Glass School was located on Goshen Street to the north of St. Patrick's Hall, talk started about building a new church for the parish at the Sixth North location. Father Collins thought the plan too expensive, and after many discussions with parishioners and bishop, he won the decision to add an east wing to the existing church on Second North. The new wing was dedicated on January 26, 1957.

Later that year, on August 31, Father Collins died at Holy Cross Hospital. The parish bulletin of the following day announced: "Your prayer is requested for the repose of the saintly soul of our beloved pastor, Father Collins, who went to his eternal reward last night at 6 p.m."

During the next few years several priests served the parish briefly. Then, in December 1959, Father Thomas J. Kaiser assumed the leadership of the parish, although Father John Sanders, whose health was failing, remained as pastor. Father Sanders died on September 22, 1961. In this interim period, the parish launched a successful fund drive for a new school bus, organized a Boy Scout troop, and opened the Guadalupe Boys Club under the leadership of "Big Jim" Hale and, later, that of Willie Price.

Mrs. James E. Cosgriff, a wealthy member of Cathedral Parish, died on March 24, 1961, leaving a bequest to Guadalupe Parish, as follows:

Bequest for a church in the Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I give to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salt Lake City, A Corporation Sole One Hundred Thousand Dollars ($100,000.00) toward the construction of a church building in the Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Two and a half years later, on September 22, 1963, Father Kaiser announced in the parish bulletin:

On Tuesday, September 17th, our beloved Bishop, Mr. [Alan] Brockbank, a couple of lawyers and I met in the Bishop's office for the transfer of title to a 10-acre piece of land located on the northeast corner of 9th North and Redwood Road. We became the proud owner of the 10 beautiful acres. The sale price was $60,000. We gave our 3-acre plot and $25,000 for the property. Great things are going to happen to our parish. I know that you are as thrilled about this as I am.

Thus "Operation New Guadalupe" was launched with plans for a new church and religious and social center. The ten acres were divided into small lots on a large map placed at the rear of the church. The "buy a lot" campaign continued into February 1964. While not fully successful, with a debt still remaining on the tract, the campaign gave to the parish a site for future planning.

In the next few years, members of Guadalupe Parish undertook a variety of service activities aimed at youth and at those in need, and a Parish Council was elected to oversee many parish activities and concerns. One service activity — the Food for Christ Hungry effort — was begun in 1964. Frequently a Sunday would be announced as "Canned Milk Sunday," "Staple Sunday," "Corn Sunday," "Soup Sunday," etc., and the people coming to mass that day would bring a can or two of the kind of food requested. This provided emergency food for needy families and for St. Thomas House on Fourth North next to the tracks. "Big Jim" Hale started this home for transient men which is now St. Mary's Home at 1206 West Second South directed by John Bush.

The youth of the parish were likewise active in the social concerns of the day. The story of Carol Elizondo who organized the Junior High School Confraternity of Christian Doctrine is especially inspiring. Carol, who died of cancer on April 9, 1970, was given the Catholic Youth Organization medal posthumously for her efforts. As described by the Deseret News of April 24, 1970, the club

was an instant success. There were parties, ice and roller skating outings, programs, community and neighborhood projects, a lot of activity. It was such a success that earlier this week the members of her church honored Carol by renaming the club. From now on it will be known as the Carol Elizondo Club.

Fifty people were elected to the Parish Council in November 1967 by those parishioners attending masses. The group included men, women, and high school students. The council organized several commissions: financial, charity, administration, confraternity of Christian doctrine, maintenance, social action, youth, and, later, an altar commission. A ways and means commission included the entire council, and the spiritual formation commission included those on particular commissions. Guadalupe was growing in both organization and in size. The parish census for 1968 reported 2,537 people.

On January 28, 1969, Father Kaiser became pastor at Magna after more dian eight years at Guadalupe. Father William H. Flegge was appointed pastor, and Father Reyes Rodriguez served as assistant for several months. The Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, teachers at Judge Memorial High School, served the parish on weekends.

GUADALUPE CENTER

In January 1961, Father Jerald H. Merrill was assigned to the mission. He was told by one of the parishioners after his first Sunday sermon in Spanish, "Father, I prayed during Mass that the Holy Spirit help you to speak better Spanish."

The people at the mission were anxious at this time to remodel the interior of the mission chapel. The sanctuary walls were paneled and the floor carpeted. A gas furnace was installed to replace the six gas stoves that had heated the building. Outside and inside painting and a new roof completed the new look. The mission was given more autonomy from the parish, and soon baptisms and weddings were conducted there. All adults were invited to join the Guadalupana Society which met monthly to discuss problems they felt to be related to the mission. Although only one-third of the forty-five families of the mission were represented, this monthly "town meeting" was a democratic way of decision making. In 1962, they decided to rent a 2,000 square-foot room under the Rio Grande Hotel, 424 West Third South, at $150 per month. This became an active social center for children, teenagers, and adults for fun and fund-raising. This was the initial step toward — and in fact was named — Guadalupe Center. A 100-foot lot east on Mead Avenue from Emery Street was purchased in 1964. A social center and, later, a church were planned.

During these years there was a strong emphasis on leadership training. The people were anxious to "get somewhere," both with themselves and their mission. A series of cursillos — three-day renewals of Christian living and leadership — attracted forty-three people from the mission, and at least thirty attended the Gabriel Richard Leadership Course in Spanish or in English. The feeling was expressed often in Guadalupana meetings that if a large Guadalupe Center could be supported, the mission could "really do something."

Then, in March 1966, the present Guadalupe Center, a 7,200- square-foot warehouse at 346 West First South, was leased by the mission for five years at $500 per month. The $8,000 that had been saved from fund-raising at the original center soon vanished into the costs of remodeling the warehouse for maximum utility. Many volunteer hours under the leadership of Manuel G. Martinez and Oliver Ulibarri and the indulgence of creditors brought remodeling to completion. The concept was simple. Guadalupe Center was to become a gathering place for families, teenagers, and adults. In addition, it would provide a meeting place for Mexican Americans and people from the larger community to plan projects and organizations answering the needs of local Mexican Americans.

A number of programs and projects did develop successfully. The Westside Catholic Credit Union, which began before the center opened, now has 309 members and $61,000 in assets. The Voluntary Improvement Program (VIP), which was started in the first summer to provide adult basic education, has maintained an average enrollment of fifty students or more with a decreasing student-tutor ratio now almost one to one. The Westside Family Cooperative, while not significant in size or accomplishment with its sixty members, did demonstrate over two years the feasibility of the cooperative idea locally. In September 1969, the Co-op became the Westside Family Market, a food outlet for needy families, which is supported by twenty-five Catholic and Protestant parishes and several private agencies in Salt Lake Valley. In the first year of operation, the market distributed emergency food valued in excess of ten thousand dollars to over four hundred families. Another success story involves Utah Nonprofit Housing Corporation which was formed by a group representing churches and cooperative associations. To date, Utah Nonprofit has rehabilitated four houses in the inner city under FHA Section 22 lh and constructed seven new houses in Magna under FHA Section 235. Preliminary approval has been given to the building of townhouse and apartment units under a co-op housing plan.

With all these efforts bearing fruit, the Mexican American community still lacked an organization oriented to civil rights and economic opportunity. Finally, at a mass meeting held in December 1967 at the center, the one hundred fifty people present chose a Central Action Committee to begin such an organization. The resulting SOCIO (Spanishspeaking Organization for Community, Integrity, and Opportunity) has become a statewide voice and social action group in Weber, Salt Lake, Davis, and Carbon counties. While lack of staff restricts the efforts of SOCIO, progress has been made in the fields of employment, housing, scholarships, and participation in educational planning and evaluation.

Economic and employment programs have been further primed by such organizations as Hispanamer, Inc., a local development corporation begun by thirty men and women to assist one another in entering the business world. Loans are available from the Small Business Administration for joint and individual business ventures. The Utah Migrant Council, funded for $85,000 in May 1969, provides for educational, health, legal, and family needs of the six thousand Mexican Americans who enter the state from Texas each spring to work on Utah farms. The program has grown out of its original office at the center and is now located at 724 South Third East.

Activities for young people were also taken into account in planning Guadalupe Center. In the beginning, the youth program included boxing, judo, skiing at Alta, and summer camping. In March 1969 the three-story Thunderbird Youth Center was leased at 44 North Third West with the help of the Salt Lake Rotary Club and several business firms. While a full-time director was employed, a basic concept of the program was to involve teenagers themselves in planning each week's activities and to provide them with information and direction toward educational and employment opportunities.

Over the past few years while programs and organizations were being formed, the greatest contributor to the warmth and fellowship at Guadalupe Center has been La Morena Cafe. Started six months after the center opened, La Morena survived a slow beginning to become the principal source of revenue for the center and its projects.

Guadalupe Mission was permanently closed on July 1, 1970, and construction of a new concrete viaduct on Fourth South began a few days later. Father Flegge was named vice-rector at the cathedral, and Father Merrill and Father Patrick R. Mclnally were appointed to a team ministry at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish as co-pastors.

A new phase of parish activities began three weeks later, on July 21, when Bishop Joseph Lennox Federal purchased for Guadalupe Parish the Sixteenth Ward Chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 129 North Fifth West for $35,000 from Diocesan Development Drive funds. Plans had already been made for use of the building, and on September 8 the Early Learning Center opened. Children four, five, and six years of age attend individualized classes. A demonstration program for four-year-olds who come from Spanish-speaking homes is taught in Spanish. As skills in Spanish develop, the children will begin working with English.

Six classrooms at the Hacienda are available for religious instruction, and office space there has been given to a field project of the University of Utah Graduate School of Social Work under the direction of Luis B. Medina. Then, in the spring of 1971, the parish youth program directed by Paul Ausick and Bill Walsh moved into the Hacienda.

Continuing a tradition begun in 1927 by the Mexican sisters, the Daughters of Charity, in response to the request of Bishop Federal in the fall of 1967, came to serve the poor on the Westside. They have worked untiringly and cheerfully in home visiting, organizing activities for children and elderly, teaching religion and basic education skills, conducting summer schools, and working with related agencies. The first two sisters, Mary Frances and Adele, served for two years. They organized the used clothing, appliance, and furniture operations of Catholic Charities and Guadalupe Center into the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, 625 South State. The store is presently operated by Bennie E. Martinez with the profits going to support the charitable works of the sisters. Sister Joan succeeded the first two sisters. She conducted adult religion classes and a summer program for children along with her work with individual families. At present, Sisters Delia and Mary Martha are completing their second year of work with energy and creativity.

Looking back over the years since the founding of the Italian Mission on the Westside in 1920, we can see the gradual emergence of Guadalupe as a distinct community within the larger urban area. The problems and struggles of tiie past fifty years have been great, and difficult challenges lie ahead. But the people of Guadalupe, in union with others, are determined to forge a new future for the Mexican American in Salt Lake City — a future of dignity and justice, opportunity and equality. With all that has been learned and accomplished to date, the hope of achieving this end is great. As de Tocqueville wrote, early in American history, "The evils which are endured with patience so long as they are inevitable seem intolerable as soon as a hope can be entertained of escaping them." It is this hopeful unrest that Guadalupe Parish can work to resolve.

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