| To round out the first year of St. Anthony of Padua, Fr. William Barnickel, O.F.M. joined the parish as first assistant. A Boy Scout troop was organized and a Knights of Columbus Council was in the planning stages. The men of the parish stepped forward to remodel the old cancer hospital and this building became known as St. Anthony Hall. A parish census revealed the parish had 1,129 families. Plans were drawn up for a parish school and church.
The new year of 1960 saw the launching of a building fund campaign. On a March Sunday morning, with some snow still in evidence, ground was broken for the gym/temporary church. During the first two years the children continued to attend St. Francis de Sales school but the C.C.D. classes were conducted at Parmadale. |
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St. Anthony Federal Credit Union was formed to serve the parishioners.
It was decided that the first fund raiser for the parish would be a spaghetti dinner to be coordinated with the first carnival. Equipment was borrowed and gallons and gallons of spaghetti sauce were prepared in tubs in the basement of the Thesmacher home, which was later to become St. Anthony Hall. The dinners, complete with salad and bread, were passed through the basement windows of the home to the waiting diners. Our parishioners certainly had no lack of ingenuity.
By January 1961 the building of the gym/temporary church was sufficiently advanced so that the first Mass could be offered in the church on Sunday, January 29. A "few items" were still incomplete - a platform for the altar, confessionals, rebuilt pews and kneelers. |
