ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY (1911)

Welby is a small town on the northern outskirts of Denver in Adams County, where many Italians planted vegetable farms along the South Platte River. Joseph Bosetti, a young priest just arrived from Italy, bicycled out to Welby in 1911 to say the first Mass in Rotolo's Grocery Store.

Dominic Rotolo, the grocer, spearheaded fund raising for a church on an acre of ground bought from the Denver, Laramie & Northwestern Railway, which had platted Welby in 1910. A handsome, simple red brick church was completed for $1,300 and dedicated on May 12, 1912. The Servites, an Italian order, took charge of the Assumption church, which they have served ever since. Father Stanislaus "John" Giambastiani, the first Servite pastor, lived in the tiny sacristy behind the altar. Weekdays, he traveled about the parish, blessing homes and fields and welcoming dinner invitations.

The many Catholic children in Welby led Father John to open a school in 1920. Mother Mary Veronica and three other Sisters Servants of Mary handled thirty-one grade school students and four high schoolers the first year. The sisters offered not only reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion but also classes in ballet, music, rural life, sports, and swimming. In 1950, a $40,000 gymnasium was added to the parish plant for assemblies, athletics, and the popular spaghetti dinners. Although the high school closed in 1952, and the nuns left in the 1970s, Assumption School remains open as a kindergarten and grade school. Bingo games, begun in 1963, became a winning way to finance education.

In winter, the brick church was heated by a feeble coal stove, next to which the elderly and children were given the pews. After the 1933 South Platte River flood almost swept away the church, parishioners helped to persuade the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dike along the South Platte River. This dike, now part of the Platte River Greenway hike/bike trail, would delight Father Bosetti, who once toured his parish on a two-wheeler.

Father John started Our Lady of Sorrows in Eastlake in 1917. Although this mission was closed after the 1950s, Holy Trinity mission in Westminister and Our Lady Mother of the Church in Commerce City have become independent parishes. At Assumption parish, a handsome brick rectory (1916) and convent (1922) were built by Henry Kline on land he donated. Father John, who had left Assumption in 1924, returned as pastor in 1945. Finding his little church jampacked on Sundays, he enlarged the structure. In the process, he carefully preserved the old bell tower, vestibule, sanctuary, and windows, while adding a second matching bell tower and installing a new Hammond organ.

Mrs. Raymond (Agnes Porreco) Domenico, who compiled the seventy-five-year history of Assumption parish in 1987, reported that the annual bazaar and spaghetti dinners date back to the 1920s when "outdoor feasts were held during the summer months on Saturday and Sunday evenings to celebrate the feasts of Saint Anthony, Saint Rocco and the Assumption." Another traditional gala came after the Christmas holidays when, as Agnes Domenico recalled,

four or five families would get together to butcher their hogs, render the lard and make the Italian sausage that was either canned or dried for winter meals. In the middle of all this activity was Father John, to give his blessing on the work and then to join with everyone at dinner followed by card games of "Tresette," "Briscola" and "Scopa" and a keg of beer.

Four-day-long bazaars, as Agnes Domenico recorded, were also "held in November after the farmers had finished their harvests and had more time. . . . The bazaars were held in the upstairs of the school and the spaghetti dinner was cooked in the classrooms. The school children enjoyed this as they were given two days off from school." Joseph M. Carbone, OSM, pastor since 1988, reported in 1989 that Assumption parish now has over 1,100 families

of whom 40 percent are Italian and 30 percent are Hispanics, along with Irish, Germans, and many other groups. The grade school enrolls 140 students taught by eight lay teachers. Rotollo's old grocery store--now a garage--is still next door. And like Rotollo and those old timers who met with Monsignor Bosetti in 1911, we're still preparing for the future. We've only just begun!