HOLY NAME (1894)

The U.S. Army proudly arrived in Denver in 1887 to establish a new military base on Bear Creek north of Kenyon Avenue. Nine days later, a distressed ranch owner, Mason Howard, pointed out they were on his spread and steered the troops a mile south to the other side of Kenyon.

Once the army began building its fort in the right spot, towns quickly sprang up around the base--Sheridan, Fort Logan, and Englewood. Local Catholics bought a church site two blocks east of the Denver & Rio Grande passenger depot, from pioneer settler Issac E. McBroom. After this site was purchased for $130 in 1894, Bishop Matz created what he called St. Patrick parish.

Ignatius M. Grom, the pioneer pastor, oversaw construction of a strange-looking church with two-foot thick walls of Castle Rock rhyolite, a low, almost flat roof, and square windows. It looked like the basement of a bigger church-to-be or a military bunker. This thirty-one-by-sixty-foot subterranean church seated about 130 parishioners, most of whom were Fort Logan personnel.

Fort Logan, a raunchy town of nine saloons, one general store, and a post office, needed a church. Yet St. Patrick's was not untouched by its surroundings and may have been the unnamed church described by Ralph Moody in his classic book about the Bear Creek Valley, Little Britches. Moody and his brother went to services there and picked up the army language used by children of Fort Logan personnel. When they brought this language home, their mother ordered them never to go to that church again.

Following several short-term missionary pastors, Father Richard Brady, the chaplain at Loretto Heights, was assigned to St. Patrick's in 1896. Father Brady, who was named a domestic prelate and vicar general in 1913, continued to minister until his death in 1940 to both the academy ladies and the army men.

Anthony A. Weinzapfel became chaplain at Loretto Heights and pastor of St. Patrick's in 1942. When Fort Logan closed as an army base in 1946, Father Weinzapfel jumped at the opportunity to improve his homey, one-building parish with some army surplus structures. For the bargain price of $1,000, he purchased a former barracks, had it placed on a new basement foundation next to the church, and remodeled it as a rectory.

Father Weinzapfel, who found himself rattling around in this 108-by-twenty-five-foot frame rectory, converted part of it into a school, doing much of the carpentry work himself. He and a lay teacher opened the first grade in 1952 and kept adding grades each year until reaching the sixth. Acquisition of another Fort Logan surplus barracks in 1954 enabled this prefab parish to boast six classrooms, three bedrooms, a dining room, kitchen, housekeeper's quarters, and a large parish hall. The elementary school also doubled as a summer religion school, conducted by the Sisters of Loretto from nearby Loretto Heights and later by the Victory Noll sisters from Holy Ghost Center in Denver.

Father Weinzapfel established a parish credit union in 1958 and also urged parishioners to donate to a building fund. The following year, the old stone basement church was demolished to begin a $200,000 replacement. Denver architects Victor D. Langhart and John F. McGuire planned a low-slung modern brick church, using gold and light woods inside and a six-foot crucifix over the main altar. To avoid confusion with the three other St. Patrick churches in Northern Colorado, the parish was officially renamed Holy Name on September 23, 1960. The new, 137-by-eighty-five-foot church, seating 800, was first used for Christmas Midnight Mass in 1960. Not until April 24, 1961 did Archbishop Vehr formally dedicate the new house of God with a Solemn Pontifical Mass.

Father Weinzapfel retired in 1970, to be followed by Thomas McMahon (1971-1977) and Frank G. Morfeld, VF, (1978-present). Although Holy Name School closed in 1968, the parish thrived, claiming almost 500 families in the 1980s when it presented a far different scene than in the 1890s. Then, the homely stone dugout known as St. Patrick's perched on a bleak prairie hillside. Now, a modern church with an ultramodern steeple overlooks a sea of new suburban homes. Traffic rushes by on South Federal Boulevard and West Hampden Avenue to the east and north, but to the west lie the peaceful fields of Fort Logan National Cemetery, whose graves include those of some pioneer parishioners.