ST. AUGUSTINE (1887)

Brighton began in 1870 as Hughes Station on the Denver Pacific Railway. Not until 1882 was it platted as Brighton by Daniel F. Carmichael, who named it for his wife's hometown in New York. Mary Stieber, in her 114-page centennial history of St. Augustine's, says the first Masses "were said in the Higgins Bar, with planks placed across beer kegs to make seats." The saloon belonged to John P. Higgins, a pioneer rancher and tavernkeeper who became the first sheriff of Adams County in 1902 and later served as mayor of Brighton.

Under the auspices of Bishop Machebeuf, William J. Howlett and twelve Catholic families organized the parish in 1887. D.F. Carmichael donated a church site. John Stieber, a homesteader, farmer, and dairy man, gave $100 toward building a church, with the stipulation that it be brick. This quaint church--which looked like a brick house with a little wooden steeple--had a pump organ and rose window given by the Higgins family. It was completed in 1888 for $1,500 at 139 North Division (now Main) Street (a site now occupied by the Brighton Blade newspaper).

Father Howlett, historian of the early Colorado Church and biographer of Bishop Machebeuf, proved to be an energetic pastor. Besides building St. Augustine's, he constructed a series of mission churches along the Platte at railroad towns. In 1888, he moved to Sterling, where he built St. Anthony Church. James G. Hickey took over at Brighton.

By 1890, Brighton had grown to a town of 306 souls, and Carmichael donated a new church site at the southeast corner of 3rd Avenue and Bush Street. St. Augustine Church was moved to the new site, where a small house next door became the rectory. A series of short-term pastors followed Father Hickey. One of them, D.C. Robertson, wrote to Bishop Matz on August 2, 1902:

The church was in dilapidated state--almost gone to ruin. The same might be said of the house; it needed renovating, costing me almost $300.00 for the repair of the church and house.

Bernard J. Froegel, a German immigrant sponsored in Eastern seminaries by Bishop Matz, became St. Augustine's ninth pastor in 1904. This energetic clergyman built a new, two-story brick, $2,500 rectory and also helped found the Brighton Public Library. Subsequently, Father Froegel built mission churches in Akron (1907), Julesburg (1908), Fort Lupton (1909), Welby (1912), Keenesburg, (1918) and Hudson (1918). Besides these missions, the "Mother Church of Northeastern Colorado" also sponsored services at Barr Lake, Dacono, the Denver Poor Farm at Henderson, Frederick, Gilcrist, Hardin, Hudson, Masters, Orchard, Platteville, Roggen, and Weldona until other parishes could be created to help with the churching of northeastern Colorado.

Father Froegel also planned a Catholic hospital for Brighton, for which D.F. Carmichael once again donated a site. The hospital was never built, but the site served the community well anyway; the Brighton Volunteer Fire Department flooded it in winter to create a public skating rink.

Emile J. Verschraeghen succeeded Father Froegel in 1929. This fiery red-haired priest from Belgium, generally accompanied by a halo of pipe smoke, set about building a new church. Brighton had grown to a town of 3,394 by 1930, thanks in part to the thriving Great Western sugar beet refinery and the Kuner canning, food-processing, and pickle plants. The new church site, occupying an entire block, was purchased in 1929 for $10,000, the same price for which the old parish plant was sold to T.A. Allen. He converted the church to a mortuary and the rectory to a private residence. A new $49,000 rectory and church with a basement parish hall were completed in 1930, with the old church's rose window and two Gothic windows installed over the altar.

Howell B. Baber, who surveyed the church for the Works Progress Administration Historical Records project in 1939, left a detailed description:

Modernized Romanesque type of red pressed brick, semi-tower containing two bells which harmonize. One half of church inside completed, altar installed temporarily until completion of church which will take on the form of a cross. Plastered walls. Altar of white painted wood, communion rail of wood, wooden pews. Two small,sacred art colored windows to left and right of Altar. All other windows colored but with no religious significance. Organ and choir balcony in rear of church. Father Weakland has taken an unusually enthusiastic interest in his Spanish charges and during the past two years has, instead of seeing them spend their earnings on luxuries, imbued in them a spirit of thrift.

Bernard Weakland, who became pastor in 1938, arranged for sisters from Denver to teach catechism classes two hours each week. In 1944, he collaborated with the Archbishops' Guild, an organization of Catholic women pursuing missionary work under the direction of Monsignor Gregory Smith, to purchase a house at 6th Avenue and Egbert Street for $6,000. By September 1945, it had been converted to a catechetical center operated by the Missionary Sisters of Victory Noll. The sisters also traveled from their Brighton headquarters, which was christened Saint Augustine Convent, to teach religion in Barr Lake, Fort Lupton, Lafayette, and Wattenberg. Father Weakland, a much loved pastor, died in 1948. Catholics and non-Catholics alike flooded St. Augustine's for the solemn funeral Mass with Archbishop Vehr presiding.

Roy Figlino, the next pastor, immediately endeared himself by adopting Father Weakland's distraught pet Pekingese, Zookie. Father Figlino, as assistant pastor at St. Augustine's, had shown his compassion during World War II by ministering to the German and Italian prisoners of war sent to work farms in Brighton and Fort Lupton. These POWs joyously joined their voices in Latin Masses, singing and praying with special earnestness for war's end.

Father Figlino delighted the many agriculturalists in his parish by leading church processions out to bless surrounding farms and ranches. Hispanic farmers and field workers fancied the parish's 1958 construction of the Shrine of St. Isidore, a Spanish saint revered as the patron of farmers.

In 1955, Father Figlino joined Archbishop Vehr and the Victory Noll nuns in dedicating St. Augustine School, a modern, $50,000 brick structure at 7th Avenue and Egbert Street. Before the order withdrew from Brighton in 1969, thirty-seven sisters had lived and worked at St. Augustine's over the course of twenty-four years.

Father Figlino tended Our Lady of Sorrows mission in Eastlake until its closing in 1970 and Our Lady of Grace Mission in Wattenberg. St. Augustine's started a Knights of Columbus Council (1950), opened a credit union (1960), and contributed generously to town enterprises, notably scholarships for Brighton High School graduates and improvements in the City Park.

In 1966, the parish broke ground for its third church, on the twelve lots that had been donated sixty years earlier for a Catholic hospital. This emphatically modern church, dedicated by Archbishop Casey on September 24, 1968, was built of native wood and stone to replicate a sacred tent where a pilgrim people might gather for worship. A detached cement and steel streamlined bell tower soars over the front yard.

Father Figlino was transferred to St. Mary Magdalene parish in Denver in 1969, when Patrick J. Kennedy became the new pastor at St. Augustine's. In the new church, Father Kennedy soon encountered some of the turbulence of the 1970s, including an arsonist's work in 1971. In 1973, armed protestors seized the church, demanding that Brighton build a youth center. Father Kennedy worked with local authorities to defuse this clash, then donated the old church building as the Ricardo Falc¢n Memorial Community Center.

Tensions between Hispanics and Anglos were eased with the help of Sam Trujillo, a parishioner who became one of the first permanent deacons in the archdiocese. Trujillo served as president of the first parish council and as Adams County Jail chaplain, and helped establish the Crusillo movement in the archdiocese. Father James Purfield, a Spanish-speaking priest who established a mariachi choir, served as pastor from 1977 until taking a missionary assignment in 1981. By that time, the parish had grown to include over 800 families, many of whom were Hispanic. Jude Geilenkirchen became the pastor who presided over St. Augustine's centennial celebration, followed in 1988 by Stephen V. Padilla.