ST. MARY (1985)

Eagle's few, scattered Catholic clans have hung on to their often priestless parish ever since 1911, according to parish historian Eileen Randall. In 1911, Mrs. E. E. Glenn organized about twenty-two Catholic families under the guidance of Joseph P. Carrigan, pastor of St. Stephen's in Glenwood Springs.

Masses were said in the Glenn home until the old Eagle schoolhouse and lots were purchased in 1916 for $1,100. A donation from Denver and Colorado Springs mining man Verner Z. Reed helped the parish to pay for these transactions and fix up the old school with ten pews. The Catholic Church Extension Society of Chicago donated an altar and a tabernacle.

Father Carrigan offered the first Mass in the present church in 1917. The tiny mission donated the rear of its building, in 1945, as a home for the Eagle Public Library. Having these books nearby was helpful to the Benedictine sisters from Canon City who came up in the summers to teach CCD classes.

Joseph J. Leberer became Eagle County's first resident pastor, based at Minturn but began offering regular Sunday Masses at St. Mary's. As summer tourists squeezed into the little mission, Father Leberer expanded the church by moving the altar back into an adjacent room in 1953. The old homemade pews were replaced with elaborately carved oak pews from the old St. John Church at East 5th Avenue and Josephine Street in Denver. Parishioners donated lumber and labor to remodel St. Mary's and painted the outside a soft desert rose. In 1985, the 185 members of St. Mary's became a full-fledged parish, with their own resident pastor for their historic church.

John E. Dold, the first resident pastor, worked with parishioners in 1986 to add a new nave and remodel the old building. Frank Deml, SVD, the second resident pastor, further remodeled the church, which is now adminstered by John F. O'Shea, SJ. Archbishop Stafford dedicated the remodeled church on January 4, 1989.

Harold Koonce compiled a brief parish history, recalling the days when the congregation met in the old school house with

an old-fashioned stove, which when ignited with wood and banked overnight with coal, would raise a mid-winter temperature from 20 below zero to a barely tolerable 50 degrees by morning, when a priest, who had travelled by train from Glenwood, would say Mass for us--once a month, if we were that fortunate.

Koonce noted proudly at the 1989 dedication that the

fine new nave holds 200 plus persons, two classrooms, two offices, a big basement room outfitted with a full kitchen. When we are able, we plan to add more pews, to rebuild our old bell tower, to carpet our basement--all a tribute to Our Lord, and incidentally to our people.