ST. FRANICS OF ASSISI (1919)

Reverend Bernard Froegel of Brighton stepped off the Union Pacific train in 1911 to say the first Weldona Mass in Schafer's Hall. Theodora Arnold, who owned a nearby hotel, put up visitors, including First Communion and confirmation classes, which she helped prepare.

After Theodora and Henry Arnold donated a church site at Warner Avenue and Cottage Street, bricks were shipped out on the Union Pacific to the little South Platte River farm town. Members of the congregation hauled them to the site to build St. Francis of Assisi Church. Dedicated on November 1, 1919, the little Gothic church was tended first from Brighton, then from Fort Lupton (1920-1924), Stoneham (1925-1926), Brush (1927-1967), and, most recently, from Fort Morgan, which lies fourteen miles to the southeast.

Following its 1893 founding, Weldona attracted many Italian farm families who supported their church with dinners and dances. One of the pastors who cared for the St. Francis mission was wary of such fund-raisers. Father Peter U. Sasse wrote to Bishop Tihen on July 18, 1928, enclosing a newspaper clipping about the St. Francis Ladies Guild and Altar Society's dance hall permit from the Morgan County Commissioners, warning that "these road house dance halls have been the cause of untold scandal and agony to decent people." Several ladies of the parish, who have compiled more detailed histories for the archdiocesan archives, hasten to add that the dances were "always decent."

From 1948 until 1981, every man, woman, and child of the parish had been called upon to work the annual ravioli dinner, a fund-raiser that drew up to 1,000 guests. In 1961, the Union Pacific gave St. Francis's its twenty-two-by-fifty-foot frame depot, which was converted to a three-room parish hall. Once again, the congregation of two dozen families managed to raise enough--$600--to furnish their new facility, thanks to prayer, hard work, and a lot of ravioli.