ST. ANNE (1944)

The resort town of Grand Lake was founded in 1879 on the shores of Colorado's largest natural lake. What had been a haven for the Utes became a fashionable summering place,which boasted the world's highest yacht anchorage.

As early as 1906, circuit-riding priests celebrated Masses in Grand County, usually at Kremmling, which was on the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. Not until 1944 did Archbishop Vehr assign Father Thomas Patrick Barry to establish a parish in Grand County. Father Barry, an adventuresome, bold, and gregarious native of County Clare, welcomed the challenge. Besides, he reminisced in 1986, "I loved to fish--like the Apostles before me. I started out with worms, but moved up to flies, then daredevils, and since 1975 I've been trolling with triple teasers." (John McDermott of the Tripple Teaser Manufacturing Company of Kent, Washington, has named a triple teaser the "Monsignor Thomas Barry Kokanee Killer," the monsignor reports.)

On June 28, 1944, Father Barry became the founding pastor of what was initially called the Catholic parish of Kremmling-Grand Lake. While making St. Peter's in Kremmling his headquarters, Father Barry said Mass in Grand Lake at the private chapel of Martin J. O'Fallon, the founder of O'Fallon Plumbing and Supply Company in Denver. O'Fallon named the chapel for his wife, Anne, and hired Franciscan priests to come up and say Mass in the summer, putting them up at the Grand Lake Lodge. In 1945, Father Barry purchased the land for St. Anne's and moved the original building from the O'Fallon's private property on the shore of Grand Lake to the present site.

"Mr. O'Fallon was a fine Irish gentleman," recalls Monsignor Barry. "He never let on to anyone that he had donated that chapel, just felt it was part of his Christian duty."

State Senator Dennis Gallagher remembers visiting Grand Lake as a toddler and finding: "At the stop light in the middle of town, Monsignor Barry was standing there in his cassock selling raffle tickets to support the parish. We bought some, figuring that you couldn't get through the light otherwise."

Theodore Haas, who in 1954 became the second pastor of the Kremmling-Grand Lake parish, built the new St. Anne's in 1957. This beautiful church is an A-frame resting on sandstone walls. After the congregation moved into this rustic church surrounded by ponderosa pines, the old church was sold and moved to Grand Avenue across from the Town Park where it became the home of the Comic T Shirt Shop.

H. Robert White, who became pastor in 1986, oversaw establishment of St. Anne's as an independent parish and served as the first year-round resident pastor. In 1988, Father White completed an $8,000 remodeling of the interior, highlighted by modern stained glass windows depicting local lake and mountain scenes. Father White handles a vast and beautiful parish, sprawling over 4,000 mountainous acres in Grand, Jackson, and Summit counties, with missions in Granby and Winter Park.

Monsignor Barry still summers in Grand Lake, where he celebrated his fiftieth anniversary as a priest in 1988 and reminisced, "Grand Lake is a grand place, prayerful and uplifting, where I, like Our Lord and the Apostles and many priests before me, spend my time fishing--for fish and for human souls, Lord bless us."