ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST (1902)

William A.H. Loveland, president of the Colorado Central Railroad, gave his name to the town founded in 1877 where his railroad crossed the Big Thompson River. That year, the missionary priest of northeastern Colorado, William J. Howlett, apparently said the first Mass in the railroad section house. Eight years later, J.J. LePage, pastor of St. Joseph's in Fort Collins, began saying Masses regularly in the home of Daniel E. Mulvaney for Loveland's handful of Catholics.

In 1892, Reverend Edward Downey bought a little house at 8th and Cleveland to refit as a chapel. There, Fort Collins pastors continued to say Mass until Father G. Joseph LaJeunesse purchased three lots at 5th and Grant. Father LaJeunesse sold the old chapel, using the proceeds and his own funds to build a splendid little brick church that he named for John the Evangelist. Four miniature bell towers and a grand large one topped this stately Romanesque landmark, completed in 1902.

Bishop Matz, in 1909, assigned William J. Howlett as Longmont's first resident pastor. Father Howlett, who had had said the first Mass in Loveland thirty-two years earlier, lived in the sacristy where he cooked for himself. Eventually, he built a rectory, put a gallery in the church, and had the interior painted with frescoes before he retired in 1913 to the Sisters of Loretto Motherhouse in Kentucky, where he lived out his final years as chaplain.

George O. Ducharme, pastor from 1913 to 1944, was a French Canadian who came to Colorado in search of the climate cure. He never fully recovered but dutifully served the parish as well as St. Walter's mission in Estes Park until his retirement in 1944.

Francis J. Kappes, a German-American priest recruited from the archdiocese of Cincinnati, guided St. John's through the tremendous growth of the post-World War II era. Father Kappes raised a $10,000 school fund, recruited three Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis from Joliet, Illinois, as teachers and hired a young Catholic architect, Victor D. Langhart, to design a school. On the west side of town, Father Kappes paid $21,000 for the 13.5 acre Prescott spread and arranged for its annexation to Longmont as St. John's Addition in order to secure utilities and other town services. Archbishop Vehr blessed the plans with kind words and checks totaling $3,000.

Financing and construction details for St. John the Evangelist School typify the finely tuned church and school construction operations of the Vehr era. As usual, Bosworth, Sullivan & Company of Denver handled financing, arranging a $120,000, fourteen-year loan at 4 percent for a 1 and 1/2 percent commission. Young Father Kappes fretted over the delays and got fatherly advice from Archbishop Vehr in a June 26, 1956, letter: "Yours is the same story of building with its interminable delays. I think it might be best to delay the public dedication until the entire structure is completed."

The old Prescott farmhouse was converted to a convent. Nearby, architect Langhart designed a modern, $160,000 showcase school that attracted attention for its innovative engineering. A 250-ton single slab of precast concrete was lifted over the fifty-b-y100-foot auditorium. Supported only by perimeter upright beams, this roof capped an auditorium without any middle-of-the-room supports to block views. Father Kappes put it into service as a new church for his rapidly growing parish when the building was finally finished and dedicated by Archbishop Vehr on May 1, 1957.

The lovely old downtown church briefly served as the Knights of Columbus Hall before being sold in 1957. Twenty years later, the old landmark was elegantly restored and recycled as roomy office space. Parishioners constructed a new rectory for Father Kappes on the spacious new church property. After completing the new, red brick, one-story church/school, Father Kappes was transferred to All Souls parish in Englewood. Omer Foxhoven, noted throughout the archdiocese as a "Church Builder," came to St. John's as pastor from 1965 to 1970. True to his reputation, he added four more classrooms to the school and built St. John's modern 1969 church, a striking Victor D. Langhart structure.

The high U-shaped ceiling gave the new church an airy feeling, and its lofty ceiling beams provided a winter home for sparrows. The post-Vatican II floor plan featured a central baptistry, raised choir area, and banks of pews huddled around a simple modern altar. In front of the church, a detached skeletal tower bears electric bells and a cross.

St. John the Evangelist School faced, in 1970, the same soaring costs that closed many parish schools. Parishioners, however, rallied to form a Save Our School (SOS) committee that raised enough money and pledges to keep the school open, though the seventh and eighth grades were dropped. Staffed by several nuns and lay teachers, it survives to this day.

Taking a tip from the Ecumenical Chapel adorning the main entry of their new church, St. John's joined All Saints Episcopal and First Congregational churches in sponsoring an ecumenical Bible School. Regis F. McGuire, the pastor since 1973, reported in 1988, "When I came here St. John's had about 850 families. Now that Hewlett Packard and Kodak have opened plants here we have around 2,300 families and are the largest congregation in `the sweetheart city'."