1
St. Andrew’s Parish:
A History of Catholicism in the Lower Kittitas Valley
By Thomas Wellock
November 2009
“One must know the world so well before one can know the parish.”
Willa Cather
When Aloysius Parodi, an Italian Jesuit, left the Kittitas Valley in 1887, his departure ended the
region’s missionary period that had spanned four decades. Soon to be assigned to similar work
in Alaska, Parodi left with an awkward sense of success and failure. He had come to the valley
in 1880 to convert Indians, but had left largely servicing a burgeoning white population in
Ellensburg by helping them complete construction of a new church in 1885, later named St.
Andrew’s Church. However, the object of his spiritual and educational efforts since 1880, the
Kittitas Indians, were “disappearing in proportion that whites are coming.” Fatalistically, he
added, “this is not very consoling, but we must be indifferent to all God’s dispositions.”1 The
establishment of St. Andrews Church, then, marked a turning point in the Valley’s history.
The history of early Catholicism in the Kittitas Valley was emblematic of the entire campaign to
spread the faith in the Pacific Northwest. To a remarkable degree, it has been an international
effort, one that distinctly characterized and separated Catholicism from its Protestant
counterparts. The world flooded into the Pacific Northwest. French missionaries, Italian
missionaries, German nuns, Dutch, Irish, and Mexican clergy, all have left their mark on the
Valley’s history and reflect the immigration patterns of the Catholics who came to America in
the last 150 years. Catholics saw themselves as part of a world community of believers—both a
source of strength and a problem. Catholics were often more worldly than other Christian
denominations, but they had to grapple with the perception that they were less than loyal citizens
because of it, even as they gradually became more like other Americans in their values and
outlook. That paradox has influenced the history of Catholicism in this county, as its followers
have sought to define themselves as Christians and citizens.
Early Missionary Efforts
For the missionaries, creating an integrated Catholic community proved a problem from the start.
What emerged was not the Christian community missionaries envisioned, which was a “new
civilized Catholic Indian sub-state,” as one historian noted.2 Instead, missionary activity
inadvertently paved the way for a more traditional American Catholic community that served
Euro-Americans with parishes, parochial schools, Jesuit colleges, and diocesan institutions. This
1
Fr. [Aloysius] Parodi to Father Superior [Joseph] Cataldo, December 13, 1884, Father Aloysius Parodi Papers,
Gonzaga University, Spokane Washington, Box 1.
2
Gerald McKevitt, Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848-1919 (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2007), xiv.
2
outcome was driven by the fur trade, the intense competition for souls between Protestant and
Catholic missionaries, white and Native-American conflict, and religious events in Europe that
led many Catholic religious orders to spread the faith elsewhere.
Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River
The first Catholics to make permanent settlement in the Northwest were French-Canadian
trappers brought to Fort Vancouver by the British Hudson Bay Company. The French Canadians
were preferred by the company for their adaptability and supposed submissive nature. Once in
the Northwest, however, the trappers lobbied for priests to service their religious needs. The
Company’s response was to resist anything that might distract its employees and lead to more
permanent settlements near Fort Vancouver in present day Washington State.
The arrival of Methodist missionaries and American settlers in the 1830s, however, forced a
change in priorities. Fearful that the missionaries and settlers in Oregon would lure the French
Canadians away from their dependence on the Company, Hudson Bay officials allowed the
Reverends Francis Blanchet and Modeste Demers passage to Fort Vancouver in 1838. The
clerics’ goal was “the triumph of the holy Catholic faith throughout this vast territory.”3 Fearful
that through the Protestant missionaries some Catholics had been “exposed to the most seducing
temptations of perversion,” Blanchet worked feverishly to win back the French Canadians. Such
efforts also served a second agenda: to gain access to Native Americans. Despite the head start
that the “false prophet” Protestant missionaries enjoyed, the Catholic priest soon gained the
upper hand in working to convert Native-Americans when the Indian wives of the French
trappers allowed them an easy entry into the confidence of Northwest tribes.4
George L. Thomas, “Catholics and the Missions of the Pacific Northwest—1826-1853,” (PhD diss., University of
Washington, 1986), 113.
4
Thomas, 121.
3
3
By the early 1840s, the meager results of the Methodist missionaries among the Indians forced
them to scale back their ambitions and focus on white settlers. The priests, however, expanded
their work among the natives. By 1845, Blanchet had recruited several priests, lay brothers and a
half dozen Sisters of Notre Dame. That same year Blanchet was elevated to be the first bishop of
Oregon Territory, and he departed for Europe to recruit more help. In 1847, he returned in
triumph with 21 priests and lay people.
The most important recruits for Kittitas history were the Missionary Oblates of Mary
Immaculate, whom Blanchet found in France. The arrival of the Oblates was largely due to
growing nationalism and secularization of French society after the revolution. The Oblates had
worked for the most part in French provinces, but were prohibited from continuing such work in
1830 by the French government because their leadership had opposed the rise of France’s new
leader, Louis-Philippe. Looking abroad, they began missionary work in England and were then
recruited to North America, particularly Oregon, where they sent 21 missionaries by 1860. The
“saintliest of them,” Jean-Charles Pandosy and Eugene-Casmir Chirouse, were young scholastic
brothers who had not yet been ordained priests when they were pressed into service and shipped
to the Walla Walla diocese.5
The Oblates arrived at Walla Walla on October 3, 1847, just in time to experience the fallout
from the massacre of Presbyterian missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and eight others.
Protestant missionaries were not happy with the Catholic presence in the area, and the priests
were falsely blamed for inciting the Cayuse Indians to kill the Whitmans. Nevertheless, the
Oblates continued their missionary work. In need of men who could perform sacraments,
Pandosy and Chirouse were quickly ordained priests on January 2, 1848.6
Oblate Missionaries Charles Pandosy and Casmir Chirouse were responsible for the founding
of the Immaculate Conception Mission along the Menasatash Creek in 1848. Their poverty
and isolation drove the men to despise each other.
Ronald Wayne Young, “The Mission of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate to the Oregon Territory,”
(PhD diss., Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, Rome, Italy, 2000), 43-45 and 58-59.
6
Thomas, 212-17.
5
4
As Pandosy and Chirouse prepared for the priesthood, Fort Walla Walla was visited on
December 28, 1847 by Yakama Chief Owhi, who requested that a mission be established among
his Kittitas tribe. That it was Indians who requested the establishment of a mission was a
common pattern at the time. Native Americans saw material benefit from the help offered by the
priests. Two brothers departed on January 3 to build a mission on the east bank of “Mnassatas
Creek” in the Kittitas Valley. Chirouse and Pandosy arrive shortly after that and began to
baptize Indians. They were unable to complete construction of the mission due to the Cayuse
War, however, and would not return again to finish the job until July 6, 1848.7 The new mission
was named after the Immaculate Conception. Despite the unrest in the area, the Oblates had
succeeded in erecting three mission stations that year in the Yakima Valley: Immaculate
Conception in the Kittitas Valley, St Rose at the mouth of the Yakima River, and St. Joseph
approximately half way between the two at Union Gap.8
In 1872, Father Chirouse relinquished his claim to the Immaculate Conception Mission. This map of its
location accompanied his statement.
Pandosy’s chief assignment was serving the Kittitas Indians. Using the Immaculate Conception
Mission as his base, he traveled a circuit that included Moxsee (Moxee) and Sylla (Selah). He
found that the Indians were “indifferent” to his efforts. Although Pandosy reported to his
superiors much success at Immaculate Conception and claimed that as many as 100 to 150
Indians camped out near the mission, when Chirouse visited him in August 1849, he found that
the Indians had deserted the area. For all his efforts, Pandosy had baptized only 23 Indians, most
of them children. Language barriers, he concluded, had rendered his efforts at conversion
ineffective. Even worse, Pandosy, unused to frontier life, was starving and completely unable to
take care of himself. His poverty was so extreme that at one point he had walked to Fort Walla
Walla barefoot. The previous winter had been horrible for him, and Pandosy, his superiors
7
Young, 76, 81, and 85; and Earl T. Glauert and Merle H. Kunz ed., Kittitas Frontiersmen (Ellensburg, WA:
Ellensburg Public Library, 1976), 75-84. See Appendix A for a discussion of some of the confusing claims about
the date and location of the missionary churches in the Kittitas Valley.
8
The St. Rose de Chemna Mission has sometimes been confused as being located in the Kittitas Valley. See
Thomas, 201 and Appendix A.
5
feared, was losing his discipline and civility. Despite the fact that he fought with Chirouse
constantly—their shared poverty had driven the two priests to do battle over spare buttons and
other small items—Pandosy abandoned Immaculate Conception the next winter to live with him
at the Holy Cross Mission. Stops in Kittitas became less frequent, and Immaculate Conception
was ordered closed in 1851. During the Yakima War in 1856, it was burned, and Catholic
presence in the Valley ceased until the 1860s.9
Italian Jesuits Take Over
In 1867, Bishop Blanchet ordered diocesan priest J.N. St. Onge to reactivate the St. Joseph
mission, and baptism records indicate that he made trips to the Kittitas Valley that year. It is also
likely that in 1869 he baptized the first white child in the valley, Emma Daveren, who later
married Philip Fitterer. The work among the Yakama Indians was made difficult by Protestant
U.S. government reservation agents who were hostile to Catholic missionaries. St. Onge
appealed to the Jesuits to take over the mission, and his request was taken all the way to Rome
where Bishop Blanchet begged the Jesuits’ Father General, Peter Beckx, to send his missionaries
to the Yakima Valley. Blanchet’s timing was perfect. The famed Jesuit Rocky Mountain
Mission that had been established by Father Peter De Smet in 1841 and ranged between the
Cascades and Rocky Mountains had experienced plenty of ups and downs over the previous
twenty-five years, but the late 1860s signaled a period of growth. Beckx relented and wrote to
the Jesuits’ Northwest leadership, “The Bishop implored me on his knees and I could not refuse
him. Take over the Yakima Mission, even if you have to give up some other place.”10
Giving up another place proved unnecessary. There were soon plenty of Jesuits to go around.
As with the Oblates in the 1840s, nationalist sentiment in Europe conspired to bring a new flood
of Jesuit missionaries to Washington Territory and the Kittitas Valley in the 1870s. The midnineteenth century marked consolidation of the kingdoms and Papal States on the Italian
peninsula along with a growing nationalist, anti-clerical sentiment among the general population.
The Catholic Church and the Jesuits, as opponents of this movement and liberal reforms in
general, became victims of retaliation. The Jesuits were expelled from Italy quite suddenly in
1848 and, after a temporary return, through a slower process between 1859 and 1873 when a
Piedmontese liberal monarchy united most of the peninsula. With their Italian assets confiscated
and clergy scattered about Europe, Jesuits were left to ponder their future. One priest wondered,
“We live at a time when events occur so swiftly and on such a vast scale that history provides no
equivalent. Where will we go and where will these extraordinary times take us?”11
The answer to that question for some Italian Jesuits was Kittitas County, Washington Territory.
The first, Joseph Caruana, arrived in the Yakima Valley in 1870. Urban Grassi, one of the most
active and accomplished of the Northwest Jesuits, came shortly after and made regular trips to
the Kittitas Valley after 1873. On these trips, Grassi stayed with the Jacob Becker family.
Becker, a blacksmith, was one of the first Catholics in the valley, and since there was no church
in the valley, his home was used for Mass and education—religious and secular—for the
9
Young, 93-95, 112, and 117.
Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Paths to the Northwest: A Jesuit History of the Oregon Province (Chicago, IL:
Loyola University Press, 1982), 95-96.
11
McKevitt, 14-35.
10
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children.12 Grassi was also responsible for inducing Blanchet to make the first visit to the valley
by a bishop in 1876, where Blanchet performed Kittitas’ first confirmation ceremony in 1876.
The Kittitas church was the most remote outpost in the Rocky Mountain Mission system. For
the Italian Jesuits, it was a long way from home, and they clearly missed their native food. In
1884, Grassi made a long, difficult journey to Kittitas to visit a fellow missionary there. On
arriving, the famished missionary asked, “Have you macaroni?” Grassi was probably the first,
but certainly not the last traveler, to discover that it is very hard to get good Italian food in
Ellensburg.13
Grassi and Caruana’s key legacy was in establishing a permanent church in the valley. They
built a small chapel around 1875 near the entrance to Naneum Canyon, about ten miles north of
Ellensburg, to serve the Indian campground that was regularly used by the Kittitas Indians and
other tribes. Bishop Aegidius Junger confirmed 22 and gave communion to 70 at the little
chapel in 1880. That same year the two clerics built a church much closer to Ellensburg.
Established on a forty acre claim near the present Dolarway Pond and the Yakima River, the
little church was sixteen by twenty feet. Whites and Indians attended services there. Junger
returned again to the Valley in 1884 and administered the sacrament of confirmation at the
church to an overflow crowd.14
In the same year, Aloysius Parodi arrived in the valley and soon became the prime missionary
for Kittitas until the Jesuits pulled out in December 1887. He also made monthly trips to Cle
Elum and Roslyn. Parodi used the church for religious and secular instruction, closing off the
altar with a red curtain. It is regarded as the first school for white children in the Valley.15
Parodi was the most significant of the missionary Jesuits who came to the valley, and St.
Andrew’s Knights of Columbus Council is fittingly named after him. It was not a mission he
chose for himself. While finishing his theological studies in France in 1877, his superior
dropped in on him one day and asked, “Did you ever feel a vocation for the Rocky Mountain
Mission?” Parodi replied, “No, Father, but I will gladly go if you send me.” The next spring,
Parodi accompanied other Jesuits heading west to join the mission. Migration defined the rest of
his life. He never set down roots long anywhere, turning up, as one historian noted, “like a
character in a Dickens’ novel” in Washington, California, Washington (again), Alaska (where he
suffered a nervous breakdown but recovered), Washington (again), and Michigan.16
Parodi’s prime objective when he came to the Kittitas Valley was to minister to the Native
Americans, but he quickly realized that his was a shrinking band of converts. The Kittitas
Indians were disappearing. They were dying, starving, and leaving the valley for the Yakama
reservation, having been squeezed out spiritually and physically by whites. As the Indians lost
their lands to white settlers, they could not save themselves, and converting to Catholicism did
[Father John Sweens], “The History of the Catholic Church in Kittitas Valley: Period from Beginning, 1838 to
1872,” no date, St. Andrew’s Church Archives.
13
McKevitt, 234.
14
Parodi, unpublished memoir, September 28, 1907, Parodi papers, box 1 and Catholic Sentinel (Portland, OR),
May 13, 1880.
15
Sweens, “The History of the Catholic Church in Kittitas Valley.”
16
McKevitt, 107.
12
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not help. The white population of the Valley grew an astonishing 1,745 percent in the 1880s.
Hence, Parodi’s observation that“the Indians are disappearing in proportion that whites are
coming…. This is not very consoling, but we must be indifferent to all God’s dispositions; it is
different I understand when His Indians have a catholic reservation, Thanks be to God.”17
Despite his comment, Parodi was anything but
indifferent to the plight of the Indians. In 1883, he
wrote to Father Cataldo, his superior, “As the Indians
are diing (sic) and disappearing, I have not much to say
about them. Since last March, more than 25 Indians
died, and almost all of them, I should say, were the best
Catholic Indians we have in this place.” Parodi’s
correspondence shows that his time was consumed with
ministering to sick and dying Indians, many it seems
who were afflicted with tuberculosis. He arrived in
Indian camps that were without any food.18
For a few years, the whites and Indians of the valley
celebrated Mass together at the church near the Yakima.
Parodi reported in 1883:
Aloysius Parodi (right) and his superior
Joseph Cataldo at the Yakima Mission in
happier times (~1890). Isolation in Alaska
later drove him insane.
On Easter Sunday I felt quite consoled on account of
a large congregation of Indians and whites that the
little Church of Ellensburgh could scarcely contain
them all. Many Indians came from afar on Saturday; some of them were here from the
Columbian River. They all came to their duties, even those that did not practice their religion
for 7 and 10 years. So on Saturday I was very busy till very late at night, and on Sunday
morning again other Indians and whites came to their duties. The 8 pews of the Chapel were
occupied by whites, and the Indians were sitting on the floor as usual and filled up all corners
of the Chapel and the next room. . . . The Indians were edified of the good behavior of the
whites, and the whites were edified of the Indians, and especially they were well pleased in
listening [to] a beautiful song of the O Salutaris Hostia—some chosen voices were singing
after Consecration.19
Whether either side was “edified” of the other is uncertain, but the whites soon began to clamor
for their own church. The Ellensburg residents had never been happy sharing a missionary with
Yakima. At first they plied Parodi with promises to make his stay in Ellensburg more
comfortable. Parodi asked for a stove for his room in the back of the church, and it was installed
by his next visit.20 By 1884, however, Ellensburg residents had grown impatient. Parodi arrived
in the spring to find that “the Catholics of Ellensburg were already in bad humor, and could not
17
Parodi to Father Superior [Cataldo], December 13, 1884, Parodi papers, box 1. The last sentence likely refers to
the great frustration the Jesuits felt when the Yakima reservation was turned over by the Grant administration to be
administered by Protestant ministers. So when the Kittitas Indians left for the Yakama reservation, the Jesuits had
limited access to them.
18
Parodi to Fr. Cataldo, February 23, 1883, Parodi Papers, Box 1.
19
Parodi to Reverend Father Superior [Cataldo], May 27, 1883, Parodi papers, box 1.
20
Parodi to Cataldo, February 23, 1883, Parodi Papers, Box 1.
8
understand how the Fathers could be so busy in Yakima as not to visit Ellensburg.”21 Lonely in
Ellensburg, Parodi implored Father Superior Joseph Cataldo to send a brother to help him.22 But
none came, and Parodi was still required to split his time with Yakima and occasional forays to
the Columbia River.
By 1884, the church near the river could not accommodate the crowd, and Parodi conducted
segregated Masses, the white being the larger of the two. Forty-two white families now attended
services. Bishop Junger visited the valley that year for the sacrament of confirmation. Parodi
had to bring in extra pews. So crowded was the interior that the bishop, “a big stout man,” could
barely fit down the center aisle. It still wasn’t enough to fit everyone. Parodi reported, “The
Indians were sent away, and the whites came in. I did not expect so large a congregation of
people. The Church was full, and yet the greater number of people were outside. They were
bound to assist at mass and to hear the sermon out of the Church, the windows of the Church
being opened.”23
White Catholics resolved in 1884 to have a larger building in Ellensburg, and Parodi assisted
them in obtaining the land. Led by Martin Michels, a leading area farmer and rancher who had
migrated to the United States from Germany and left Minnesota in 1882 after a grasshopper
plague, Ellensburg's Catholics managed initially to raise only about $750 for its construction
(eventually over $1,700). And they still needed a city lot for it. Michels had eyed land on
Seventh and Water Street owned by Ellensburg founder John Shoudy. In the spring, he and
Parodi asked Shoudy what he wanted for the lot. Five hundred dollars, Shoudy told them. That
was two thirds of their entire budget. Recognizing that appeals to Shoudy's charitable side
weren't working, Mitchels, "a good talker" as Parodi recalled, went after his fiscal sensibilities.
He assured Shoudy that by having a town church "many Catholic families would come down
from Minnesota, and would be customers in his store. Mr. Shoudy in conclusion said: well, let
the Father have the land gratis! Mr. Shoudy," Parodi exulted, "was the Grand Orient of the
lodge!"24 And so, for the hope of some Minnesota immigrants, Ellensburg's Catholics got their
church lot in the city.
21
Parodi to Cataldo, April 14, 1884, Parodi Papers, box 1.
Loneliness eventually drove Parodi “violently insane” while doing missionary work in Alaska. Completely
isolated in a location called Tununa, he threw off all his clothes in winter time and fled his hut and could only be
brought back after being forcibly restrained by local Indians. He was institutionalized for a time, and later
recovered. Schoenberg, Paths to the Northwest, 211.
23
Parodi to Cataldo, September 8, 1884, Parodi papers, box 1.
24
Parodi memoirs.
22
9
The original 1885 church on 7th and Water Streets. The transept and tower was added in 1888.
The church interior.
Ellensburg residents wasted no time. When Parodi returned to Ellensburg later in the summer of
1884, he reported: “I found the Church already up, covered and finished outside. Its size is 50
feet by 28. As soon as it will be fit to hold services in it, people want me to deliver some
lectures, in order to have means for its completion.” Apparently, residents had not raised
sufficient money to complete the church, and although today’s parish celebrates its founding as
1884, “the first Catholic Church for white people,” as Parodi recalled, was not completed and
used until the summer of 1885.25
25
Parodi to Cataldo, September 8, 1884, Parodi papers, box 1, and Catholic Northwest Progres (Seattle, WA), May
20, 1927. Although earlier church histories claim that the church was built in 1884, evidence indicates that the
Church was not completed or used until 1885. Parodi’s memoir claims that the church was not opened until the
10
Choosing the right date for the beginning of St. Andrew’s
“Parish” is problematic for other reasons. Even after it
was built in 1885, it was still a missionary church served
by Parodi; it was not a parish run by a diocese. The only
change was that whites and Indians no longer used the
same church for their services. For the next two years,
Parodi lived at the Indian church near the river. The
segregated services he had provided there were now held
in separate buildings. He said Mass for the Indians first on
Sunday near the river, then rode into town to do the same
for whites. In 1887, the Nisqually (later Seattle) Diocese
assumed jurisdiction for the white church, and the Yakima
River church was abandoned. “The Indians,” Parodi
lamented, “were left without a [religious] leader,” and the
devout among them relocated to the Yakima Reservation
to find Catholic ministry. Father Louis Kusters became
the first parish priest assigned to Ellensburg, and Parodi
left in December. A transept was added in 1888, and in
October Bishop Junger dedicated and named Ellensburg’s Father Parodi ministered to many
church as St. Andrew’s Parish.26 In choosing a date for its Kittitas Indians, including the two best
known to Ellensburg residents, Nancy
origins, then, the parish must decide what it should
and Toby.
celebrate: (1) when the Catholic community first came
together to celebrate Mass in a church on a regular basis (1880); (2) when town Catholics first
built and used their own church (1885); or (3) when the church was dedicated and assigned a
priest from the diocese (1887-88).
The Early Years of the Parish
The first twenty years of the parish’s existence focused on establishing many of the traditional
institutions and buildings of traditional American parishes. A school became a priority of
Kusters, but it took twenty years, Eastern money, and the help of German nuns to establish
Lourdes Academy. There had been several false starts in establishing a school. In 1887, $3,000
was pledged for establishing a school, but it was insufficient. Patrick Lynch, an Irish bachelor
farmer, deeded the “Lynch block” for the use of the school and convent, but during the
depression of the 1890s, the church could not raise the money to keep the property and lost it. It
would not be possible to start a school until the parish had sufficient land of its own.27
summer of 1885. An article in the February 19, 1885 Catholic Sentinel reported that the church was still under
construction. Ledger books at the Ellensburg Public Library in the D’Abliang Family Papers confirm that
construction continued into 1885, since the Church ordered shingles and ceiling material in the spring and summer
of 1885.
26
Parodi memoir and Catholic Sentinel, October 18, 1888. It is only in 1888 that church records start referencing
“St. Andrew’s Church.” The likely date in October for the dedication is either October 14 or 21, which were the
Sundays before and after the Catholic Sentinel report.
27
Catholic Sentinel, April 14, 1887, and Sweens, “History of the Catholic Church in Kittitas Valley.”
11
\
Martin Michels was the key force behind the building of the 1885 church. His children married into other
important Catholic families, such as the Uebelackers, Mullers, and the Meaghers. Rear from left to right:
Elizabeth (Michels) Meagher, Jake Michels, Emma (Michels) Fogerty, Frank Michels, Katherine (Michels)
Muller-Linder, George Michels, Anne (Michels) Ubelacker, Front: Henry Michels, Rose Michels Beaver,
Margaret Michels, Martin Michels, Lena Michels, Pete Michels.
Oddly, it would be horse manure that made the school possible. The original site for St.
Andrew’s Church was Seventh and Water Streets, but odor from a livery nearby made services
unbearable for Father John Sweens, the parish’s second pastor. Sweens arranged to buy a larger
section of land on Seventh and Pine, and in a daring decision, had the church building moved to
the new location four blocks away. “Miraculously,” Father Joseph Luyten noted, “the building
held together as it was not very substantial.”28
Land was only one component needed. Europe supplied the womanpower. Members of the
Sisters of St. Dominic based in Ratisbon, Bavaria, a cloistered order, had taken on teaching
duties in their town in 1803 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars to avoid being closed down as
had three hundred other orders in Bavaria alone. In 1853, they were recruited to the United
States to serve the needs of German immigrant communities. By 1885 the order had established
a presence in New York, New Jersey, and Ohio, and they were recruited once again to serve
what they were assured were the flourishing communities of the Northwest.29
Their initial experience in 1888 out west seemed to prove otherwise. On the train ride to
Pomeroy, the tiny hamlet near Walla Walla where the nuns were to teach, Sister Thomasina
looked out on what she saw as a desolate countryside. She remarked to her companions, “I
certainly hope we are not going to live in this wild region.” Almost instantly the conductor
shouted out, “Pomeroy!”30
Father Joseph Luyten, “St. Andrew’s Parish: Ellensburg Washington,” (1945), St. Andrew’s Church Archives.
Eugene J. Crawford, The Daughters of Dominic on Long Island: The Brooklyn Sisters of Saint Dominic (New
York: Benziger Brothers, 1938), 31 and Sister Mary Rita Flanagan, O.P., “The Work of The Sisters of St. Dominic
of the Congregation of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Diocese of Seattle, 1888-1951,” (Masters thesis, Seattle
University, 1951), 4-5, 10-13.
30
Flanagan, 14.
28
29
12
Amidst the nuns’ gloom at being in such a remote location and among Catholics who could
barely support them, Father Kusters swooped in hoping to spirit some of the sisters away to serve
his largely German Catholic parish with promises of a school, Novitiate, and Motherhouse.
Bishop Junger assured Sister Thomasina, “I am certain that Ellensburg will be a good place and a
tolerably large town.”31 It was tempting, but no one becomes a Mother Superior without being
able to balance the books. Thomasina, whom one historian described as having a “keen mind
and business acumen,” realized that Kuster’s eyes had gotten too big for his parish’s stomach.
He offered to deed the nuns land, but it carried a mortgage. The community wanted a school, but
expected the nuns to finance it. A trip back east by Thomasina failed to raise significant funds
for the project. Finally, after “long and prayerful consideration,” she concluded that “we are not
financially circumstanced for such an undertaking.” Later she noted, “It is a wearisome struggle
to get our daily bread here [in Pomeroy] and if we accepted Ellensburg, it would be worse than
here for there would be rent [to house the nuns] to look after.”32 Kusters did not give up, and
Junger constantly pressured her, but Thomasina remained firm for the next two decades.
Success finally came in 1907. Father John Sweens tried to raise money for a school building, but
again the parish failed to raise enough funds to build an adequate school. Mother Thomasina,
now happily ensconced in Tacoma, again contacted her sources back east and arranged the
necessary loan to complete the school. The parish donated the land, and construction began on
February 11, 1908, the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes. The school opened on September 14
with 125 pupils and Sister M. Alphonsa as its Superior and principal.33
Lourdes Academy (foreground), St. Andrew’s Church, and the rectory at the parish complex on 7 th and Pine.
31
Flanagan, 17-18.
Flanagan, 16, 80-81,
33
Flanagan, 82-83.
32
13
For the children who attended Lourdes in the early years, the Dominican nuns left a lasting
impression. The nuns were responsible for creating many of the children’s activities and
organizations in the parish. Many children joined Sister Cecilia’s orchestra or Sister Dominic’s
choir. Sister Dominic, Bernice Skiffington remembered, made the children practice “for hours,
the kids loved it.” They sang for Mass, parish functions, and funerals. Others joined the Our
Lady’s Florist Club, which provided flowers for Mary’s altar. The sisters emphasized the
importance of fresh cut flowers, and when Elizabeth Gehlen and Margarite Dunning couldn’t
find them in their own yards, they looked in their neighbors. They were careful to take only
those flowers they considered public property because they poked out through fences and hung
over the sidewalk.
The sisters meted out equal measures of discipline, kindness, and terror that only a child with a
parochial school education could appreciate. Mary Andreotti found that being shy had its
benefits. Sister Jeanette, the cook, would let her avoid playground time and sit in the kitchen
eating cookies while she was there. Bob Snyder recalled Sister Evangela’s spelling bees with
dread. Rather than dispensing what we might today call “positive reinforcement, such as candy
to winners, those who got a word wrong received a swat from her paddle. Uniform dress codes
were enforced. Skirts were required to touch the floor when a girl knelt down in the pews at the
daily morning Mass that all children attended. Under the nuns, the children thrived. Elizabeth
Gehlen fondly recalled that the sisters “prepared the students for life.”34
The ethnic composition of the parish became more diverse particularly after 1900 as Dutch
settlers moved into the valley in large numbers. The Dutch migrated due to over population,
poor prospects for agriculture in the Netherlands, and the superior prospects to find good farm
land in America. Arriving first in the Midwest, these mostly rural folk set up numerous small
Dutch communities from Michigan to Iowa and Minnesota. They stepped off from there and
migrated to the Pacific Northwest, particularly Linden, Whidbey Island, and Kittitas and Yakima
Counties.35
The migration was reflected in the occupants of the church rectory as well. Holland was one of
the great missionary countries, as Father Desmond Dillon recalled, and two of its sons came to
Ellensburg and served the parish for fifty years. Father John Sweens served from 1897 to 1914
and was followed by Father Joseph Luyten who was St. Andrew’s pastor from 1914 until his
retirement in 1946. Born in 1867 in Limberg, Holland, Luyten became an Ellensburg institution.
Like the Jesuits and Sweens before him, he came to America to do educational and missionary
work. Starting in Canada, he worked as a pastor of missionary churches in Saskatchewan and in
1906 Waterville, Washington. His peregrinations ended when he came to Ellensburg, where he
guided the parish early on through some difficult times of religious intolerance and flight by
residents from the farm to the city.36
Anne C. Johnson, “What Some People Had to Say About Lourdes Academy,” St. Andrew’s Church Records.
Stephan Thernstrom, The Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1980),, 285-89.
36
Father S.P. Duffy, “Limberg, Holland to Ellensburg; Father Luyten’s 80 Years Span Life of Service,”
Unidentified news clipping, St. Andrew’s Church Records, 1956 and Interview with Father Desmond Dillon,
November 11, 2009.
34
35
14
Creating a sense of religious community through entertainment, schooling, and church
organizations had the very practical function of creating attachment to the parish and the rural
life of Kittitas County. After an enormous growth spurt in the 1880s, the valley’s population
withered in the depression of the 1890s. While it rebounded after 1900, population hit a plateau
in 1910 and changed little for the next several decades. Even as the area grew in fits and starts,
the county was fighting the national trend of movement from farm to city. The Fathers Sweens
and Luyten worried much about the lure of the city and pondered how they might make
Ellensburg an appealing place to live. Looking back over his thirty years in charge of St.
Andrew’s Church, Luyten admitted that rural parishes had an uphill battle.
Our young men think farming, even with all the modern improvements, electricity, gasoline
engines, automobiles, etc. is ‘too slow’ and girls are afraid of the drudgery imposed on
farmers’ wives. Many Catholics think also there are more advantages for the children, both
temporal and spiritual, in larger cities, so many parishes in farming districts are not
progressing very much and a great deal of young blood goes to the cities. But as farming is
the backbone of the country let us hope that it will pay those engaged in it as well as the other
industries; so there will be some inducement for young people to remain on the farm and
rural parishes will flourish again.37
Neither Sweens nor Luyten were content to sit and wait for the revival of rural life. They
actively sought to use the church as the social glue that kept Catholics in Ellensburg. Sweens
focused on creating opportunities for entertainment, building the school, and creating
organizations. Luyten focused most of his energies on church organizations.
The Knights of Columbus dates its start to when its Parodi Council affiliated with the national
organization on April 25, 1909.38 Founded in Connecticut by the Venerable Father Michael
McGivney, the Knights were established in reaction to the anti-Catholicism prevalent in that
period and competition from fraternal lodges. Catholics were often excluded from unions and
popular secret fraternal organizations that often provided charitable works, social services, and
life insurance policies to the poor, and McGivney wanted similar services for Catholics. But
orders such as the Masons, the Catholic hierarchy feared, would steal away the attentions of
American Catholics. He also wanted an organization that allowed male parishioners to express
their pride in their Catholicism and American citizenship. Celebrating Columbus reminded
Protestants that Catholics played a vital role in America’s development, too. The Knights
became a key defender against church attacks. As one historian noted, they were “a kind of
Catholic anti-defamation league.”39
And there was much defending of the faith to do. By the 1910s, anti-Catholicism was
widespread, and the most popular anti-Catholic newspaper was The Menace with a circulation of
1.6 million readers (three times as large as the biggest city papers of that time). Father Luyten
Joseph Luyten, “Transcription of Parish History: St. Andrew’s, Ellensburg,” [1934?], St. Andrew’s Church
Records.
38
See Appendix C for a list of the founding members of the Knights of Columbus.
39
George C. Turk, Washington State Council Knights of Columbus, 1902-1990 (Seattle, WA: Washington State
Council Knights of Columbus, 1990), 1-5, and Justin Nordstrom, Danger on the Doorstep: Anti-Catholicism and
American Print Culture in the Progressive Era (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 156.
37
15
claimed The Menace’s circulation ran to 3,000 in Kittitas County.40 Papers like The Menace
argued that Catholics were disloyal, unthinking dupes of a corrupt hierarchy that made them
unable to appreciate American liberties and its democratic system. When groups like the
Knights espoused their patriotism and highlighted their contributions to America, the critics
dismissed them as “papists” and agents of Rome intent on overthrowing the government. This
conspiratorial view was directed at the Knights, and anti-Catholic papers circulated what they
claimed was the oath that fourth order Knights took on initiation. They claimed that Knights
pledged to “unhesitatingly obey each and every command that I may receive from my superiors
in the militia of the Pope and Jesus Christ. . . . I do further promise and declare that I will, when
opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly and openly, against all heretics,
Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth.” 41
This forgery was eventually exposed, but it lived on and was used in 1928 against Al Smith, the
first Catholic to run for the presidency.
Anti-Catholicism was not a new feature in America, but this movement differed from previous
episodes that had been concentrated in urban areas. It was most popular in rural communities
and sought to portray Catholics as responsible for the excesses of modern city life, such as urban
corruption, immorality, violence, and labor unrest. The anti-Catholics saw themselves as
protectors of small-town American values that were being pushed out by growing cities.42 The
anti-Catholic organization, the Patriotic Order of the Sons of America, led the anti-Catholic
crusade in Kittitas. “There was much discrimination in the schools and elsewhere,” former
pastor Desmond Dillon noted. “No Catholic was employed in the Ellensburg Normal [today’s
Central Washington University] and Catholics were looked upon with suspicion. Oldtimers will
tell you that Father Luyten often feared for his own safety.”43 While there is no record of
violence, the threat from the Sons of America was disturbing enough, Dillon recalled, that Father
Luyten made visits to the sick at night with a Knights-of-Columbus escort. The minutes of the
Parodi Council meetings indicate that they served as defenders of the faith in other ways, too.
They regularly monitored anti-Catholic activities and meetings in the Valley and investigated
accusations that Catholics were not hired in jobs because of their faith.44
Along with the anti-Catholic press that preceded it, the Ku Klux Klan’s anti-Catholicism became
immensely popular in the Northwest and the Kittitas Valley after 1915, so much so that the Klan
was able to outlaw parochial schools for a time in Oregon in the early 1920s. There was fear that
Washington State would be next. The Oregon law was overturned by the Supreme Court, and
the Parodi Council contributed to the legal defense fund that challenged the law. But Klan
sentiment ran strong in Kittitas County. Periodically, as one writer recalled, “a gigantic flaming
Luyten, “St. Andrew’s Parish: Ellensburg Washington.” This number is improbably high.
“Religion: Great & Fake Oath,” Time, September 3, 1928.
42
Nordstrom, 3-10.
43
“Monsignor Luyten Laid to Rest,” Our Times (Yakima, WA), January 14, 1966, and interview with Father Dillon.
44
There are numerous references to anti-Catholic and Klan activity in the Knight’s minutes between 1916 and the
early 1930s. On hiring discrimination, see Parodi Council Minutes, January 12 and 26, 1922 and May 22, 1922.
The complaints registered by the Knights regarding hiring practices in the public schools did not seem to help. Ten
years later, the Knight’s listened to a lecture entitled “Why a Catholic Teacher Cannot Get a Job in Ellensburg.”
Parodi Council Minutes, January 14 and 28, 1932
40
41
16
cross glowed on the face of a hillside at the valley end of Menastash Ridge, five miles out from
the center of town.”45
In this climate, the parish suffered consequences. By 1918, anti-Catholic sentiment was intense
enough that Luyten had to move the church from its 1885 building on Seventh and Pine to the
recently constructed Maryland Hall. One of the largest in Ellensburg, Maryland Hall (48x100’)
was constructed in 1909, Father Luyten wrote, “to induce youth to come there and keep off the
streets and away from other institutions.” If such a concern seems quaint today, it was not at the
time. It is likely, one historian reports, that Ellensburg had the highest density of saloons in
Washington State—about
twenty five—and many
brothels.46
Maryland Hall opened to
great fanfare and was
described as “one of the
handsomest and most
commodious club rooms in
the state.” It boasted a
gymnasium and a great hall
with a stage, an enormous
fireplace, and huge fir
beams.47 The hall was a
popular location and rented
Father Sweens poses with his first automobile in front of his master
often by community groups
creation, Maryland Hall.
for numerous social gatherings and dances. Sweens’ choice of the Hall’s name reflected the
Catholic population’s delicate balancing act between pledging their allegiance to their country
and the Church. He chose the name, he wrote, because Maryland was the first Catholic
settlement in America. Like the early colony, “St. Andrews has been here, striving at all times to
live in peace with all its neighbors, gladly shouldering its share in any work undertaken for the
public good and at the same time nonetheless effectively pursuing its own ends.”48
Parodi Council Minutes, April 10, 1924 and Merritt Des Voigne, Being Small wasn’t Bad at All (Seattle, WA:
Littleman Press, 1982), 2.
46
Luyten, “St. Andrew’s Parish: Ellensburg Washington,” and Adam Chamberlain, email correspondence,
November 6, 2009.
47
Ellensburgh Capital, December 17, 1909.
48
“Catholic Church,” Evening Record (Ellensburg), [December] 1908.
45
17
Celebrating mass in the converted Maryland Hall
Some Kittitas residents, however, did not agree that the hall and dancing contributed to the moral
uplift of Ellensburg youth. The parish’s opponents in the county boycotted many forms of
entertainment and dances sponsored by the church, which cut off most revenue generated by
Maryland Hall. In 1917, the Knights fought back and brought in a speaker to the Liberty Theater
to condemn “religious prejudice.” But the economic situation for Maryland Hall did not
improve. With a parish debt of $15,000 and the old church badly in need of repair, consolidation
and demolition of the church was necessary. In the spring of 1918, Maryland Hall was converted
to a church with minor modifications.49
Given that women have been and continue to be the bone and sinew of a well-functioning
church, creating a women’s social organization similar to the Knights proved oddly difficult.
The Altar Society was established early on in Father Kusters’ tenure and did well, as did the St.
Margaret’s Guild, and mothers of school children were active in the PTA, but a social club never
proved popular. This is perplexing since the Progressive Era was a time when women’s clubs
were immensely popular nationally. In 1916, Father Luyten worked hard to establish the
Maryland Club for women and get them affiliated with a national organization.
The club got off to a promising start, and club minutes indicate that the women were quite active
in the first few years, particularly in supporting the nation’s effort in World War I. But like the
national clubs of the period, the Maryland Club did not last long. It seems that the women of
rural Ellensburg were far too busy making the church function well to have time for a social
club. It was the women who largely ran the annual bazaars and other fund raising social events.
As parishioner Elizabeth Gehlen put it, “We [women] didn’t do much—we peeled potatoes,
cooked, served meals, cleaned the Church, and did those things that needed to be done. We just
kept the faith.”50
Luyten, “St. Andrew’s Parish: Ellensburg Washington.” The old church was not demolished right away and was
still standing by the mid-twenties. It appears that the parish held out hope that it could return to the old church when
they had the money to repair or, perhaps, replace it. Knights of Columbus Parodi Council Minutes, September 28,
1922.
50
Meeting minutes from the Maryland Club 1916-18, and Anne C. Johnson, “What Some People Had to Say About
Lourdes Academy,” 1984, St. Andrew’s Church Records.
49
18
As Luyten himself recognized, creating more than a few
religious organizations for parish members was unrealistic
in a hard working agricultural community. In 1939, he
wrote to the diocese:
The Holy Name Society was organized again a
couple years ago, but did not succeed. Our people
come to Mass and then scatter. The farmers have
so much work and the people living in the town
belong to other groups in order to promote their
business. The study clubs in Ellensburg and the
other parishes did not succeed. We all had the
same experience. I appointed leaders for the
different parts of the parish: one after the other
[they] came and said they were not able or did
not have the time to do that work.51
Father Luyten (Pastor 1914-46)
Bazaars were a key component of church life. “Before movies and automobiles took all the cash,
especially from the young people,” Luyten recalled, “church bazaars and socials were practically
the only form of entertainment, and everybody went.” There was a problem, however. Coming
from different ethnic backgrounds, some church members couldn’t avoid a little competition.
Some of the bazaars “left a bad taste in the mouth of many people. It was not intended to be that
way, but it turned out to be a contest between the Dutch and Irish.”52
During the Sweens-Luyten years, the church also established Holy Cross Cemetery in 1914.
Previously it had been a potter’s field and many burial sites are unmarked. Families, at first,
maintained the grounds, but in 1926 funds were raised for perpetual care.
See note attached to the St. Andrew’s Church 1939 Annual Report, Chancery Office, Yakima, Washington
Diocese.
52
Luyten, “St. Andrew’s Parish: Ellensburg Washington,” 1945, St. Andrew’s Church Records.
51
19
Many sons and daughters of Ellensburg Catholics joined religious orders, but Father Charles Suver, S.J.
became the most famous. Landing with the Marines at Iwo Jima in February 1945, the Navy chaplain
promised them, “If you put that flag on top of that mountain [Suribachi], I will say Mass under it.” Within
hours of the marines doing so, Suver’s service was captured in this photograph. Newsweek’s caption read,
“Faith Lives on Iwo Jima: Roman Catholics among Marines who fought their way to the summit of Mount
Suribachi on Iwo Jima attend Mass conducted there by a Navy Chaplain.” His military experiences also
landed him in Ripley’s Believe It or Not.53
Unfortunately, church archives reveal little about the parish between 1925 and 1945. Other than
a few minor changes to the church interior, it’s unclear how the parish dealt with such issues as
the Great Depression and World War II. A critical need for the parish is to interview its senior
members for what they remember of those years.
St. Andrew’s Parish after World War II
Luyten eventually retired as pastor of St. Andrew’s in 1946, and was replaced by Desmond
Dillon, born in Hong Kong of an Irish father. Following Luyten was a tall order. Dillon recalled
that the bishop at the time joked to him of the heavy, Dutch-accented Father Luyten that “people
couldn’t understand him, and after you came, they wished they didn’t understand you.”54
Nevertheless, Dillon remembers St. Andrew’s as a parish “I loved so much.” He came aboard at
a time when the parish and Lourdes Academy were about to undergo substantial growth.
53
54
Schoenberg, Paths to the Northwest, 436.
Father Desmond Dillon interview, November 11, 2009.
20
In the better economic times of the postwar period, Dillon could consider expanding the parish.
He carried out substantial remodels of Maryland Hall, and a new library was completed for
Lourdes Academy in 1948. He also started the St. Vincent de Paul Store (called the Salvage
Bureau in the 1950s) in town, and the parish supported its operation until the diocese took it over
in the 1960s.
It was a heady period for Catholicism as churches in the
Northwest expanded rapidly, and the Northwest Church
once again turned to the international community of
believers for help. To accommodate the growth in Central
Washington, the Yakima Diocese was created in 1951.
Bishop Dougherty had a problem, however. Many of his
priests were on loan, and he responded by ransacking the
seminaries of Europe for men. There was, of course, no
better place to find a surplus of priests than Ireland.
Father Seamus Kerr, who became pastor of St. Andrews
in the mid-1960s, recalled that when Dougherty came to
his seminary, All Hallows in Dublin, he scooped up ten
seminarians in one visit. Kerr arrived in Yakima in 1960
to find that “half the priests in the diocese, Yakima, were
from Ireland. . . . We were short priests in America and
the state of Washington. . . . Washington State . . . was
only about 12 to 14 percent Christian. It was a pagan
state and missionary territory.”55
Sister Marie Leo Beeler teaching at
Lourdes in the early 1960s.
At Lourdes Academy’s 50th Anniversary, sisters who taught there or joined orders after attending it were
honored guests. They included (not in order) Mother M. Rosena and Sisters M. Stephen, M. Virginia, M.
Jerome, M. Louis, M. Pauline, M. Mechtilde, M. Andrea, M. Jordana, M. Evangela, M. Columba, M.
Abrosia, M. Lourdina, M. Josepha, M. Catherine, M. Denise, M. Dolirita, M. Fidelis, and M. Ignatius.
55
Father Seamus Kerr, interview, November 11, 2009.
21
But the parish needed more than remodels and priests to handle its expansion. Lourdes was
experiencing growing pains, as were many parochial schools throughout the country. Despite a
court ruling that barred parochial school children from public school buses in Washington State
that cost the school 21 children (the church adapted by purchasing buses, and Father Dillon
drove one of them), enrollment shot up quickly anyway. In 1950, Lourdes had one of its highest
enrollments with 159 children, and it continued to expand. Two years later there were more than
200 children receiving instruction from the Dominican Sisters. When it celebrated its fiftieth
anniversary in 1958, the school was instructing 246. The Academy building constructed in 1908
strained to accommodate all the children. The church complex on Seventh and Pine was
cramped as it sought to hold Maryland Hall, the school, and the rectory. New accommodations
were needed for the nuns if the upper floor of Lourdes was to be converted to school use. The
parish needed more room. “We had to do something for the future,” Dillon recalled. He
responded by purchasing 15 acres of land outside of town on Willow Street in 1958 for $15,000.
Some parishioners questioned the acquisition because, as Anna Shuck recalled, "there was no
drainage and the land was kind of swampy." Swampy or not, it proved a wise move.56 The longterm plan was to move parish operations out to Willow Street and build a rectory, convent,
gymnasium, and church. The offer of the Albertson’s supermarket chain to lease Church
property, however led to an ill-considered interim move—forced by the diocese—to the old
YMCA that cost the parish a great deal. The temporary move to the “Y” lasted fourteen years.
It became the rectory, church, and school for a time.
Bishop Dermot O’Flanagan of Alaska administered the sacrament of confirmation at the
converted YMCA in 1967.
St. Andrew’s Church Annual Reports to the diocese1948-1950, Chancery Office, Yakima Washington Diocese,
Dillon and Kerr interviews, and unidentified news clippings in album “Misc. Articles 1957-62.”
56
22
The first to leave the temporary quarters and move to the new location was the school, but the
damage to Lourdes was already done. “The whole thing was a mess,” Dillon complained. “In
those days, you just did what you were told [by the diocese].” Parents were bitter about the
makeshift operation and the blunt refusal of the diocese to hear their complaints about the
arrangement. Enrollment plunged to 110 students. The parish hoped a new school would lure
students back. Ground was broken on what was now called St. Andrew’s School in 1967, and it
was completed that year for $188,000.57
It would be easy to blame the closing of the school on the unanticipated move to new quarters,
but several national trends served to make a difficult situation impossible to resolve. By the
early 1970s, the Catholic Church in America was in trouble. While some blamed the changes
made by Vatican II, the decline in interest in the Church paralleled similar declines felt by
mainline Protestant churches. Social trends created the crisis. America was becoming a more
secular society, and the hierarchal Church seemed outmoded to many members and its clergy. A
few statistics demonstrate the gravity of the situation faced by the Church. Mass attendance
went into a free fall. In 1958, 74 percent of all Catholics went to Sunday Mass, but by 1994, that
number had dropped to less than 27 percent. In 1965, 1,575 priests were ordained. By 2002,
there were only 450. In 1965 there were 104,000 teaching nuns, but by 2002, there were just
8,200. In the same period, the Church closed almost 4,000 parochial grade schools and half of
its high schools.58
Lourdes Academy became one of those statistics. By 1966, more of Ellensburg’s Catholic
children were enrolled in public than in parochial school. As the new St. Andrew’s School
opened its doors in 1967, there were more ominous signs. Attendance had fallen off in seventh
and eighth grades, and they were almost discontinued when the Dominican Sisters thought they
might pull out of the school entirely. Sister Mary Thomas of the Dominican nuns announced in
an appeal to the parish’s Knights of Columbus, “For the first time in their 75 years of service, the
Sisters of St. Dominic Congregation of St. Thomas Aquinas are making appeals for financial
assistance. . . . We are no longer able with our limited resources to finance the continuing
formation that contemporary religion must have to confront the challenges of the present and
future.” The crisis of the nuns was evident on the first day at the school as lay teachers
composed half the faculty. While they were dedicated educators, lay teachers simply cost much
more than nuns.
57
Father Frederick Brenner to Most Reverend Cornelius Power, August 1, 1969, Yakima Chancery Office, and
untitled news clipping album on Lourdes Academy in St. Andrew’s Church Records.
58
Annettee Lynn Cantu, “Roman Catholic Identity, Vatican II, and the Current “Crisis” of the Catholic Church in
the United States,” (Masters thesis: Reed College, Oregon, 2005), 46-47.
23
Artist depiction of St. Andrew’s School in 1967. It is now the parish activity center.
The school soon overwhelmed the entire parish budget. One official from the diocese reported
that the financial crisis had led to sagging revenue and hard feelings among parish members.
Seventh and eighth grades were jettisoned in 1969, but it failed to stop the hemorrhaging. By
1971, the proposed school budget was $66,000, even though parish revenue for all operations
had been only $74,000 the previous year. Worse, two more nuns were not going to return the
following year. With an expected enrollment of just 53 for 1972, Bishop Power authorized the
closing of the oldest parochial school in the Yakima Diocese.59 With Lourdes gone and mass
being celebrated in a run-down gymnasium that did not meet safety codes, parishioners could
only console themselves that things couldn’t get much worse.
New Church, New Era
The unfortunate death of the school gave birth to a new church, but it would be a difficult path to
completion. Little did St. Andrew's Parish know, when they demolished the first parish church
and moved services in 1918 to Maryland Hall, that 62 years would elapse before Ellensburg
Catholics again celebrated Mass in a building designed to be a church. Because of the school
funding crisis, the parish did not form a church building committee until April 1972, the same
month as the school closing decision. Led by Jack Snell, the committee labored for eight years.
A quick construction schedule was impossible since the Yakima Diocese was in a financial crisis
of its own and had no money to lend. The parish had $70,000 in school debts to repay. The
diocese chancery office affirmed that no construction could start until the parish met its debt
obligations. Planning, it was decided, “must be on a long term basis.”60 But the parish could not
delay indefinitely. The “Y” did not meet fire safety codes, and the parish had promised to build
a new church as soon as possible. Even converting the school to a church was studied, but
59
Sister Maria Goretti to Father D.F. McDermott, January 13, 1966, Father Maurice G. Mulcahy to Father Donald F.
McDermott, January 26, 1966, Father Frederick Brenner to Most Reverend Cornelius Power, August 1, 1969,
Brenner to Power, March 9, 1971, and Power to Very Rev. Seamus Kerr, April 28, 1972, Yakima Chancery Office,
and untitled news clipping album on Lourdes Academy in St. Andrew’s Church Records, and “Lay Teachers: Tell
Why They Teach in Catholic Schools,” Our Times, May 12, 1967.
60
Meeting Minutes, Building Committee, April 26, 1972 and June 28, 1972, St. Andrew’s Church Records,
Building Committee Binder.
24
deemed impracticable.61 Out of money and under the gun, the building committee had a
daunting task.
Fortunately, Father Seamus Kerr kept the committee on track during the delays. Although
members became fast friends, debates over the details of the church became so intense that
Frances Shuck composed a prayer for the start of each meeting: "We beseech You to bless us
with understanding. Help us to remember that preparing a new house of worship for You is
more important than the personal desires or preferences of anyone. Give us strength to endure
the strain of frequent meetings."62
A New Hope: Jack Snell, chair of the Building Committee, speaks at the ground breaking ceremonies for the
new church, June 3, 1979. To his right is Bishop William Skylstad and Father Seamus Kerr
Much of the design did come straight from the desires of the parish. Surveys of parishioners led
to a consensus that it should "look like a church and not a barn," be constructed with natural
materials from the area, have a design that "fit the character of the valley, a feeling of simplicity,
openness," and have "one floor, NO STAIRS." The committee got it right, but the delay led to
an additional $100,000 in construction costs. Scrapped were plans to renovate the activity hall,
build a rectory, and enclose the breezeway. Nevertheless, ground was broken on June 3, 1979,
and the first Mass was celebrated on July 26, 1980, by newly installed pastor Father Richard
Wuertz. Father Kerr returned for Bishop William Skylstad's dedication of the church on
November 20. The building designer was Ed Weber of Yakima and the contractor was Sevigny
Construction. For many years afterwards, the building committee had regular reunions. No one
called them meetings. 63
The completion of the church gave a direct shot in the arm to what has become a St. Andrew’s
Parish institution, the October Festival. Borrowing ideas from previous bazaars, such as
Hugh McElroy to Father Kerr, June 17, 1974, St. Andrew’s Church Office files, and Minutes, Building
Committee, November 28, 1973.
62
Untitled history of Building Committee, St. Andrew’s Church Records, folder, Dedication Committee.
63
Untitled history of Building Committee, St. Andrew’s Church Records, folder, Dedication Committee, and
Minutes, Building Committee, April 19, 1979.
61
25
operating a country store and serving lunch, the first Festival started in 1979 and was held in the
YMCA facility. By later standards, it was a modest affair. Fewer than 50 members helped, and
they served 18 loaves of bread (all made by one person), 25 pies, and some soup in “a two-byfour kitchen,” Frances Shuck recalled, “and I mean that literally.” Some of the others who
helped that year were Lois McInery, Margaret Knudson, Peg Seubert, Dorothy Taylor, May
Graaff, Audrey Wedin, Bertie McGrath, Marie Mills, and Colleen Sheaffer. Harriet Satnik made
an afghan for the raffle. “And there wasn’t a crumb of food left,” Anna Shuck noted.64 Net
profit: $950.
The following year, the parish had moved into the new church. “We had a mob—everyone came
down to see the new church,” Anna said. The Festival has never looked back. At the YMCA,
the parish could serve 50 at a time. The new dining area could hold over 175. By the mideighties, over 200 parishioners were helping and profits soared to over $6,000. By 1990, the 200
helpers served over 650 people with over 110 gallons of soup and 200 loaves of bread. “There
have been so many who have helped for so long,” Heidi Klindworth noted.65
Just four years later, the parish celebrated its 100th anniversary in grand fashion. Starting in June
the parish opened its celebration with the release of 1,000 balloons after services. Over several
months, the parish held ice cream socials, picnics, a reunion banquet for Lourdes Academy
graduates, and a dinner/dance at Central Washington University. But the two most memorable
activities was the creation of the Centennial Quilt with thirty blocks depicting the history of
Catholicism in Kittitas County since the Oblate Missionaries arrived in 1848, and Margaret
Knudson’s innovative idea of having a Parade of Brides with 86 gowns—all worn in St.
Andrew’s weddings between 1884 and 1984. Wearing the gowns were the original brides or a
family member. The Parade, which included bridesmaids, ring bearers, and flower girls,
included May Mitchell Graaff who had been married in 1914 at St. Andrew’s Church and still fit
in her original gown. Also featured was Mary Brezden’s 200-year-old family gown.66
64
Daily Record (Ellensburg), September 27, 1990.
See October Festival records, St. Andrew’s Church Records and Daily Record, September 27, 1990.
66
Daily Record, June 5, 21, and 26, 1984
65
26
The “Parade of Brides” at the Parish’s 100 th Anniversary
The national decline of religious orders, the loss of the school, and the lay involvement in the
building of the new church all led to a rising role of the laity in the parish that has paralleled
national trends in the Church. As nuns and associate pastors largely disappeared from St.
Andrew’s, it became the laity’s job to provide religious education and run the church on a day to
day basis. Father John Murtagh noted that by the 1980s the parish was ready to take on the
responsibility of passing on the faith. “If it is to be done,” he concluded, “we better get doing
it.”67
Church governance changed to include parish members. The Parish Pastoral Council, Father
Seamus Kerr recalled, emerged largely from the building committee and parish involvement in
the church construction. After the completion of the church, the building and finance
committees merged to provide one governance unit for the parish. In 1995, the committee was
disbanded to create the Parish Council. Father Perron Auve, pastor in the late 1990s, saw this as
a key shift in the Catholic Church. Until about 30 years ago, parish councils hardly existed, and
the parish priest had wide latitude to make decisions. There was a time when the laity was not
even allowed to be in charge of a church choir. Today most ministries are run by parish
members. As the laity became more responsible, they gained a greater voice in parish affairs.68
This greater involvement by the laity has allowed pastors to establish new ministries. Father
Auve activated the present St. Vincent de Paul Society in 1996 to work with the poor and
disadvantaged of the county. Largely in response to travelers stopping in Ellensburg seeking
help, Auve saw a wider need for a society to minister to county residents as well. As Marilee
Coscarart recalled, “he pulled together a few of us,” and the group soon broadened its original
67
68
Murtagh interview.
Interviews with Father Seamus Kerr and Perron Auve.
27
mission. Its first project was to take over the Christmas Giving Tree program in the parish. The
St. Vincent de Paul Society continues today as a program which, from its beginning, has assisted
many needy members of church and community with support for living and medical expenses.
The organization has a jail ministry to help former inmates get a new start on life and has
partnered with other churches to deal with issues like homelessness. The Society supports the
APOYO and FISH food banks in town, including a major donation to FISH for a walk-in freezer.
The parish provides additional support for APOYO and FISH with fresh food from its recently
established Community Garden. Parishioners and members of the community may rent their
own garden space while working in the Food Bank section. All vegetables grown in the Food
Bank section and other donations are given to FISH and APOYO for distribution to the needy.
Led by Celeste Kline, Ron Poplawski, and Father Siler, the parish constructed a rectory behind the church in
2007.
Religious education became the sole responsibility of the laity after the closure of the school.
For many years it was taught on Tuesday afternoons after school. This arrangement was a
struggle as it was difficult to find parish members who were available at that time. With the
arrival of Father Auve all education moved to Sundays, and he made special efforts to improve
teen education. Along with student Casey Ross, Auve fulfilled a need for a more vibrant
spiritual life for parish teens. Bringing teens to religious education had been difficult from the
start because the traditional Sunday school approach was not attractive to teens. A high school at
Lourdes had failed in the early 1920s. The parish, Auve concluded, “needed a new approach.”
The Life Teen program was a well-developed national program “built around the Mass,” Auve
recalled. He was very interested in reinvigorating the liturgy. The Life Teen program, built
around Liturgy and Life Night, fit well with that goal and continues to be a success a decade
later.69
The (Re)diversification of the Parish
When the Italian Jesuits came to Kittitas Valley in the 1870s, they worked hard to develop an
integrated Catholic community. Working among the Indians, Irish, Germans, and Dutch
69
Auve interview.
28
immigrants, they hoped for racial integration that, for the Indians, did not occur. With
immigration restrictions in the 1920s, European immigration also faded away over the years.
The Irish priests who arrived in the 1950s and 1960s ministered to a largely homogenous
population of native-born Americans. The Irish priests, too, were replaced by mostly native-born
clergy.
Today, however, St. Andrew’s is experiencing change once again. As the American Church has
suffered a crisis of confidence and membership in the last several decades, the international
Church has come to its aid, just as it has done throughout its history. New immigrants have
arrived in ever greater numbers to Kittitas County and the parish has grown proportionally. The
Hispanic community has created a diverse Catholic community similar to the one populated with
Germans, Dutch, and Irish in the late nineteenth century. Although they come from many parts
of Latin America, most of the new arrivals are from the Mexican state of Jalisco and work in
alfalfa fields and orchards of central Washington. Although the migratory and uncertain nature
of this work hinders regular church attendance, their numbers have increased markedly in the last
ten years. Separated by language, culture, and transience, many Hispanics feel isolated from the
majority of the parish.70
Fathers Perron Auve and Robert Siler have sought to smooth this transition to a more
heterogeneous parish. Auve instituted a Spanish Mass each Sunday. Work with the parish’s
sister parish, Mary, Mother of God, in Colima, Mexico, Siler believes, have helped, and group
events, such as breakfasts, dinners, and the celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe,
have drawn the two parts of the current parish closer together. Siler also sought to have a
Hispanic associate pastor named to the parish, although the diocese could spare one for only a
few months.71
Father Tomàs Vázquez
In the summer of 2009 the arrival of a Mexican-born priest, Father Tomàs Vázquez from the
state of Michoacàn, has fulfilled Siler’s hope for an improved conduit for the Hispanic
70
71
Email from Father Tomàs Vázquez, November 20, 2009.
Auve and Father Robert Siler interviews.
29
community. Vázquez studied for the priesthood in Mexico City and wanted to work among his
countrymen in the United States. He was ordained at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Yakima in 2004.
Since coming here, he has taken special care to work and socialize with the Hispanic community,
and being good at soccer doesn’t hurt his efforts, either. The results have already been
impressive. Hispanic children have flooded into religious education and Life Teen, creating new
excitement and new challenges in how to best instruct our Catholic children in their faith.
The parish, then, has come full circle, returning to the patterns of the nineteenth century.
Increasingly dependent and linked to an international faith, Catholics in Kittitas County are
sustained by a global community of believers in an effort to bridge cultural divides. The Church
was only partially successful in doing so in the nineteenth century. The challenge for St.
Andrew’s Parish will be to do so in the twenty-first.
30
Appendix A
Clarifying the Record
The First Baptisms and Mission
Due to an incomplete and confusing record, previous histories of Catholicism in the lower
Kittitas Valley have drawn some unfounded conclusions. A number have claimed that the first
baptisms in the valley were administered on November 30, 1847, by the Oblates at a mission
called “St. Rose de Chemma,” but this is not possible. The historical record shows that the
Oblates were nowhere near Kittitas on that date. They were, in fact, establishing a mission at the
confluence of the Yakima and Columbia Rivers called St. Rose de Chemna.72 The November 30
date, which coincides with St. Andrew’s feast day, has led to speculation that the supposed first
baptismal date was the reason for the naming of St. Andrew’s Church. But the November 30
mistake was made well after the church had been so named. Unfortunately, we have no evidence
yet that explains why the church was given its name.
Location of the Missions
Although the site of the mission on Manastash Creek is clear, there has been much confusion
regarding the location of the others in the valley. For example, historian Wilfred Schoenberg has
claimed that a church was built by the Jesuits on Nanum Creek in 1880 near Ellensburg.73 Other
histories refer to two chapels used in the 1870s and 1880s, naming one of these as the St. Rose
Mission built by the Oblates in 1847-48. Yet we now know that the St. Rose Mission was really
located near the mouth of the Yakima River. These claims have been further confused by vague
accounts regarding the location of the church used by Father Parodi just two miles from
Ellensburg. Were there one or two churches/chapels used in the 1870s and 1880s? Where were
they located? When were they built? Obtaining the letters and memoir of Father Parodi, located
at the Oregon Province Archives at Gonzaga University (copies of these documents are now
deposited with the St. Andrews Church records and the Ellensburg Public Library), and the land
records at the Kittitas County Courthouse allows us to clear up the record somewhat.
Records show there were two chapels built and used by the missionary Jesuits in the 1870s and
1880s. One was located in the area near the entrance to Naneum (the older spellings were
Nanum and Nanem) Canyon about ten miles north of Ellensburg. This building was constructed
in the 1870s, according to Parodi, by Fathers Grassi and Caruana, and was very close to a major
Kittitas Indian campground that early Valley maps reported held 400 Indians. Parodi wrote his
memoir in 1907, twenty years after he left Ellensburg, and he garbled Nanum’s spelling, calling
it “Anana, or Ananam.” But his general account locates the chapel in the Naneum area, which
fits with references made by early settlers of a chapel located in the “Nanum hills.” Parodi
describes it as a site ten miles north of Ellensburg at the base of the mountains that separate the
Kittitas Valley from the Columbia. From his base at “Ananam,” Parodi made many trips over
those mountains to visit the “Winatche” Indians along an Indian trail that had snow on it even in
See Thomas, “Catholics and the Missions of the Pacific Northwest,” Young. “The Mission of the Missionary
Oblates,” and Glauert and Kunz, Kittitas Frontiersmen.
73
Wilfred Schoenberg, A Chronicle of the Catholic History of the Pacific Northwest, 1743-1960 (Spokane: Gonzaga
Preparatory School, 1962), 93.
72
31
the summer. We also know that Bishop Junger conferred the sacrament of confirmation at the
“chapel on the Nanem Creek” in 1880.74
The second Jesuit church was built in 1880 and located much closer to Ellensburg near the
present day Dolarway Ponds and Reecer Creek. This church was where Parodi ministered to
whites and Indians and provided religious and secular education to children. Grassi filed a 40acre claim and turned it over to Parodi. The claim was later sold in 1895 by the Jesuits to
Charles Suver for $1,000, although Parodi was under the impression that the claim had been
jumped after he left. The exact location for the claim is recorded as the southwest quarter of the
southwest quarter of Section 34, Township 18, Range 18 east of the Willamette Meridian.
Unfortunately, there is no mention in the records as to where the church might have been located
on those 40 acres.
Appendix B
Pastors of St. Andrew’s Parish
1887-1897
1897-1914
1914-1946
1946-1959
1959-1963
1963-1966
1966-1975
1975-1977
1977-1980
1980-1983
1983-1986
1987-1988
1988-1994
1994-1995
1995-2002
2002-2007
2007-2009
2009-
74
Louis Kusters
John Sweens
Joseph Luyten (Monsignor)
Desmond Dillon
Frederick O’Hearn
Maurice Mulcahy
Seamus Kerr
Seamus Kerr and Arthur Waters, co-pastors
Seamus Kerr
Richard Wuertz
John Murtagh
Richard Scully
John Heneghan
Brendan Dorian
Perron Auve
Robert Siler
Michael Brezowski
Tomàs Vàzquez
Catholic Sentinel, May 13, 1880.
32
Appendix C
Members of the Parish Who Have Joined Religious Orders
Priests
Gerald Desmond
Reginald Mitchell
Charles Suver, S.J.
John Fitterer, S.J.
Joseph Graaff
James Kelleher
Maurice Peterson
Given Name
Raymond Desmond
John Paul Mitchel
Charles Suver
John Fitterer
Joseph Graaff
Year
1930
1931
1937
1953
1955
Brothers
Aloysius, OSB
Robert Aloysius Graaff
1949
Deacons
Jack Spence
Jack Spence
Sisters
Mary Coronata
Mary Evangela
Mary Ambrosia
Mary Lourdina
Mary Andrea
Mary Dolorita
Mary Mechtilde of Jesus
Mary Josepha
Mary Harold
Mary Dorothy
Anna Mueller
Mary Rollinger
Gertrude Nesalhous
Teresa Pott
Margaret Clerf
Marie Bartholet
Marie S. Moreau
Dorothy Rollinger
Joan Marie Wales
Dolores Marie Hutson
1905
1910
1911
1912
1913
1915
1915
1915
1951
Appendix D
Donors to the Building of the 1885 Church
Beale and Reis
J.P. Becker
Jacob Becker, Sr.
Mathias Becker
L. Blumauer and Sons
Frank Bossing
Henry Clerf
Nick Clerf
John Clifton
Bierru and Felton
Walter Bull
J.M. Byrnes
Patrick Carey
Pat Desmond
John Fogarty
A. Haberman
Fred Hiller
S. Klienberg
Mike Kohlheff
Patrick Lynch
A. McCoy
J. McDonald
J.J. Meagher
Martin Michels
J.J. Mueller
Nick Mueller
David Murray
Jerry Pattenande
Mike Pott
Charles Reed
Mike Rollinger
Nick Rollinger
C.A. Sanders
33
Martin Sautter
Louis Schang
Frank Schuller
Peter Schuller
Adolph Von Hollen
Shoudy and Stewart
Watson Brothers
Frank Uebelacher
Appendix E
Charter Members of the 1909 Knights of Columbus, Parodi Council 1401
C.J Bartholet
Charles Bartholet
Matt Bartholet
H.J. Block
E.C. Brown
Louis Burtle
James Camody
Nicholas Clerf
Frank R. Coleman
J.M Coughlin
James Daugherty
P.J. Fagan
Thomas W. Farrell
W.P. Finnegan
Frank Fitter
Philip Fitterer
James P. Flynn
Thomas L. Flynn
C.L. Hoeffler
J.F. Keenan
John Kellegher
J.J. Kryger
R.A. McArthur
Patrick McMahon
George Michels
Henry Michels
J.J. Michels
John O’Ban
Jerry Pattenaude
Fred Pera
Anton Pieroth
Frank Pott
Jacob Pott
J.P. Redmond
Jacob Pott
George Rollinger
Michael Rollinger
N.P. Rollinger
Tony Rollinger
Matt Sandmeyer
Joseph Scheier
Matt Scheier
Clyde Suver
George Suver
Harry Suver
J.N. Streff
Rev. John Sweens
George Watts
Simon Wippel
Joe Wittman
Thomas Woods
34
Dominican Sisters Who Taught at Lourdes Academy
First Name
Last Name
Years in Ellensburg
Sister Mary Alphonsa
Sister Teresa
Sister Cecilia
Sister Pia
Sister Reginalda
Sister Dolores
Sister Leona
Sister Loretta
Sister Rosaria
Sister Raymindine
Sister Lucilla
Sister Mercedes
Sister Carmelilta
Sister Amanda
Sister Alberta
Sister Baptista
Sister Amelia
Sister Antonia
Sister Petrina
Sister Bernadetta
Sister M. Margaret
Sister Innocentia
Sister Dympna
Sister Edwardine
Sister Aloysia
Sister Angela
Sister Rose
Sister Bonaventure
Sister Salesia
Sister Marcia
Sister Fidelma
Sister Christine
Sister Columba
Sister Rosanne
Sister Margaret Mary
Sister Cornelia
Sister Jean
Sister Regina
Sister Aquin Gertrude
Sister Mark Lois
Scheuer
Cussen
Oberland
O’Brien
Hughes
Oldfield
Morin
Lorama
Hannon
Noonan
Loughnane
McAvoy
Green
Noonan
Dineen
Gannon
O’Farrell
O’Brien
Hughes
Loughnane
McNerthney
O’Brien
Ward
Nash
Burns
Hardy
White
Hayes
Mullen
O’Gorman
Tuffy
Armstrong
Craig
O’Brien
Barry
Meyers
Meyer
Nelson
Payette
Parcher
1908-13.
1908, 1913
1908-09
1908-09
1908
1908-12, 17-20
1908, 1910-11, 13
1909-10
1909-10, 13, 22-27
1910-11, 24-26, 29, 33-36, 41
1910-12, 17
1911-12
1911-12, 15
1912, 32
1912, 20, 60
1912-14, 18
1912
1912
1913-14
1913
1914-15
1914-15
1914-15
1914
1914-15
1914, 1916-21
1916-19, 22-24, 34-39, 48-49, 56
1916, 32-41, 60-63
1916-17
1916-19, 22
1916
1917, 1922-23
1945-48, 57, 59
1946
1947-49
1947
1947, 59
1948
1948
1949
35
First Name
Last Name
Years in Ellensburg
Sister Thomas Dolores
Sister Dominic Bernice
Sister Patrick
Sister Raymond Eileen Marie
Sister Lawrence Agnes
Sister Alphonsa Mary
Sister Joan Florence
Sister M, Margaret Rita
Sister Colmcille Mary Pat
Sister Pauline
Sister Dennis Jean
Sister Stephen
Sister Catherine
Sister Diana
Sister Joanna
Sister Finbarr Marie
Sister Leo Marie
Sister Joachim Phyllis
Sister Therese Marilyn
Sister Bernard Margaret
Sister Raphael Mary
Sister Marie Goretti (Marie Celine)
Sister Rosalie Maureen
Sister Thadeus Judith
Sister Maureen
Sister Ruth Jean
Sister Carmel
Kirk
MacDonald
Johnson
Glavin
Huck
O’Sullivan
Johnson
Grogran
Murphy
McMahon
Hopper
Stubbins
Patch
Feeney
McCarthy
Murphy
Beeler
Ganoe
MacDonagh
O’Farrell
Vivolo
McMahon
Manion
Seiwerath
O’Brien
Mandy
Farrell
1949
1953-56
1953
1953
1953-56
1954
1954
1955
1955
1955-57
1955-56
1957, 59
1959
1959
1960
1960-61
1960-63
1962
1962-63
1963
1964
?
1964-65
1964
1965
1965-68
1966