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74-year-old parishioner writes history of st. patrick parish, east st. louis

Story by RAFE MIDDEKE
Messenger staff

By any measure, Memoirs and Memories — a review of the parish history of the former St. Patrick Parish in East St. Louis — is a unique journalistic venture and achievement. It will never be a parish history template. It will remain unique.

For author Lorraine LaChance the original intention to write a booklet and update the parish’s history, which was founded in 1862 and suppressed in 2006, evolved into an 18-month labor of love documenting the faith journeys of the parish and parishioners.

It is also a journal of her own faith journey rooted in the parish which was her spiritual home for 74 years.

Lorraine was 4 years old when in 1932 her family moved into St. Patrick’s Parish, and a few years later into the house on 34th St. in the shadows of St. Patrick’s, where she continues to live.

For 63 years, beginning at the age of 15 she was the parish’s organist, although she had played for funerals, weddings, Benedictions and other events beginning in the 5th grade. The parish’s musical history, its dramatic changes after Vatican Council II and the demographic change from a predominantly Irish parish into a predominantly black one presented challenges for the parish’s music director.

Memoirs and Memories is not predominantly a history of the parish as an institution, with a bit of human interest tossed into the mix. There is human interest galore in this history/scrapbook/photo album work of love.
The parish’s history is not shortchanged. The first 81 pages recount the parish’s development, sites, and dramatic changes. Included are copies of newspaper articles, official letters, and the pastor’s handwritten one-page 1930s end-of-year parish histories.

The history also notes the contributions and impact of a number of parishioners and organizations — a recognition of the parish community as the people of God.

Inclusion is a hallmark of Memoirs and a tribute to Lorraine’s commitment to honesty and integrity.
The early pages of the history include the reproduction of an anti-German flyer distributed during parishioners’ bitter rejection of the appointment of a German pastor for the-then 800 Irish parish family. After several years of excommunications and appeals, the Apostolic Delegate ordered the lifting of excommunications and the appointment of an Irish pastor. Noted, too, is the misappropriation of funds in 2004.

A watershed 1961 parish directory listing the over 700 parish families is reproduced. By the end of the decade more than half of the families had moved out of the parish boundaries.

The uniqueness of the Memoirs is the fact it doesn’t end with a detailed parish history. Histories are often tunnel-visioned and ideologically harnessed. Memoirs is not.

The real inclusiveness is its humanity — which spills literally from parishioners’ hearts and souls, painting a picture of a community on a journey of faith. This is the living history of the body of Christ that was St. Patrick’s for 144 years.
After sections on sacramental rites, school faculties, and graduating classes dating to 1932, pages are devoted to the parish’s history of music, recalling Lorraine’s 63 years as the parish’s organist and since her late teens choir director.
The 47-page “Parishioners’ Potpourri” recognizes in personal histories all of St. Pat’s parishioners on the parish roll at the end of 2005, including their years of membership.

With 74 years, Lorraine is by far the longest continuing member. She received her B.A. in Math from the former LeClerc College in Belleville and an M.A. in Elementary Education from St. Louis University. Her 37-year education career included teaching at St. Mary’s in Belleville, the Adult Education Center in East St. Louis, and for the last 12 years, before retiring in 1987, as a math teacher at East St. Louis Senior High School.

A “Do you remember” section recalls many a personal memory ranging across the entire spectrum of human experience and emotion.

Paragraphs on pages 80 and 183 document Lorraine’s sad goodbye. Now her memories replace three quarters of a century of a journey of faith in a parish community.