By Gretchen Keiser

One is an organizer and the other can make just about anything from wool or ceramics or stained glass. Together, Eve Trepanier and Pauline Harkins gave the first push to a project at Corpus Christi parish which, like the snowball rolling downhill, seems to get bigger and roll faster than seemed possible at first.

Perhaps the first big push came in June, when the two women pooled their talents and organized a crafts workshop for senior parishioners where people could gather at the parish once a week and learn to work with macramé, ceramics and other crafts. The idea, said Eve Trepanier, was “to get senior citizens away from sitting at home.” Pauline Harkins, gifted in nearly every art and craft, taught what she knew and the parish oven became, during certain hours, a pottery kiln where bud vases and ceramic figures were fired. People “came in to look and to see, and they stayed,” said Mrs. Trepanier. Out of the summer workshops, a group of parishioners from 64 to 93 years old blossomed, who come by the parish every Thursday to share and develop their talents.

From the art work created during the weekly meetings, the senior parishioners gathered items for a November craft fair. The proceeds from the fair, and from coffee and doughnuts sold at the parish after Mass each week underwrote a special program Dec. 4: Christmas with the senior parishioners at Corpus Christi.

The day brought 200 fellow senior parishioners together from five parishes, including the Cathedral, Corpus Christi, Immaculate Heart of Mary, Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Lawrence churches. Priests from the five parishes, led by Father Charles Kershcer, shepherd to Corpus Christi’s seniors, concelebrated an 11 a.m. liturgy. A Christmas lunch was served after the liturgy, with entertainment and each person was given a wrapped Christmas present, handmade ceramics by the Corpus Christi seniors.

Mrs. Trepanier said that some of the fruits of the first workshop were planned, and the group hopes to make the Christmas gathering an annual event. But, in other ways, the senior parishioners have been drawn, unexpectedly, into the parish ministries. Some months ago, another parishioner was so touched by a rose brought to his wife when she was ill that he became the impetus for the creation of a parish rose garden, providing flowers to bring to the sick or housebound. Special ministers to the sick in the parish now go out on their visits with a rose, placed in ceramic bud vase created by the seniors’ workshop.

And, in turn, the parish has welcomed and supported the seniors’ plans and ideas, Mrs. Trepanier said, providing helping hands, enthusiastic backing and an open door for the weekly gatherings, and for the inter-parish Christmas celebration. In fact, attempting to give credit to a few or anything less than all was brushed aside by everyone carrying trays or piling dishes at the luncheon.

“This is the work of the senior parishioners,” and parish angels, Mrs. Trepanier said, surveying a hall filled with candlelit tables, centerpieces, and the clatter of dishes. “There’s just tremendous support” from the parish and staff, said Gini Eagen, one of the parishioners whom seniors claim as “angels.”

The seniors hope to develop a theater group in the future, drawing on the talents of Helen Clifford Mooney, an actress and author who provided a narration of “The First Christmas” at the luncheon. The work will be another way of drawing on the “talent, the know-how, the experience these people have” to offer the parish, Mrs. Trepanier said.

Whatever else they may do, they have already developed the talent for “a brotherly feeling” one to another.