By Rita McInerney

This is the second of two articles recalling Glenmary Home Missioners service in the north Georgia mountain areas of the archdiocese of Atlanta. This is the 50^th anniversary year of the Glenmary society.

When the Glenmary area of service in the archdiocese was extended to Banks, Habersham and Rabun counties in 1964, the first priest to take up residence in Clarkesville was Father Bernard Quinn, who came from the Glenmary Pastoral Center in Buck Creek, N.C.

That his welcome was a warm one, with cooperation extended not only by the small flock of Catholics but people of other faiths as well, was due mainly to the efforts of a Connecticut Yankee.

John and Ruth Thompson and their two children had been living in Clarkesville since 1956. The family came from Waterbury, Conn., on a “temporary basis” while John trained local people for work at the Scovill plant, manufacturer of buttons and zippers.

People were nice to him, he recalled some quick to say they had never met a Catholic before or that they had been told Catholics had horns. When Thompson was offered the chance to stay at the Scovill plant, he said he would if he could find a Catholic Church. He found another Catholic who attended Mass in Gainesville. There was also a new Catholic mission, St. Mary’s in Toccoa, 20 miles away.

The few Catholics persuaded Father Gino Doniney, a Verona Father in Toccoa, to celebrate Mass for them in Clarkesville. The local Lions Club allowed use of its hall and the first Mass was celebrated during the winter of 1961.

Thompson, later to become permanent deacon, put out sandwich board signs on the five main roads announcing the Mass. There were 30 people attending that first Sunday. “Some people came over from Toccoa to help us,” he remembers.

That was the situation when Father Quinn arrived. A rented house served as rectory and for daily Mass. Sunday Liturgy remained at the Lions hall. (Later, two Glenmary brothers built a portable altar for Liturgy there.)

The Thompsons and a few others in the congregation square-danced at the hall on Saturday night, then stayed after the fiddlers had left to clean it up for Sunday morning Mass.

The congregation loved Father Quinn, Thompson said, recalling him as “quite an organizer.” In 1966 he left Clarkesville – Clayton to become research coordinator, later director, for the Glenmary Research Center. As part of his work, Father Quinn wrote a book on The Small Rural Parish published in 1980. The center and Father Quinn moved to Atlanta from Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s.

Father Lou McNeil followed Father Quinn as director of the center on Piedmont Avenue in 1986.

The center helps home missionaries gain a better understanding of the evangelical context they minister in, whether black, southern white or Appalachia communities. It also serves to research needs of the Catholic Church in rural America. It can supply profiles of every county in the U.S. with statistics of membership in the Catholic parishes, including ages of members, educational attainment, divorce rate, etc.

Groundbreaking for St. Mark’s Church in Clarkesville took place in 1967 and the first Mass was celebrated in the new structure late the next year. Funding came from Habersham Mills Foundation, the Catholic Church Extension Society, the archdiocese, parishioners and friends. Father Mert McMahon was pastor.

Clayton

St. Helen’s in Clayton was a well-established mission of Toccoa with its own church dedicated in November, 1961, when the Glenmary priests came to north Georgia. The Verona priests from Toccoa began coming to this little town to say Mass in 1960s, according to the recollections of Lina Davis.

Mrs. Davis came to Clayton as the bride of John Davis, a Baptist, in 1947. They had met in her native Italy during World War II. The only Catholic in town, she experienced bigotry and hostility yet with her husband’s support, “I kept my head high and always showed pride in my faith with a smile.”

When the St. Helena’s congregation celebrated the 25^th anniversary Mrs. Davis was honored for her efforts to establish the parish. The anniversary Mass was celebrated by Father Peterson, pastor, Father Gerry Conroy, former pastor, with Deacon Bob Mulligan assisting.

Father Conroy was pastor for four years, beginning in 1974. This was when the formerly isolated areas of western North Carolina and North Georgia were rapidly developing as vacation and recreational areas. Elliott Wigginton, Father Conroy recalled, had just begun publishing the Foxfire books to teach the young people of the region the values of Appalachia and how to preserve them.

Father Conroy first learned about Atlanta’s Cabbagetown when children from that unique neighborhood were brought to Rabun Gap for a few weeks in summertime and introduced to mountain lore and crafts.

Now the Glenmarian lives and works in Cabbagetown where he is co-director of the Southeast Center for Justice based at the Christian Council offices on Boulevard. The center, a non-profit group begun in 1986 with funding from Glenmary and with the approval of Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan, offers assistance to people working to bring justice to the poor.

When Father Gerald Peterson became pastor of St. Mark and St. Helena in 1978, he found “good ecumenical activity” and became involved in the Sharing and Caring Places of the ministerial association, which help the area poor. Food and clothing, medical assistance including dentures and glasses and financial assistance are available to them.

Father Peterson was a leader in establishing Habitat for Humanity in his own area and encouraged Catholics in Cleveland to become active in that county chapter. Later Habitat of Rabun County was formed. Habitat is a volunteer worldwide organization which builds houses for low-income families. The families are also involved in construction of their homes.

In Clayton Father Peterson was instrumental in getting the ministerial association to sponsor an annual prayer service for Christian unity.

He inherited a rented rectory which suited his “taste for the simple lifestyle” with space enough for two Vietnamese refugees in need of a home. They shared his for six years. Currently, he reports, one has graduated from college and the second will finish soon.

He also shared generously the bounty of his backyard garden. Father Peterson served as archdiocesan rural life director for eight years until 1988 when he left the north Georgia mountains. During that time he wrote a monthly column on rural issues for The Georgia Bulletin.

“Evidence of a desire to help the poor is seen in the fact that our two small churches began tithing the regular offering eight years ago. In the past year, we extended more than $20,000 in support of organizations like the three Sharing and Caring Places and Habitat of North East, Ga., and now Habitat of Rabun County. At the same time we responded to some world hunger needs,” Father Peterson wrote in a column in The Georgia Bulletin in July, 1988. He was leaving the north Georgia mountains after 19 years of service. He is now pastor at Holy Spirit parish in Winfield, Ala.

The Glenmary way of evangelization through hospitality and social outreach is evident at Covenant Center in the Sautee Valley. Here, refuge is offered the homeless, runaways, recovering addicts and victims of domestic violence. A long-term shelter program helps them get back on their feet.

The rambling stone home was given to the archdiocese in the early 1980s and later turned over to Glenmary. Brother Larry Johnson has been on the staff since October, 1985, and preferred to remain when he had “the option of moving on” not long ago.

The center calls St. Mark in Clarkesville its parish. Father Alex Keenan celebrates Mass there weekly. Volunteers from Catholic and Protestant churches in the area help out in various roles at the center which serves Rabun, White, Habersham, Towns, Union and Banks counties.

Glenmary assigned Father Keenan to St. mark and St. Helena after Father Peterson left. The Boston priest, on five-year leave from the archdiocese, was used to serving parishes of more than 8,000 people with as many as 1,200 youngsters enrolled in religious education.

Just beginning the third year of his five-year commitment to Glenmary, he spent one year in western North Carolina before arriving in Clarkesville in August, 1988.

Now, leading a congregation of 250 people, he sees a “deep sense of community, deeper awareness of interdependence…They come together at times of grieving or to celebrate.” He admits to having “learned a lot about shared ministry, the calling forth the gifts of the people,” since being with the Glenmarians.

St. Mark’s is welcoming young professionals who commute to Gainesville or Gwinnett, Father Keenan said, and parishioners are getting an evangelization program off the ground. John Thompson “is one of the best evangelizers we have. He’s down to earth and does a lot of work in the community.” Thompson, now retired, is president of Sharing and Caring and took over the prison ministry when Father Peterson left.

Father Frank Ruff said Father Keenan’s program involves training parishioners as evangelizers. “The laity will take on responsibility usually done by priests and sisters.” The Glenmary president said he is “concerned by the increasing number of inactive Catholics that have moved in. We know there are a lot of retirees and also a lot of people in jobs serving them.”

Twenty-eight miles away in Clayton, another deacon, Bob Mulligan helps Father Keenan. Trudy and Bob Mulligan came to the mountains from Connecticut in 1986. Already a deacon, Bob sought out a place to serve through Father Ruff’s newsletter. Father Peterson alone responded.

During the seasons when tourists flock to the area, Father Keenan’s schedule is somewhat frantic with Saturday Vigil and Sunday masses in Clarkesville and Clayton. Bob Mulligan has prepared for the Liturgy when the priest races into Clayton. He also directs religious education for the mostly retired parishioners. There are fewer than 10 children and teens in the parish. The Mulligans live about half-a-mile from St. Helena.

Two School Sisters of Notre Dame from Baltimore, Sister Mary Burke and Sister Catherine Concannon have been vital to the workings of the two churches and their outreach for years. They were recipients of tender tribute from Linda Davis when Clayton marked its quarter century in 1986.

Blairsville

When the parishioners of St. Francis of Assisi in Blairsville happily marked their 20^th anniversary in 1986, a pilgrimage to the first places of worship opened a day long celebration. Blairsville Dress Factory was the first stop. Here, because of good will of Jewish manager, the few Catholics were first able to celebrate Mass.

Also visited was the home of Elizabeth Dockery, pioneer parishioner, whose home had been a location for Mass, and the Methodist Church where they worshiped from 1970 to 1975. Since 1978 the parish has worshiped, studied and socialized in a rustic stone and wood church converted from its former life as a gun shop by two Glenmary brothers and parishioners.

Father Ed Gorny became pastor in December, 1987, when Father Poandl left for a sabbatical and later reassignment. Now it is Father Gorny who makes the 35-mile trip over Blood Mountain to Cleveland. Traveling the hazardous road full of hairpin curves in winter “begins with the Act of Contrition,” he confesses.

He makes the trip several times a week for Mass and meetings. Helping on the Blairsville side of the mountain is Sister Rosemary Wickham while Sister Toni Kivlahan fills that role in Cleveland. They are sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Family from Dubuque, Iowa, whose members have served with the Glenmarians in North Georgia since the 1970s. Deacon Dan Bradach also assists in Cleveland.

There are about 96 full-time households and 20 part-time making up the Blairsville parish now, Father Gorny said. Twenty children are enrolled in grade school religious education and 10 in the junior-senior high school program.

In Blairsville and Cleveland there are pockets of poverty hidden along the side roads. Parishioners reach out in both towns to help. The Blairsville parish maintains an emergency fund administered by the outreach committee of the parish council, contributes to the food banks in White and Union counties, and is now in the midst of collecting funds and food to brighten Thanksgiving and Christmas for needy families.

With other local clergy, Father Gorny and Sister Wickham take their turns as chaplain at the local hospital and are involved in Habitat in White County.

Last year, Father Gorny said, parishioners invited friends and neighbors to come to the evangelistic mission held at St. Francis. A handful came, “more out of curiosity,” the priest said. Efforts are made on an ongoing basis, he added, to reach out to the unchurched either through person-to-person contact or through the media. But most RCIA participants, he finds, are either spouses or other relatives of Catholic families.

“We are a traditional kind of Catholic parish,” he said. “There is good family spirit among the people attracted to a simpler form of life. But it’s not easy to keep young people here.”

In Cleveland, the outreach continues. Sharing and Caring, food bank, and clothing store are recipients of parish assistance.

Sister Kivlahan said the congregation now numbers between 80 and 90 families with 23 children and 12 in the teen group. The church is “wall-to-wall people” for weekend Masses during the summer months.

In her years of working with Glenmarians, Sister Kivlahan has found them to be people-oriented, aware of the signs of time and preparing for the future.

“They are constantly challenging the people to reach out,” she added. “And they appreciate the gifts of the laity.”