By Georgia Bulletin Staff

While there were dangerous moments throughout the terrible snowstorm, there were also moments of kindness, good humor, derring-do and survival that surfaced at Catholic parishes in North Georgia.

A few of the many untold stories concerned a determined and flexible bride and groom in Dunwoody, stranded out-of-towners in Conyers, and an Irish pastor in Blairsville without water, electricity and heat for several days.

Leslie Turin and Steve Yancoskie planned a 7 p.m. wedding at All Saints Church in Dunwoody on Saturday, March 13. The bride and groom, former Atlantans, were friends of Father Willie Hickey, parochial vicar at the parish.

Yancoskie had been a member of St. Catherine’s Church in Kennesaw and often played golf with Father Hickey. Ms. Turin had attended Holy Family Church in Marietta. Both now live in Memphis.

Despite metro Atlanta’s blizzard conditions, “the bride was very insistent on having (the wedding) in the church,” Father Hickey said. “They were a very inspiring couple all the way along and had a real sense of the sacrament.”

The wedding came off, but it was a close call.

Kathy Palmer was stranded in Smyrna and, with her boyfriend, was the only local resident to make it to the ceremony.

“They knew I really wanted to be there,” said Ms. Palmer, who was chauffeured to the event in a four-wheel drive vehicle the bride and groom had commissioned for duty.

Out of town guests, mostly from Florida and Oregon, were ferried to the church from the nearby Marriott Perimeter Hotel in four-wheel drives.

Parish organist Giny Baethke, who learned there was neither heat nor electricity at All Saints, said she could play the piano if someone came for her. Another four-wheel drive brought her along.

“It was one of the best candlelight ceremonies I’ve ever done,” Father Hickey said.

Candles were placed on the altar, in back of the church and down the aisle. Four four-wheel drive trucks were left running outside the church’s plate glass doors so their headlights could add further light to the ceremony.

“It was a very formal wedding,” said Ms. Palmer, clad in snow-issue jeans and tennis shoes for the occasion, “but it became a bit more casual as the ceremony wore on.”

When one of the candles fell over, she said, the father of the groom retrieved it , averting a possible disaster.

“There were heavy duty tears that fell” as the groom and his groomsmen gathered before the ceremony, Father Hickey remembered. “Everything went so wrong and everything came out so right.”

During the wedding, he had told the couple that “the great gift of married love is that you learn to be flexible.” He conceded that, in view of all the plans that had to be changed, they had started out on the right foot.

The Yancoskie’s reception at the Dunwoody County Club had been canceled earlier in the day. Without electricity, they had been told, food preparation was impossible.

Instead, the reception was held at the Marriott Perimeter, where guests were shuttled after the ceremony and where a reception had been set up for another party unable to get there because of the weather.

Despite his wish to celebrate the day, Father Hickey had to stay at the rectory. “I couldn’t get my car out of the driveway,” he said ruefully. “I just waved them off.”

The Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers turned into a hostel for many nationalities during the storm of the century.

Already filled to capacity in their guesthouse with people taking part in a retreat led by Father Eugene Bonacci, CP, the Trappist monastery extended hospitality to another 30 or more stranded people for several days and nights, putting mattresses on the floors of dining rooms and offices.

“We survived. We did very well. I think people were having a party,” said Father Anthony DeLisi, OSCSO, prior of the monastery. The facility was also without electricity and heat for most of the day and night March 13 after a tree fell on a generator.

The extra visitors were out of town people who had flooded Rockdale County for the thirteenth of the month, the day of reported Marian apparitions in a field off Highway 138. Instead people from the Northeast, from Tennessee and Alabama got stranded because the blizzard closed roads in and out of the state. Many had nowhere to stay.

The Rockdale County Sheriff’s Department asked St. Pius X Parish in Conyers to serve as emergency shelter, which it did, letting people sleep in classrooms of the parish education building and feeding crowds both Saturday and Sunday. On Monday, March 15, those still stranded in Rockdale were ferried over to the monastery to consolidate the group in one place.

Father John Walsh, pastor of St. Pius X, said the parish St. Vincent de Paul Society coordinated the emergency effort and food was brought in.

He estimated about 30 people slept in the parish hall over the weekend.

“There was an awful lot of good will on the part of all the people here,” Father Walsh said. “It was a weekend where there was a lot of good will, goodheartedness and kindness.”

While many Catholic parishes throughout the archdiocese canceled all their Masses because of the dangerous road conditions, St. Pius went ahead with its schedule of extra Masses. They had been planned because the county anticipated 70,000 people trying to come for the reported apparitions. In fact, about 7,000 to 10,000 people came, county officials said.

Both St. Pius X and the monastery benfited from the extra mattresses stashed at the Trappist site by the Cursillo movement. “Say thanks to the Cursillo movement for the mattresses they left here,” Father DeLisi said. “We had whole families sleeping in one room and mattresses on the floor in the dining room.”

Among those who spent time at the monastery or St. Pius were visitors to Conyers from Australia, a Vietnamese family trying to reach New York, a Korean Family, one of whom had to be taken to the hospital because of illness, and other of Filipino and Hispanic background, Father DeLisi said. “It was like a League of Nations around here.”

--Gretchen Kiser

Neighbors from across the way battled knee-high snow drifts in their 4x4 to deliver a birthday cake to Father Paddy Donaghey in Blairsville during the Blizzard of ’93.

Candles lit on the cake they emerged from the truck after snow up to the grill stopped them in their tracks halfway up the drive to St. Francis of Assisi parish rectory. To the sound of “happy birthday” the priest trudged to meet them before the wind blew out the candles. His birthday is March 17.

“I spent my birthday last year in St. Joseph’s Hospital,” he recalled during a telephone interview, “and this year, snow-bound.” Father Donaghey underwent bypass surgery a year ago.

Without electricity from 1:30 a.m. March 13 to 5:20 p.m. March 15, the North Georgia pastor roughed it by melting snow packed in large plastic garbage cans and keeping the gas oven in the kitchen stove buring for heat. The well pump is powered by electricity as is the rectory heating system.

“You’d be surprised how much snow it takes to get just a little water,” the priest observed. He used snow water for washing and cooking. A pot of stew begun Saturday morning was stretched through several meals by adding rice, mushrooms and chicken. He had just melted enough snow to take care of other sanitary necessities when the power came back on.

“I’m going to ask the finance committee about building a fireplace. This kind of storm happens about every 10 years. That ought to be enough time to find the money and get it built.”

Local telephones remained open and Father Donaghey spent the day after the storm checking on parishioners, several of whom had health risks.

“It’s been bad up here, really bad. The hospital in Hiawassee is packed.” Those without heat and at risk were taken to the hospital. The priest said parish facilities had not been damaged, but the storm made him aware of what was needed to conserve on heat in the buildings.

The beauty of the snow did not escape his notice. “The chairs I have on the deck looked as if they had a rich, thick upholstery. The sun came out yesterday and it was beautiful,” he reported.

“I can see the well house now,” he added, but his truck is still in the carport covered with ice and snow. The priest agrees it will be several days before he is released from his wintry prison.

--Paula Day