By Thea Jarvis, Staff Writer

CONYERS – Traffic was as bad as ever, prayers and hymns were repeats from previous gatherings and a reported message from Mary echoed earlier pleas for repentance and predictions of doom. But thousands who trekked the muddied fields of Rockdale County in search of direction and inspiration didn’t seem to mind.

The Oct. 13 anniversary marking the beginning of alleged Marian apparitions to Conyers housewife Nancy Fowler four years ago drew a crowd of 23,500 from across the U.S. and beyond.

“Someone told us it was the last time Mary was to appear,” said Helen Routhier, traveling from Vermont to a winter home in lake Worth, Fla., with her husband. Veterans of a pilgrimage to Lourdes, the couple decided to stop off at Conyers despite the steady rain that pounded the area and made the apparition site and adjoining pastures virtual mudlands.

“It was a very bad drive, visibility was wretched,” said Mrs. Routhier, sporting thin canvas shoes soon to be caked with thick Georgia clay. “We were lucky” to have found room in a local motel with the crowds of people converging on the town, she said.

Slowly moving queues armed with raingear and rosaries, coolers and water jugs, pushing baby strollers and carrying lawn chairs, appeared oblivious to the elements.

“I was very skeptical in the beginning,” said Tillie Lamb, a 70-year-old mother of nine and member of St. Joseph’s Church in Macon who made her third trip to Conyers this month with her daughter. The statuary and plastic flowers had “looked tawdry” and she was unimpressed by the “medium” – an average housewife like herself – but struck by the “absolute silence” of so many thousands of people.

“It made me more zealous,” Mrs. Lamb said. Now, “I pray a lot more.”

Floridian Wesley Wright drove through the night with his wife and two children to get to Conyers. The little band arrived in time for early Mass at the Trappist Monastery and Our Lady of the Holy Spirit and napped in their car before beginning the hike to “holy hill” and beyond.

“I’ve said a rosary a day for the past six years,” said Wright, explaining his interest in the Blessed Mother. “(Mary) has helped me through some traumatic things in my life.”

At the gray frame farmhouse where the latest message was to be reported, people in wheelchairs sat patiently in the raw noon cold. Babies wrapped in blankets slept or cried; children squirmed. Crowds massed on grounds surrounding the house while film crews and reporters jockeyed for position in front of the porch.

Matthew Latta, a rangy tenth grader from Goose Creek High School outside Charleston, S.C., struggled with a new camera he had brought for the occasion.

“I’m supposed to be in school right now,” said Latta, adding that his parents had okayed his absence and brought him along for the ride south. People in his parish were divided on the authenticity of the Conyers apparitions, he said, and “our priest is unsure of it,” but “I came with an open mind.”

Over the loudspeaker system, members of our Loving Mother’s Children, supporters of Nancy Fowler and the Conyers events, encouraged people to pray, sing and wave white handkerchiefs. After 15 decades of the rosary, led in a variety of languages, a message attributed to the Blessed Mother was announced.

There were no surprises. Like past pronouncements, the latest foretold dire happening if people continued to turn away from God.

“I have warned of wars, of natural disasters, famine, drought, floods, epidemics and sufferings of every kind and you fail to understand,” a disembodied male voice announced, conveying words Mrs. Fowler reportedly received from her heavenly visitor.

“God wants you to amend your ways,” the voice continued. “Pray as you never prayed before.”

Following the message, allegedly offered by a tearful Virgin Mary, visitors were advised of a recently passed Rockdale County ordinance that could restrict future gatherings.

The ordinance is tantamount to a denial of the free expression of religion, said a spokesperson for Our Loving Mother’s Children, who suggested that people contact local officials to express their objections.

Mark Garvey, a Catholic from Cincinnati who has visited reported Marian apparition sites in Falmouth and Cold Spring, Ky., said he was surprised that this month’s purported message held nothing new. His on-line computer network had alerted subscribers that the Blessed Mother was to come “in a really special way. Everybody expected something big.”

Garvey said he was “pretty disappointed” in the “monotony” of the message. “I was expecting more.” The spiritual trappings and graphic statuary he found at Conyers are reminiscent of “Gothic Catholicism,” he said, and books and pamphlets on the alleged Conyers apparitions send “schizophrenic messages” about a God alternately gentle and punishing.

Scott Malette, one of over 30 off-duty sheriff’s deputies hired by event organizers to supervise traffic for the day, had been on site since 4 a.m. Oct. 13. A Michigan transplant with just five months’ service in the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Department, Malette kept a smile on his face and a yellow rain slicker over his uniform as he played people-mover.

“I’ve never seen this before,” he said, grinning amiably through a damp moustache. “I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never seen it before.”