Parish celebrates hall opening as it bids farewell to longtime pastor

by Marc and Julie Anderson
mjanderson@theleaven.org

SCIPIO — In the choir loft. Under the choir loft. In the sacristy. In the rectory’s laundry room. In the rectory library. On the back porch. 

Those are just some of the spots religious education students of St. Boniface Parish in Scipio and nearby St. Therese Parish in Richmond met for classes. That’s no longer the case.

On Sept. 28, the parishes’ 140 families held a soft opening of their new 11,500-square-foot parish hall, allowing for tours, fellowship and refreshments.

The gathering doubled as a farewell party for Father Gerald Williams, O.Carm., who retired as pastor of the two parishes on June 30 but stayed around to finish overseeing the project. On Oct. 1, he returned to the Carmelite priory in his native Chicago after serving as pastor for 17 years.

Holding giant scissors, Father Gerald offered a prayer prior to cutting the ribbon.

Invoking the intercession of both parish patrons, he prayed for the hall to “be a welcoming place to others and the receiving of your (God’s) grace through our interactions, through our friendship and through the . . . good times — as well as the bad — that will be remembered here for another century to come.”

He also expressed his gratitude to all of those who had given of their time, talent and treasure to the project.

Designed by Zimmerschied Architecture of Lawrence and constructed by Loyd Builders of Ottawa, the new facility, parishioners hope, will last at least 100 years. The former building’s cornerstone was laid exactly 100 years ago and served parishioners until June 2021 when what might have been a microburst blew off the majority of the hall’s roof, as well as that of the church.

Ironically, the parishes had planned to build a hall. The storm damage sped up the process by providing insurance monies, jump-starting fundraising efforts.

Planning began in the fall of 2021, but it was not until late in 2024 that the hall’s concrete slab was poured, with construction getting into high gear this past spring.

The new building features approximately 9,000 square feet of usable space, an increase of 2,000 when compared to the previous hall. More importantly, though, the new hall sits on one level instead of three. So, parishioners won’t have to climb or descend stairs. And there’s plenty of space for religious education.

Annually, the parish instructs 70 kids in kindergarten through senior year of high school. Prior to the storm, parishioners used PVC pipes and tarps as dividers, but as sisters Carol Lutz and Nancy Hermreck and fifth-generation parishioners explained, the dividers often had to be disassembled for wedding receptions and reassembled for classes.

Lutz, the current religious education director, said the new hall features eight multipurpose rooms, two of which are larger than the others and two with removable walls, providing a maximum seating capacity of 250 to 275.

Besides the spacious main room and multipurpose rooms, the sisters said the new kitchen and office will serve the parishes well for funeral dinners, wedding receptions, Christmas parties and the annual bazaar, which typically attracts around 800. The office will allow photocopying to be done on-site instead of off-site or at the rectory.

“To me, there’s not as much unity without a building,” Lutz said. “You go to church together, and you might visit outside of church, but when you have an actual event, you get to see everybody and visit with everybody again. And it’s just more community-minded. I mean, we have a home again.”

Hermreck agreed, saying, “It makes us happy to know that we have a parish center for future generations.”

Father Gerald has high hopes for the hall.

“It’s a very functional building for adult education or other programming because you can give a talk or a speech to a large group, and then all those multipurpose rooms could be used for breakout sessions,” he said.

 “I hope this might enliven some of the archdiocesan programming to know that there’s another resource at least here in the Southern Region, if not even broader than that,” he added.

As for moving, he said, “It is a bittersweet leaving, but I have redone two churches and I was here for the renovation of the priory. I do get a kick out of doing big projects like this, but I’m 74 and I think I can let go of that pretty easily and just decorate my own room.”