Govans parish has 175-year history of ‘valuing differences’

Claire Reisler, a recent retiree and a longtime parishioner at St. Mary of the Assumption in Govans, spoke of the magnetic pull her church has asserted for much of her life.

Janelle Baum has spent the last 28 of her 38 years feeling the same attraction at St. Mary’s. Milton Dugger, 81, and a member of St. Mary’s for more than 20 years, said the spirit of that place is very much alive in him.

Each pointed to a bond with the nearly 200 worshiping members of the St. Mary’s community, a bond driven by the diversity and inclusion that has marked the parish for decades in North Baltimore.

“I have always felt at home and at peace when I walk into that church. The people value everyone’s differences,” said Reisler, who attended St. Mary’s through age 14 while attending St. Mary’s School, which closed in 2012. Her family moved to Towson and left the parish. About 15 years later, Reiser rejoined her old church and has remained there for the past 34 years.

“Now, it’s all tied together in one big emotional bundle,” added Reisler, a volunteer on the church’s history committee. “I just know St. Mary’s works for me and us, and it’s a shame we’re going to lose that.”

Not even the anger and sadness that have hit the congregation since the archdiocese finalized the Seek the City to Come plan that includes the merger of St. Mary with the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland Dec. 1 – during St. Mary’s 175th year – can keep the parish family from appreciating what it has had together.

“You can feel the spirit of this place. That has not changed at all. All that’s changed is the (shrinking) numbers of people here,” said Baum, who joined St. Mary’s by receiving her confirmation there at age 10. Baum, who fondly recalls youth ministry trips as a middle-schooler at St. Mary’s in the late 1990s, serves as secretary of the pastoral council.

St. Mary’s has maintained a solid ministry presence. The St. Vincent de Paul Society has operated at the church since 1864, feeding those in need in the neighborhood and helping to coordinate a monthly “Van Outreach” to the homeless of Baltimore. The parish’s Trash Bashers have continued the periodic clean-up of several blocks of the York Road corridor. Its extraordinary ministers of holy Communion still assist in the distribution of Communion at Mass and offer it to the homebound and hospital patients.

The history committee is working on plans to honor the church’s 175th year by scheduling tours of the church, the St. Mary’s Cemetery, which dates to 1846, and the former St. Mary’s School. The committee also may announce a choir recital and a special anniversary night Mass. An organ recital has been scheduled for Nov. 10.

As the “Mother Church of North Baltimore,” St. Mary’s established daughter parishes in Cockeysville, Towson, Mount Washington and Hampden.  

“I have been a parishioner since the late 1960s (with) one of eight black families who were at St. Mary’s then,” said Blackwell, now a retired volunteer. “Some people have suggested that we have a good, old-fashioned Irish wake.”

St. Mary of the Assumption started as an orphanage in the mid-1840s. Thousands of families escaped Ireland during the Great Famine. Many did not survive the disease-infested voyages to Baltimore. Father James Dolan, a Fells Point priest, built the orphanage on a farm in Govanstown along North Charles Street. A chapel at the orphanage became a local church.

In 1847, the cornerstone was laid for the original St. Mary’s Church nearby on what became Homeland Avenue, where the cemetery and a schoolhouse also opened.

St. Mary’s stayed on Homeland Avenue until 1942, when it opened its new church, school and convent at the intersection of York and Tunbridge Roads.

Over the past quarter-century, the numbers in the pews at St. Mary’s have dwindled greatly.

“A lot of our parishioners who went to school here moved away years ago, but still drive 45 minutes to an hour (from as far as southern Pennsylvania) to worship here,” Caldwell said. “This is where they grew up. Many will not be worshiping in the city anymore.”

“This small parish of under 200 people is truly integrated in terms of race, background, social standing,” Dugger added. “We are young, old, middle-aged, Black, White, Hispanic, Filipino, LBGT. From my experience, it is the most successfully integrated parish in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.”

“As long as I can get in the car and physically drive (to Govans), I will be a part of St. Mary’s,” said Betty Graf, 85, part of four generations of Irish farming families who have been part of the St. Mary of the Assumption story. Graf now lives in Harford County and commutes to Baltimore City for Mass.

Graf, who said her extended family is amply represented in St. Mary’s Cemetery, was an extraordinary minister of holy Communion and a history committee worker for many years.

“I have always been happy with St. Mary’s,” she said. “St. Mary’s was home, still is. But it won’t ever be there for kids again. That’s the hard part about this.” 

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