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July 5, 2009

Church parishioners celebrating 150 years together

By Brian Ojanpa

LE CENTER — No fuzzy math for the folks of St. Henry Catholic Church this time around. No sir.

A couple of decades ago, the rural Le Center church celebrated its 126th anniversary. Reason? The 125th year of its existence came and went with no one noticing.

What’s more, 43 years earlier parishioners feted the church’s 83rd anniversary.

83rd? 126th?

Church member Loren Riebel just shrugged.

“We’re not too fussy,” he said by way of explaining the curious chronologies.

But they won’t get fooled again.

On July 12, picnicking will commence, softball games will be played, and the church’s 133-year-old bell will clang, telling one and all that St. Henry’s has reached the nice round age of 150.

Lord knows it’s not easy keeping a country church afloat, but the congregation has done it with moxie and good fortune.

“Financially we’re fine — no debts,” Riebel said. “We’re hanging in there.”

St. Henry’s numbers 50 to 60 families. Maybe.

“Depends on how you count,” said church member Karl Germscheid, who figures the tally is more like 40 families.

St. Henry’s lost its pastor several years ago, but his duties were fortuitously taken up by the Rev. Chris Schofner of St. Mary’s Catholic in Le Center.

Schofner conducts St. Henry’s sole weekly mass 8 a.m. Sundays. That time may not play well with young churchgoers, but that’s a moot point because St. Henry’s congregants skew elderly.

Many, such as Dick Wieland, possess multi-generational lineage to the church two miles west of Le Center.

Wieland said when his grandfather was 7 years old, circa 1904, he’d grab the church bell rope and ring that thing for all it was worth.

Up front, beside the altar, is a near life-size statue of St. Henry that a parishioner carved long ago from a log fetched from the woods out back, and in the basement hand-hewn logs are still in place.

Church origins date back to 1852, when eight families from the mountainous Canton Grissons in Switzerland settled on a piece of high ground just west of what became Le Center.

They came to a new country to get what their native land couldn’t provide — fertile ground. The Swiss mountains were nice, church old-timers said, but you can’t eat scenery.

Crude log cabins sprang up and the settlers, plying a language called Romancha, built themselves a church in 1859. Theirs was the first, and last, Romancha settlement in the United States.

In the cemetery beside the church lie the remains of parishioners, including several priests, two Civil War veterans, and the infant Wenzin twins — Leonal and Anthony — who died within days of each other in 1888.

St. Henry’s now, as then, is bounded by cropland and a whole lot of quiet. While showing some visitors around the other day, Germscheid grabbed the bell rope and gave it a few yanks.

In the old days, the pastor would sound the bell to let field hands know he’d arrived at the church to hear confessions.

Now its use is ceremonial — clarion ringing to announce worship services, somber tolling for funerals.

According to church lore, the 1,000-pound bell was hoisted into place by schoolchildren in 1876, but Wieland doesn’t buy it.

“I think that’s just ‘romance,’” he said.

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