Holy Family Church in Jerome, AZ

by pauljgrenier@aol.com

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HAPPINESS is to have EVERYTHING
you NEED,
NOT the NEED to have EVERYTHING

This month’s Travel Plans:
14. March 4th Cottonwood, AZ at Verde Valley RVP (TT) x 14 nights (A section!!)
15. March 18th Grand Canyon Village at GC Campground for 4 nights
16. March 22nd Las Vegas at Las Vegas TT Campground for 14 nights

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3.10.2019 

New Life for Holy Family Catholic Church, Jerome AZ…

Posted on by Diane Rapport-November 26, 2014

Scott Kola, wasn’t always Catholic. He was a renegade from growing up in a family of conservative Orthodox Jews with a Rabbi father and converted to Catholicism eleven years ago. Today, he lives in the Holy Family Catholic Church’s convent, where he can monitor day-to-day restoration. The Holy Family Catholic Church in Jerome AZ, built in 1896, then rebuilt a few years later after it burned down, is the town’s oldest church. Image courtesy Wikimedia.

A year and a half ago, Scott outlined the structural problems of the church and his dreams for renovation to Father David Kalesh, pastor of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Cottonwood. The three-story brick and stone back wall facing Main Street is bowed, its foundation crumbling, mortar for its brick and stone façade in need of repointing. Not surprising for a building that was built in 1896, burned in the fire of 1898, and was rebuilt as a brick and stone structure in 1899-1900. It was known as the ‘miner’s church.

Father David and Scott Kolu became strong allies. Together they are bringing Jerome’s Holy Family Catholic Church back to life. Father David conducts Mass on the third Saturday of each month at 8:30 a.m. When long-time and much loved Jerome resident Don Walsh died in late September, a funeral service was held to a packed church of family and friends. “The church has immense historic value,” Father David told me. “Most important are the memories the church holds for former parishioners and their families who visit Jerome. I would like to help the church become the polished jewel that it once was.”

The Pipe Organ

The organ, designed especially for smaller churches, was built by the

prestigious Kilgen and Sons Pipe Organ Company in St. Louis in the early nineteen hundreds. Only two others of the same compact design still remain in the United States. (Perhaps the most well known Kilgen church pipe organ is housed in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan.)

“We are ecstatic that Mr. Charles Kegg, President and Artistic Director of Kegg Pipe Organ Builders (www.keggorgan.com) is willing to take on the restoration project,” Scott said. I sent an email to Mr. Kegg and asked him why. “I would like to restore it to its original condition so that it can remain an example of this almost extinct style of American pipe organ,” he said. “The pipe organ in Jerome is rather unusual. . . It was being sent to a place where electricity probably didn’t exist at all at the time, so this organ was built using methods from the mid-19th century and with the intention that it must play under difficult circumstances with little or no maintenance. This was not uncommon at all for remote locations. . . Jerome must have been an outpost much more remote than other locations that would want a pipe organ. Another thing that makes it unusual is that it has survived, virtually intact.”

The article was first published in the Verde Independent newspaper in Cottonwood, AZ on November 18. The photo gallery of Vyto Starkinskas’ photos are spectacular. https://verdenews.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=63344

(Diane Sward Rapaport is the author of Home Sweet Jerome: Death and Rebirth of Arizona’s Richest Copper Mining City. The blogs are different from the stories that are included in the book.) 

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