By Tom Maguire
Associate editor
The centennial Mass offered a Slavic surprise.
“Linguistic continuity” with the church’s founders prompted Father Ken Kirkman to speak Slovak for the opening prayer, the prayer of the gifts, the preface and the closing prayer Oct. 1 at St. Joseph’s in Endicott.
The statue of St. Joseph with Jesus is displayed in front of the altar.
“He did a good job at it,” said Father Jacinto Mary Chapin, F.I., one of two Franciscans of the Immaculate in the sanctuary for the well-attended Mass.
A book on Slovak grammar along with YouTube and the internet had helped Father Kirkman prepare. He had tipped off the parish council, and some people probably saw or heard him practicing, the pastor figured, but his homage to the language would have been new to a lot of parishioners.
“I probably had a little bit of a Polish accent,” Father Kirkman self-critiqued, “because my grandparents are Polish, but they said that’s OK, nobody’s perfect.”
The choir sang “Hail, St. Joseph” and other songs but, again honoring cultural continuity, switched to Slovak to sing the Communion Meditation, “You Are Holy, Holy.”
A greeter for the centennial Mass, Maureen Silkworth, a parishioner for probably 40 years now, said, “My mom was Slovak so that kind of drew me” to St. Joe’s “but it’s just such a friendly community, a welcoming community.”
St. Joseph’s Church sees good attendance for the centennial Mass.
Czechs and Moravians too
The parish was originally founded as a Slovak parish but it also included the Czechs and Moravians, according to Parish Historian Donald Mastro.
As a little girl, parishioner Marybeth Vanderpoel said, she would “talk to the angel” in the church, which has multiple angelic statues. Vanderpoel doesn’t think the transition from the original Slovak language has hurt the parish, but she does miss the old altar. She spoke of her grandfather Matthew Drozdek, who was one of the first altar boys when he came over from Czechoslovakia as a 9-year-old. “I feel his presence here,” she said, “every time I come in. Every time. … I was almost crying this morning. He’s here with me.”
Father Ken Kirkman points during his tour of the stained glass windows at St. Joseph’s Church. The first pastor (1924-1928) was Father John J. Pochily, associate pastor of St. Cyril’s.
At the after-Mass dinner at Endwell Greens Golf Club in Endicott, parishioner Agnes (Sochor) Shattuck Dekar displayed Czech festival attire, “kroj” (pronounced kroy). “My outfit was exactly like that,” she said of a colorful “kroj” on a doll. “That’s from my mother’s village” in Moravia.
Historian Mastro’s archives note, “During the early years the events were similar to what they were used to in their homeland. Traditional dances such as pre-Lenten (Fasank) and harvest (Vinobranie) were held for many years.”
Mastro, a former altar boy at St. Joe’s, said the founders came from part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, just before and just after World War I, especially to find work. The majority of the first generation of immigrants worked at Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company; their kids worked at IBM. The early parishioners were workers and they were prayerful, and they named their parish for St. Joseph, “model for workers,” as it says in the Litany of Saint Joseph.
The original 117 or so families asked St. Cyril’s to give them a priest, and “he became almost like a missionary in the beginning,” Mastro said. For close to a year in those days before construction of a wooden church, a dance hall above a bar hosted Latin Masses with the homilies and singing in Slovak.
Built for $197,847
The centennial cake at Endwell Greens Golf Club.
A new church was completed in 1929 at a cost of $197,847; a major renovation of the interior was performed in 1996 in conformance with Vatican Council II. Renovation of the church hall was completed in 2006. Today, the parish is a melting pot but the church’s Stations of the Cross conform with the Slavic heritage; for example, “Jezis nesie kriz svoj”: Jesus carries his cross. “We have people who were born in the 1920s and 1930s who are members of the parish still,” Mastro said, “and they are still coming to Mass. Ninety years old. Ninety-five years old. People are still coming to Mass.”
St. Joseph’s Parish today has 504 registered families, according to the latest annual report. Volunteers constantly work to keep the parish a “functioning and beautiful place,” Father Kirkman said. It’s prayerful too: After the centennial Mass a small group, including parishioner Mary Shatara, stayed to say the rosary aloud.
Angel statue with holy water.
The church is “extremely beautiful,” she said, and the parish offers lots of Bible study. Father Ken, she said, “is very accommodating with most things we want to do.” For example, she started a rosary after Mass. “It’s a really great parish, they always have something going on,” she said.
One committee is the Finance Committee, chaired by Parish Historian Mastro, a lifelong member of St. Joe’s. “My great-grandparents were original founders on my mother’s side,” he said. “My grandparents, they raised their family directly across from the church shrine, which is connected to the church itself. My mother was raised there.” The sizable shrine has a grotto and is designed after the Lourdes shrine in France.
Coinciding with the parish’s centennial Mass, the community observed the feast day St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, who was beatified in 1923, the year of the parish’s first Mass. The parish’s devotion mirrors that of Pope Francis, who Catholic News Service says recently published a papal letter honoring St. Thérèse, “C’est la Confiance,” subtitled, “On confidence in the merciful love of God.” St. Joseph also gets due honor in the church, with statues and large banners reflecting the Litany of St. Joseph.
St. Joseph’s parishioner Mary Shatara outside the church. She stayed to pray the rosary with others after the centennial Mass.
Loyal hermitage
Happy to help out the parish is Mount St. Francis Hermitage, which covers about 150 acres in beautiful surroundings only about 10 minutes away in Endicott. It offers retreats, Masses, confession and spiritual direction. “People can pray with us” when the Franciscans gather in the chapel for prayer, said Father Jacinto, the hermitage’s Guardian, who was in the sanctuary for the centennial Mass with fellow hermitage Father John Joseph Mary Cook, F.I.; Father Kirkman; and Deacon William J. Matts.
St. Joseph’s is canonically linked with St. Ambrose, the first parish in Endicott, and St. Anthony of Padua, and Father Kirkman wants parishioners to get used to moving between churches if they want to for Mass. “Just cooperating and learning to see it as one community is definitely going to be our priority,” he said.
Asked why she thought the parish deserved the huge centennial celebration, parishioner Marybeth Vanderpoel, who remembers talking to the angel in St. Joe’s when she was a little girl, said, “I’m going to get emotional. This is my church. This is the community’s church. This is where I feel at home.”
St. Joseph’s timeline
Parish Historian Donald Mastro supplied this abbreviated timeline about St. Joseph Church in Endicott:
- 1917: An unofficial census reported approximately 117 families for the new parish to be formed.
- 1923: The first Mass was said in a public hall (Kotchicks) on the corner of Green Street and Hill Avenue by the Rev. John J. Pochily.
- 1924: A small wooden structure was built on N. McKinley Avenue just north of Green Street (Watson Boulevard). It had a coal stove, wooden benches; occupancy about 100 seated.
- 1927: Eight lots costing $500 each were purchased for the new church construction on a northside hill; the remaining lots on the city block were donated to the church by the Endicott Land Company.
- 1928: The first of 15 Franciscans (1928-1997) is appointed to lead the parish.
- 1929: The new church is completed at a cost of $197,847: steel frame, concrete foundation, “Binghamton Tapestry” brick laid in white mortar, stained glass windows with stone trim.
- 1941: The shrine designed after the Lourdes Shrine in France was completed behind the church. “The Slavic people have a great dedication to Mary, the mother of Jesus.” Even to this day, events such as Masses, the May crowning, pilgrimages and Memorial Day services are held at the shrine.
- 1956: Construction of St. Joseph School was completed. Staffing it were the Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius.
- 1996: A renovation of the interior of the church was completed.
- 2002: Construction of a third floor and a gymnasium for the school was completed.
- 2009: The grades-1-through-8 school closed. The first two floors now are rented out to a childcare business.
