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Twenty-Fourth Sunday of the Year
12 September 2010
Dear Friends in Christ,
Like many Catholic parishes in the South, St. Mary’s began to experience a growth spurt in the early 1990’s, and our need to expand was frequently greater than the available means to do so. To help St. Mary’s find room to grow in the future, a group of dedicated parishioners came up with an innovative plan: they would form a not-for-profit foundation that would work with the pastor to identify and secure properties the parish would eventually need but did not have the ability to acquire at that time, and the result of their plan was the Tower of David Foundation.
Since its inception in 1997, the Tower of David has worked diligently to help St. Mary’s grow, and the results are impressive: the land on which we now have our athletic field, parking lot, and the Monsignor Baum gymnasium was all acquired first by the Tower of David at the best possible price, and then later the church acquired the property (already cleaned up and cleared of derelict buildings) at no profit to the Tower of David. The same procedure was followed in the purchase of the now vacant lot on the corner of Washington Street and Butler Avenue and in the addition to our campus of the Cregger Plumbing Company. When all of these properties are combined, the Tower of David Foundation helped us more than double the size of our campus in the past thirteen years.
And the final service to St. Mary’s is also the last act in the life of the Tower of David: the building which is now home to the Downtown Presbyterian Church, across Washington Street from our church, was owned by the Tower and was recently purchased by our Presbyterian neighbors. The proceeds from that sale allowed the Tower of David to give to St. Mary’s sufficient funds to retire our debt on the Cregger Plumbing Company and to pay off the remaining mortgage on the small house next to the old Cregger Building on Butler Avenue. Once these transactions are complete, St. Mary’s will own all of the property on the west end of our block, with the exceptions of the small apartment building on the corner of Butler and Hampton Avenues and the Victorian style house next to the apartments. Finally, after handling all of the necessary legal and tax obligations, the Tower of David Foundation will be dissolved, and a brilliant chapter in the history of our parish will be closed.
The sacrificial generosity of dozens of parishioners who were the Tower of David has reshaped our parish home and given us ample room to grow in the future. To all of them we owe a great debt of gratitude, and we can best honor their commitment by following their example of selfless dedication to the Lord Jesus and His holy Church.
Father Newman