During these early years of building our parish on this new site
of Woodhaven Blvd. [61st Road, 85th Street, and
Eliot Avenue.], we were also blessed to have the Trinitarian Sisters as
part of our parish staff. They worked with our children, visited the sick
and homebound, and started our first parish census. One of the more
extraordinary members of this religious community was Sister Mary Angeline.
It was she, who gave many years of dedicated service to this parish. To
this date, many of our elderly parishioners remember her with love and
affection.
Of course, none of
the priests, the Sisters of Charity, or the Trinitarian Sisters lived in
the buildings we now see as part of the parish. Way back in 1930, the parish
priests lived in the rectory on 55th Avenue in Elmhurst [the rectory
connected with the site of the first church, Ascension of Elmhurst.] In 1940,
the priests moved into a private house located at 85-16 61st Road. The
Trinitarian Sisters then vacated the rented house they resided in, located
at Bourton St. and moved into the, then, vacated rectory at 55th Avenue in
Elmhurst. At the same time, the Sisters of Charity were living on the top
floor of the original school building.
But -- as many long-term
members of this community know -- parish life did not remain static. Already,
by 1941, the school had an enrollment of 1051 pupils. Fr. Feely decided to
purchase four houses located on Eliot Avenue and 86th Street (later known as
"Weber Yard" and now the site of several multi-dwelling homes) and convert
these houses into a convent for the Sisters of Charity. This would provide
some privacy for the sisters, but also allow the top floor of the school
[their previous convent] to be converted to additional classrooms. In a short
period of time, those classrooms were filled with more students.
Unfortunately, tragedy
now entered into our parish story. Fr. Feely, at the age of 52, died on December 6, 1943.
He was deeply mourned, not only for what he had already done for the parish,
but also for the loss of what more he really would have done for the parish
-- given his zeal and potential.
At that time, Bishop Molloy
assigned David J. Lynch as the new pastor of our parish. Within two years of
Fr. Lynch's arrival, Bishop Molloy decided to assign Fr. Lynch's senior associate,
Thomas J. Dunnigan, to be the pastor of our original church "Ascension at Elmhurst".
However, this decision created a major pastoral problem that was not resolved for
many years since there now existed "Ascension Church in Elmhurst", and
"Ascension Church in Rego Park". Folk lore described the former as "little" Ascension
and the latter as "big" Ascension. But, confusion still hung over the fact that
two churches [with the same name] were no more than 30 blocks apart from each other!
As you can imagine, something much more definite had to be done about this dilemma.
And, it was done -- to be exact -- in 1951!
