Luck O’ the Irish / Billy Murphy Symbol of Irish Heritage / Guardian of the Old Rock Church

By Pauline Masson – 

Billy Murphy was best known for his 30-year crusade to preserve the Old Rock Church in Catawissa, but it was the way he did it that was a testament to his Irishness. 

A raconteur of the first water, Billy was known as much for his storytelling as for his belief that his circle of acquaintances would bear any burdon, meet any hardship, to assure the survival of a historic church, opened in 1867 and closed as a parish in 1925.

 St. Patrick’s of Armagh, in Catawissa was his only hobby. The Missouri limestone church anchors the historic parish campus: the bell tower; the rectory, which Billy always referred to as the “old priest’s house;” the modern kitchen and dining hall; the 1870’s barn that had sheltered the horse that carried the traveling priests to three separate parishes they oversaw in the 1860s and 70s; and the cemetery. All of it got so much loving care that it emerged as a modern day showplace and community center.

The only source of income for this restoration miracle was an annual August homecoming picnic spearheaded by Billy and his legion of volunteers, donors, supporters and attendees.

This story got it start at a 1967 morning Mass at St. James parish when Father Bell announced that parishioners interested in the future of St. Patrick’s should ramain after Mass. The cemetery fund of the old church was out of money, the priest said, and all the buildings, except the church, were to be razed.

Billy’s mother Margaret Murphy looked at him and said “You stay.”

She had held her wedding breakfast in the rectory and she could not accept the idea of it being demolished.

When Father Bell arrived at St. Patricks to meet the group interested in the old church, there were so many cars parked along the roadway that he could find no place to park and had to walk upwards of a mile to get to the church. The assembled crowd formed a Preservation Society and vowed to raise the money to save the church and grounds.

Billy told this story so often and so well that it became enshrined in the lore of the St. Louis Catholic Archdiocese. No bishop or archbishop who visited St. Patrick’s failed to pay homage to Margaret Murphy for restoraition of the former parish church.

Billy could never separate St. Patrick’s from the pioneer families that settled in the La Barque Hills south of Pacific, which became known as Little Ireland. The parishioners and parish priests came here from Ireland and came together for Mass, summer picnics that lasted into the evening for dancing, and hundreds of lively Irish wakes that filled the cemetery.

They had a debating society and Billy could tell stories of who argued that Wellington was a better general than Napoleon. He kept a list of which parishioners borrowed which books from the parish library and who paid the two penny fee for returning the book late. He could recite the amounts that donors conttibuted to rebuild the church after the 1870 fire that gutted the church. One lady vowed to put cardboard in her only pair of shoes and wear them one more year and donate her shoe money to help rebuild the damaged church.

It was the cemetery, and the compulsion of the Irish families to be near their forebears that kept modern day St. Patrick’s supporters energized. They had begun burying people here before construction of the stone church was started in 1859. During the years that St. Patrick’s was an untended mission church, the former parishioners still wanted to be buried with their parents and grandparents. Friends and families came to prepare for burials using push mowers and hand scyths to cut a path to the burial site.

Billy told and retold the story of one legendary lady who used her sewing scissors, clip the grass away from stones closest to the newly opened grave.

This was always a labor of love. Who wouldn’t want to attend a homecoming picnic and help save the old parish?

They came in droves, year after year. The same families manned the bingo booth, the country store, the kitchen dining hall and carryout window, and the parking area that grew to mammoth proportion. Steve Conley and his crew mowed the parking area and greeted each new arrival, motioning them the next vacant space. Steve showed up at Billy and Charlotte’s 2017 wedding anniversary at St. Bridget’s dining hall in Pacific with a gift for Billy. In clearing the parking area for the previous picnic, he had spotted something shiny on the ground and picked up a dime dated 1863, which he placed in a tiny box.

After Billy’s death when his grandson David Murphy found himself in charge of the picnic, he worried that he had not paid better attention to Billy’s stories. He did not know the names of all the worker and wondered who might show up to help. But on the morning of the picnic, one by one the families arrived from St. Louis, Illinois, Texas and California, ready to work.

Frst among the workers was the Conley Clan. Steve Conley and his uncles and cousins had spent a year of their lives restoring the interior of Margaret Murphy’s beloved rectory building that was listing like the Leaning Tower of Pizza before Billy persuaded Graf Construction to lift it off its rotting base, pour a new foundation and right it.

Today David and another of Billy’s grandsons, Mark Pross – along with a legion of Conley cousins – organize the August picnic and maintain the historic church, which continues to be used for weddings and celebrates Mass three times a year, on St. Patrick’s day, Memorial Day and the August picnic on the third sunday of August.

A newsletter I received from the St. Patrick’s Preservation Society this week reminded me that St. Patrick’s will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day Mass at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, March 17 with Father Mark Bozada officiating.