Gathered in prayer, Baring Catholics search for ‘hidden treasures’ in tornado’s aftermath
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“It could have been so much worse.”
Joyce Delaney held back tears as she looked out at the storm-ravaged homes, businesses and trees, then back at the image of the Blessed Mother in a tall, stone grotto — fully intact.
Except that the hands, once folded in a prayerful posture, had been sheared off.
“We took it as a sign that our Blessed Mother was here with us, that she held us in her hands and helped protect us from any worse damage or loss of life,” said Joyce, a lifelong Baring resident and member of the former Mission of St. Aloysius.
An EF-2 tornado struck the close-knit railroad town in northeastern Missouri with little warning in the late hours of Friday, Aug. 4.
Damage was extensive, but no one in the town of 124 was killed or seriously hurt.
“Only minor injuries,” said fellow lifelong St. Aloysius parishioner Katie Delaney.
“Have you seen the senior housing?” she asked. “It’s a miracle! They were pulling people out of there at 11:30 at night, where ceilings and roofs had collapsed. They were okay.”
Katie and Joyce were part of a somewhat smaller-than-usual group that gathered around the grotto at 6 p.m. on Aug. 8 to pray the Rosary.
Catholics in and around Baring get together to meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries at the grotto every Tuesday from May through October, as well as the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries on the 13th day of each month.
This time was different for several reasons, including the tornado’s aftermath, as well as the recent demolition of the St. Aloysius Mission Church, next to which the grotto was built nearly seven decades ago.
The 130-year-old church had become unsafe and too expensive for the small congregation to repair.
Parishioners now go to Mass at St. Joseph Church in Edina, about 7 miles away, or in one of the other neighboring parishes.
“Our church has only been down for a few weeks,” said Katie Delaney. “If it were standing when this tornado came through, who knows what other damage would have happened, or if somebody might have been seriously injured.”
Valley of tears
The post-storm Tuesday night Rosary group included Echo Menges, editor of the Edina Sentinel newspaper (edinasentinel.com).
She was the first reporter in Baring when the tornado hit.
“They had no warning,” Ms. Menges reported. “There were no weather alerts from the National Weather Service, and Baring does not have a tornado siren.”
“On impact, many of the residents were sleeping in their beds and woke up to find their ceilings collapsing on top of them, which was followed by ferocious winds and heavy rain,” she wrote.
The paper reported that the tornado destroyed or significantly damaged at least 35 homes and displaced at least 16 people in the Baring area.
Two minor injuries were reported.
There was also substantial flooding overnight throughout the area.
“Tornado victims reported trying to help their neighbors or needing help themselves,” Ms. Menges wrote. “More than a dozen people had to be rescued from their homes, and every residence had to be checked.”
Volunteers from neighboring communities arrived the following morning to help remove “the massive amount of debris strewn throughout the town,” the Sentinel reported.
“Disaster relief teams from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army arrived with response vehicles and supplies for the victims,” the paper continued. “Missouri Southern Baptist volunteers arrived with supplies and offered to help in any way they could.”
About 100 local volunteers from Weaverland Disaster Services, a Mennonite disaster response ministry, were busy helping with clean-up operations.
The Weaverland volunteers are “a force to be reckoned with,” said Baring resident, restaurant-owner and lifelong St. Aloysius parishioner Shannon Downing.
“They’re like a well-oiled machine,” she said. “They know what they’re doing and they do it.”
Eyes of mercy
St. Joseph Parish in Edina took up a special collection at Sunday Mass two days after the tornado, bringing in about $2,000 for relief.
Deacon Kenneth Berry, who assists the pastor of the Edina parish, contacted Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri (cccnmo.org) to help coordinate assistance to the tornado victims.
Catholic Charities participated in an Aug. 9 Multi-Agency Resource Center (MARC) event organized by the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency in the Knox County Community Building in Edina.
Thirty-five people who were affected by the tornado and flooding came to find out what resources were available to them.
“It’s pretty impressive, the mindset of the people after all they’ve been through,” said John Doyle, mobile resource coordinator for Catholic Charities.
“These small communities, they come together,” he said. “Everybody there helping each other — it was good to see.”
One resident told him she was sitting on her couch when the tornado hit her home.
“The roof got picked up and the ceiling fell on her,” he said. “She was unable to move.”
Heavy rain pouring in eventually softened the drywall, allowing her to break it apart and pull herself out.
Mr. Doyle applied for and received an Immediate Disaster Funding Grant from Catholic Charities USA, which can help with such emergency expenses as rent, a deposit on a rental unit, insurance deductibles and immediate necessities for people affected by a disaster.
He plans to return to Knox County several times to make sure people are signed up to get the resources and relief they need.
While the devastation was extensive, Mr. Doyle said he’s grateful that no one was seriously hurt.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he stated, “but he doesn’t make mistakes.”
Most gracious advocate
About 10 people stayed around to visit after the Tuesday night Rosary at the grotto.
“The benches were all piled up on top of each other,” Katie Delaney pointed out. “But as you can see, we got everything set back up, and it still looks good.”
Joyce and Katie Delaney told stories they’d heard about how the late Father Stephen Carew, who was pastor at St. Aloysius for 34 years, rallied parishioners to build the oversize grotto in 1955.
It was part of the yearlong, worldwide observance of the 100th anniversary of Our Lady’s miraculous apparitions in Lourdes, France.
Fr. Carew wanted the grotto to be built like the stone walls in his native Ireland. He and a group of parishioners went to New London, Mo. to pick out weathered limestone rocks.
“They’d bring him a piece of limestone and say, ‘Father, how about this one?’” Joyce Delaney recounted. “And he’d say, ‘No, not that one,’ and they’d take it back.”
Finally, parishioners located enough suitable stones to build the grotto, which Fr. Carew dedicated on May 5, 1955.
Parishioners started gathering there for Tuesday Rosaries in 2017, the 100th-anniversary of Our Lady’s miraculous apparitions in Fatima, Portugal.
Walla DeRosear said praying the Rosary with her neighbors brings her an unmatched sense of peace.
She and her husband Eric moved to Baring upon his retirement.
“My mom grew up here, and we had our son’s funeral in the church here, so this is really home,” Mr. DeRosear said.
Their son, Joel, was 22 when he died from a brain tumor. He is at rest in the parish cemetery, just outside of town.
“Praying the Rosary here with people helps me feel close to him,” said Mrs. DeRosear. “I feel a bit of peace whenever I’m here.”
A moment’s rest
Ms. Downing once heard that the last tornado to hit Baring was in the 1800s.
Finally home from work, she was resting and enjoying the rhythm of the rain on her roof when she heard two loud thumps and the sound of shattering windows.
She got up and stepped into the hall a few seconds before her bedroom window shattered, raining glass down onto her bed.
“By the grace of God, I was not asleep!” she said. “When I do fall asleep, I go into a semi-coma and I don’t hear a thing. I would have been awakened by broken glass falling on me.”
More thumps and more splintering glass.
“It got really quiet and then it got really loud again, and then it started raining really hard,” she recalled.
She called her parents, who live a few miles out of town, and they drove in to pick her up.
The rain had become a steady torrent, and police cars, ambulances and emergency equipment were speeding by.
“There were trees and power lines down and we had to go three or four different ways just to find a route out of town,” said Ms. Downing.
“Never been locked”
Baring began as a stop along the Atchison, Topeka and Kansas Railroad, with trains carrying livestock from nearby farms to market.
The St. Louis archdiocese bought land there for a church in 1893.
The Catholic Extension Society of America helped pay for the church, which Archbishop John J. Kain of St. Louis dedicated and named in honor of St. Aloysius Gonzaga.
The church was expanded in 1922, and brick facing and stained glass windows were added in 1926.
In recent years, priests from Edina would drive to Baring to offer Sunday Masses during the summer months.
On Holy Thursday of this year, St. Aloysius was hosting a retreat for students from Truman State University when one of the lights in church quit working.
An electrician went into the attic to try to fix the light and saw major cracks in several beams and trusses.
Father Simeon Etonu, who was the pastor at that time, said the church needed to be closed and locked for everyone’s safety.
“We don’t have a key,” Mr. Delaney told him. “It’s never been locked before.”
Subsequent inspections by Brad Copeland, diocesan building and properties director, revealed that the church’s walls, roof and foundation were too deteriorated to fix.
Joe Delaney saw no choice but to let the church go.
“As painful as it was, it had to happen,” he said. “When they started taking it apart, you could see that there was even more damage than we knew about.
“Floor joists were rotting out,” he said. “The foundation was giving way.”
Katie Delaney recalled the homily Fr. Etonu gave during the last Mass he offered as pastor of Edina and Baring before being reassigned.
“Preaching on the Gospel reading, he said, ‘You’ve got to look for the hidden treasure,’” she recalled.
“I think this was a hidden treasure,” she asserted. “The church is down on our terms. People were able to get the things they needed and put them to good use.”
Joyce Delaney and Ms. Downing lauded the demolition workers for their sensitive approach. The workers were patient with parishioners and went out of their way to save the keystones above the windows and doors.
“We hope maybe we can build some kind of memorial here,” Joyce stated.
Remembering his mercy
Mr. Delaney noted that items from St. Aloysius Church are being put to use in many places.
Several statues have been moved to St. Joseph Church in Edina, St. John Church in Memphis, and the Catholic Newman Centers in Kirksville and Rolla.
Parishioners claimed the 13-foot-long wooden pews and the stained-glass windows that were donated by their ancestors, while the kneelers were given to the organization that maintains the historical former St. Mary Church in Adair.
The relief image of the Last Supper from the front of the altar will adorn the chapel in the St. Joseph Retreat Center in Edina, while other items will be used in St. Michael Church in Kahoka.
Mr. DeRosear hopes a pavilion can be built on the former church site, where local gatherings could be held and Mass could be occasionally celebrated.
Ms. Downing said she was as upset as anybody that the church had to be torn down.
“But looking back, it must have been part of God’s plan,” she said. “We don’t always like God’s plan. But maybe he saw this as the better option, for us to come to terms with losing it before it was taken away in the storm.”
Mindful that the Church isn’t only in church but also out in the community, “I’ve learned that you don’t have to be in a building to be in communion with God,” she said. “It happens all over the place.”
She goes to Mass every Sunday and has become active in St. Joseph Parish in Edina.
“I was born and raised Catholic, and I’ll be Catholic all my life until I die,” she said.
One of her duties as a member of the St. Joseph Parish Stewardship Council is to make an announcement before Mass each Sunday: “Welcome to St. Joseph Church. To the members of St. Joseph, St. Aloysius and any visitors — we’re happy to have you here.”
She’s looking forward to getting her restaurant rebuilt, and to her and her neighbors rebuilding their homes.
On behalf of all of Baring, she asked for prayers for patience “and a strong will to not give up.”
She’s convinced her hometown will survive the catastrophe.
So will the sons and daughters of St. Aloysius Parish, as they continue coming together for prayer while making their mark on neighboring parishes.
“God has a plan,” Katie Delaney insisted. “We just have to wait and be attentive, and in his time, he will show it to us.”
