St. Alphonsus Festival – Chicken, Pies and Saints

My church parish, St. Alphonsus Liguori, for the past 26 years has hosted a festival on the second Sunday in July. An old fashioned gathering of our community and our parishioners to celebrate our community and well to offer some of the best entertainment if not the only in entertainment in Peru, other than one of Father Ron’s lively homilies that is!. Prior to 1992 the parish went six years without a festival after the Ox Roast which ran from 1976 until 1986 ended. Church festivals are becoming somewhat extinct, especially in our Huron County area. St. Mary and St. Paul parishes stopped having their festivals a few years ago with St. Mary’s going to a highly popular dinner-theater in the fall of each year. It used to be that by the time the school year rolled around I was BBQ’d Chicken ‘ed out. At St. Alphonsus we’ve always been fortunate to have large crowds flock to Settlement Road for their first summer taste of Chicken and homemade pies, ours has always been the first festival locally. The day starts the day before with many, actually – all hands of the parishioners on deck to setup the festival and all parishioners working a two-hour shift or two…or three on the day of the festival. My family has been coordinators of the dining room drinks for at least the last 23 years. We serve drinks of lemonade, ice water and coffee to everyone that purchases a dinner and sits inside the air-conditioned social hall to enjoy with their dinner of Chicken or Ham, mashed potatoes, green beans cooked with bacon and onions, a roll and a slice of homemade pie, all lovingly baked by the women of the parish. These drinks are poured non-stop by parishioners for our guests from 11am until the last of the chicken is sold and the dining room closes, around 7pm. St. Alphonsus Parish has always been a parish family of means and determination, from our humble beginnings in 1828 when our founding settler’s traveling from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France encountered a broken wagon wheel beyond repair as they were making their journey to Cincinnati. It was here that these determined pioneers in America laid down roots of a parish that would exist through today, 190 years later in north central Ohio. The names of those settlers are still prominent among the families of St. Alphonsus Parish today. We are the oldest parish of the Toledo Diocese and we have a rich and vibrant history in that almost two centuries of existence. A young horseback riding Redemptorist priest by the name of John Neumann served the church for five months in 1841, after leaving our area he traveled on to Philadelphia where he was instrumental in the establishment of parochial schools and eventually went on to become the 4th Bishop of Philadelphia and in 1977 was canonized a saint. Not many churches has the distinction of saying that a saint has walked and worshipped on the same grounds we walk and worship on today. We have very high admiration to our beloved St. John Neumann, a very large portrait of him adorns our church sanctuary and we have lovingly moved and restored the Carabin family log home (where he would have slept and stayed while attending to the needs of our ancestors) to our grounds and is now known as the St. John Neumann Prayer Center – large part historical museum and a very peaceful place of prayer. This log cabin connects our parishioners and visitors to our long and dedicated history to the parish; So, as you can see we have a rich history that is steeped in our roots of determination and prayer. This is reflected throughout our festival as well which offers a little something for everyone. There is a large silent and live auction, adult games of chance, bingo, children’s games including an old-fashioned cake walk, stands selling sandwiches, homemade fries, lemon shake-ups, cotton candy and ice cream and a location for carry out dinners as well as a softball tournament in memory of a fellow parishioner, Marc Jones. A visit to the festival is a day filled with excellent food, fun and great fellowship among our family parishioners and our family guests. Come visit us this Sunday July 8th, eat some chicken, take in some of the games, bid on something wonderful, visit the Prayer Center, look around our historic church and enjoy the day in the “Settlement” and walk where a saint has walked. Located just south of Norwalk west of State Route 61 on Settlement Road…look for the church steeple!