Dear Editor: What a beautiful experience to read Mrs. Virgadamo’s account of her life in Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal parish. Thank you for sharing your heartwarming story! What a grand way for you and your husband to have grown in that environment and then to have raised your family there.

It seems that there will be many wonderful stories like yours from that great parish.

May God bless you and OLMM.

Thank you again.

VIRGINIA INSERILLO

Howard Beach

 

Dear Editor: You’ll probably get many letters on this subject, but let me join those thanking you for the gracious centerfold (Dec. 16) coverage of the closing Mass for Miraculous Medal’s century of service to the Ridgewood community.

I just want to add that my family was proud to consider ourselves among the OLMM “pioneers,” with my sister being a student in the building which then housed both the church and the school.

For myself, I’m proud to have served by-that-time Msgr. Oppel as one of his altar boys (yes, boys, not “servers”). And, I wonder how many readers remember the time during “the war” (WWII) when Msgr. Oppel built a chicken coop (really) between the rectory and the new church building so the priests would still have chicken and eggs despite the food rationing at that time? As a city-bred youngster, it always amazed me then to see real, live chickens in their pen.

And a special note of gratitude to Sister Clotilda, the school principal when I attended. Those were the days when nuns rarely left the convent except in pairs, and she was good but strict, as I recall.

Some of the priests on staff when I attended were Father Kenny, Father Swabius, and especially Father McDade who led the altar boys.

Finally, we also had a real, but small, log cabin in the school basement for the Boy Scout troop to which I also belonged.

Ah, thanks for the memories!

GARRETT DEMPSEY

Whitestone