POCAHONTAS — Leo Hoelscher entered the adoration chapel at St. Paul Church in Pocahontas with his usual basket of beads in hand. However, this time Kathy Dust could not contain her curiosity any longer.
“I’d been watching him for weeks and I finally just went over and asked him what he was doing,” Dust said.
After learning the colorful beads were for making rosaries, Dust was ready and willing to come on board and learn from the gentleman who had been perfecting the art since 1989. Hoelscher began making rosaries after seeing an Our Lady Rosary Makers advertisement in Our Sunday Visitor.
According to the Our Lady Rosary Makers’ Web site, more than 17,000 members in the United States and several foreign countries make and distribute about 7 million cord and chain rosaries annually.
Hoelscher began with a starter kit, complete with instructions, from the Louisville, Ky., based organization and, after a few minor adjustments, soon had an enough for a shipment for distributions to prisons, schools, hospitals and missions around the world.
“I couldn’t quite master the link rosaries, so I went with the cord ones,” Hoelscher said.
Hoelscher’s wife, Dorothy, measures and cuts the cord and often joins her husband in stringing the beads.
“We have 10 different colors we use,” Hoelscher said. “Sometimes I mix them up rather than go with just one color. The ones made for prisons have to be black or brown.”
Once the rosaries are completed — approximately 35 to 40 — they are shipped back to the company to be distributed throughout the world as needed.
“It’s hard to believe there are people in the world that don’t have rosaries,” Dust said.
Dust began making rosaries in April and has since completed approximately 35.
Despite often taking “at least five” attempts to get the knots mastered she still finds the experience “relaxing.”
For Hoelscher, it’s just another way in which he can honor the Blessed Mother, a devotion that began at the age of 16 following a late night dip in the Eleven Point River. Hoelscher said he would never forget that night when he swam to shore with the temperature “around zero” and contended the only reason he survived to retell the story was because of the rosary he carried in his pocket. Dorothy said her husband’s devotion to Mary was so strong that he insisted upon beginning their married life together in May, “Mary’s month,” and also named their first born child in honor of the mother of Christ.
The couple pray the rosary each morning and before every trip.
“You have to have faith and believe,” Hoelscher said. “Everyone Mary has ever appeared to has been instructed to pray the rosary.”
And Hoelscher, who will celebrate his 75th birthday July 4, is doing his part to make rosaries available, as well as ensuring the tradition will continue once he is no longer able.
“I’m not passing on the tradition,” Hoelscher said. “I’m going to be making them for at least another 20 to 25 years. I asked the Blessed Mary Virgin to allow me to make a rosary the day I die.”
Hoelscher has two scheduled hours each week of perpetual adoration. During each hour, Hoelscher recites the rosary while he works, making approximately five, sometimes 10, rosaries each week.
“Ever once in a while, someone like Kathy (Dust) will come over and show an interest. I enjoy it and hope to continue making them for a long time,” Hoelscher said.
