FAYETTEVILLE — Students at St. Joseph School no longer have to play on the church driveway. Thanks to a massive volunteer effort over the course of about nine months, there’s now an impressive playing field, big enough for both a football field and a soccer field.
“This is a great story,” Paul Rossi, one of the volunteers, said about the project, and “for something that was really important.”
“We don’t have a gym yet and we all recognize that the day would come when we’d have outdoor facilities and better indoor facilities, but we needed to make kind of a bridge plan,” he continued.
St. Joseph’s building houses both the church and the school, but the long-term goal is to build a free-standing sanctuary. It’s a multi-phased effort and in September the parish announced plans for a 31,000-square-foot classroom/gymnasium/performance building. The Norm and Caroline DeBriyn Activity Center should be ready in time for the 2010-2011 school year.
But the outdoor play area for ballgames was pretty much limited to the parking area, parishioners say.
“Father (Bradley Barber) says a parking lot is a parking lot; it shouldn’t be where the kids play,” Rossi said.
So, several parents of St. Joseph’s students decided just before the school term began in 2007 to see what they could do themselves. They asked people interested in helping to show up the next day.
“Literally 30 people showed up,” Rossi said.
While Rossi is enthusiastic about the project, he is adamant that it was a community effort. He estimated at least 50 people took part along the way, giving as their talents were needed and their time permitted.
So many people contributed, there’s a reluctance to name names for fear of leaving someone out.
But several fathers of students were among those who helped, including Rossi, Jimmy Rappert, Tom Hennelly, who provided engineering help, and Jay Berryman, a contractor who donated services. Another father with children at the school, James Keenan, helped provide irrigation through his family’s non-profit organization, The Raven Foundation. Hugg & Hall donated use of some specialized equipment.
“We brought close to 400 loads of dirt,” Rossi said. “The (field)goals were made right here in Fayetteville by a local guy, who basically sold them to us at cost.”
There were “countless other people who just came out to help,” Rossi said. “They didn’t care if they were ever thanked. I was not surprised.”
“We never faced a situation where we didn’t have (enough) bodies to get the work done on a particular day,” he added.
“St. Joe’s is unique; it’s special that way. People are always there to help when you need them. It doesn’t matter what event you’re talking about,” Rossi continued
The overall cost to be done completely by professionals was about $200,000. School and parish volunteers did the work for about $40,000.
There’s been no formal celebration, yet, although Rossi said the group has talked about doing something in the spring. “We celebrate it everyday with kids playing out there … The real joy is seeing the kids playing (on the fields) instead of playing on cement.”
The playing field won’t be there forever. That land is where the new sanctuary will stand when the parish is ready to build. “Hopefully, in eight or 10 years, we’re building a new church right on top of it,” Rossi said, but volunteers knew that going into the project.
“It might have a limited life of five to seven years, but the only way it will be disrupted is for something we’re praying for anyway,” a new church, he added.
