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PAGE 5 — The Southern Cross, September 12,1985
Joseph C. Schreck
Recollections Of A Parishioner
The Cathedral has a special place in the
life of Joseph C. Schreck, who was bap
tized there seventy years ago. His wedding
took place in the Cathedral, his wife has
been organist and choir director there for
over forty years, and his two sons were
both ordained to the priesthood there by
Bishop Raymond W. Lessard.
Like many of the boys of Catholic
background who grew up in the city of
Savannah in the l920’s and 1930’s Schreck
attended the old Marist Brothers’ School,
which used to stand across the square
from the Cathedral, on Charlton Street.
Frequently called upon to serve as an
altar boy, he learned to love the beauty
and splendor of the liturgy which he
believes greatly outshone the simplified
liturgy which followed Vatican II.
“I miss the Latin in the Mass,” he said,
walking through the newly-repaired
Cathedral recently after the week-day
noon Mass which he regularly attends. “I
liked the old liturgy better and I could pray
belter. I don’t know if they will ever find
anything to equal Palestrina.”
The entrance procession was a lengthy
affair in the days of Bishop Gerald P.
O’Hara, whose episcopacy lasted from
1935-1959. Wearing the cappa magna, with
altar boys to carry the train, the Bishop
would process around the church with his
deacons and subdeacons. ‘‘By the time he
was vested and the deacons and
subdeacons ready for Mass, half an hour
would have gone by,” Schreck said. ‘‘That
was real medieval splendor.”
The Cathedral was familiar to every
Marist boy who came over to say the
rosary regularly, marched there and back
by the Brothers. In the early days some of
the interior features were different, Mr.
Schreck remembers. The baptismal font
Joseph C. Schreck
Outside Cathedral
at the back of the church was a large, or
nate one, accessible through a gate. The
names of the bishops were inscribed above
the confessionals they used. On each pillar
was a bracket for lights—with both elec
tricity and gas installed in case of a power
outage.
At one time, a huge wooden pulpit was
wheeled out for the priest to use during his
homily at Mass. “It was kept in the
transept and brought out when it was going
Old Pulpit Recalled
to be used. We wheeled it out on small
wheels. It was a tall pulpit and we had to
push hard to get it started. Over the top it
had this huge dish, with a dove and
clouds,” Schreck said. “That was before
we had a sound system.”
The Cathedral has always had a difficul
ty with its accoustics, which are good for
music but terrible for speech, according to
Schreck. The installation of a new system
recently is expected to be an improve
ment.
Tourists visiting the Cathedral are im-.
pressed by the tall stained glass windows,
made in Innsbruck and installed after the
rebuilding of the Cathedral in 1900. Only
one is an original, having survived the 1898
fire. This one, at the back of the Chapel of
the Virgin Mary, to the right of the altar,
has two panels. One shows St. Cecilia with
her organ; the other St. Agnes, with her
lamb.
The stations of the Cross are another
feature much admired by visitors, Schreck
said. Hand carved and imported from
Munich, the carvings are painted to
resemble marble.
Among Schreck’s memories is the sing
ing of the Lamentations during Tenebrae,
with the male choir singing a capela. The
choir sang from a gallery at the front of the
cathedral, to the side of the sanctuary.
The chapel downstairs once had a
wooden floor and crude wooden pews, he
remembers. Msgr. Joseph F. CroKe
renovated it as pastor about 1936, putting
in a terrazo floor. In 1939 Msgr.
McNamara put in a new altar and new
pews, turning the area into an elegant
chapel and funding the alterations entirely
through donations given as memorials.
The downstairs chapel on the right has a
sign identifying it as having been donated
by “St. Patrick’s T.A. and B.” This
mysterious reference is to the “Total
Abstinence and Benevolence” Society of
St. Patrick’s Church, Schreck said, noting
that St. Patrick’s, which used to stand on
Liberty and West Broad Streets, fell into
disrepair and was ultimately destroyed
when a hurricane blew off its roof.
A statue of St. Patrick, rescued from the
old church, is still located at the Cathedral..
New Pipe Organ To Be Installed
A new and majestic sound will fill the
Cathedral when its three-manual,
2,178-pipe organ is installed two years
from now.
A consultant to the committee which is
planning the organ’s installation says that
the pipes will provide a sound which is dif
ferent in tone as well as in quality from
that produced by the present one. William
Clarke, organist at St. Paul’s Lutheran
Church, Savannah, explains that the dif
ference has to do with the actual way in
which an organ operates.
“With the present, electronic organ,
sound is produced mechanically or elec
tronically within the instrument, and
amplified with loud speakers. With a pipe
organ, sound is actually produced in the
air in the room, resounding in the par
ticular pipe that is playing. It is a different
quality—a more refined quality,” he said.
“It really should be a beautiful sound for
that beautiful building.” An artist’s im
pression of the organ shows it with
classical, semicircular casework, allowing
its pipes to frame the rose window at the
back of the choir loft, while the smaller,
lancet windows shine through. The effect
will be to enhance the stained glass rather
than competing with it, according to the
planning committee.
Headed by Dr. J. Harry Persse, the com
mittee has chosen the Noack Company of
Massachusetts as the builders. One reason
for the choice of Noack is the fact that
committee members were familiar with
an instrument built by Noack installed at
Savannah’s Wesley Monumental Church.
“The quality of the work is high,*’ Mr.
Clarke said, “We also liked its tonal
quality—the way the organ sounds. It is a
pleasant sound, not too loud and not too
soft;”
Entirely custom made to fit the
Cathedral, the organ will be built at
Georgetown, Mass, and brought here by
truck with a crew to assemble it. Accor
ding to the present plan, it will have 33
stops, to fit in with budget limitations. The
committee hopes that a donor may step
forward to fund additional stops, which
could be added as a memorial.
An organ of this kind should last a life
time according to Mr. Clarke. He notes
that he has seen organs in Europe which
were built in the 16th and 17th centuries,
and are still playing. Through many of the
parts have been rebuilt, the instruments
are essentially the orginal ones.
Mrs. Patricia Schreck, organist, is
delighted at the prospect of a new organ.
“All these years, it was my dream that we
could have a beautiful organ at the
Cathedral,” she said. “It will be a thrill to
play a pipe organ, because we have never
had one there since I have been organist. I
have played the one at Wesley Monumen
tal, and it is gorgeous.”
An old pipe organ was removed from the
cathedral in the 1930’s, Mrs. Schreck said.
“It would have cost $10,000 to repair it, and
in those Depression years no-one could af
ford it. They took it out, and brought a
Hammond. That was there when I came,
and in the fifties they bought a Baldwin.
That’s what has been there ever since, un
til it died a few weeks ago.
A new, computerized, electronic organ
has been installed as a temporary
measure until the new pipe organ is ready,
when it will be moved to the Chapel of Our
Lady, beneath the main Cathedral.