Memorial Day

Charles Frederic, Minnie, Anita and Lemarie Zabriskie c. 1905
courtesy of Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY

Today is the original Memorial Day so I worked yesterday (for double overtime) and took today off. Had a meeting with Kevin O'Brien of AWR this morning to assess the leader and gutter work which is just getting underway. After looking at the map of drainage lines we may have to rethink expanding the leaders and gutters to 6" since the drain pipes are only 4". But at least we will get some flashing and pointing done in some crucial areas and also a new skylight for the tower apartment. I also talked Kevin into repairing the cross and finial which were damaged during last summer's work when we draped the Altar of Repose in plastic. We didn't realize they were just sitting on the stonework with pegs so they came tumbling down when we pulled the plastic off. Not my favorite day at the shrine church. But Kevin thinks he can fix them, so we live in hope. I told him we would both get 25 years off Purgatory if we got them restored so perhaps that will be an incentive.

I always love walking through Central Park on Tuesday afternoons and it got suddenly too hot to do anything more strenuous, so I decided to take a leisurely stroll over to St. Ignatius Loyola and perhaps hear a mass for Memorial Day since we no longer have a Tuesday mass. It was a lovely day in the park, all the crowds back at work, and I got a nice welcome dose of sunshine after many days of rainy chilly weather. Spring has come awfully late this year. When I got to the church it was awhile before the next mass so I decided to just pray for all my beloved departed and save myself from feeling annoyed that I can't actually receive communion in good conscience there.

Then I walked by Anita Zabriskie's old residence on Park Ave. and 86th and said a prayer for her sweet soul. I have been reading all the minutes in 3 volumes of St. Raphael's Guild we found last year and have discovered that Anita (who was Charles Frederic's daughter) was a member of the Guild, which had care of the sacristy and sanctuary, for about 25 years, from 1921 to 1946. Anita also gave the cushion for the Lady Chapel communion rail in 1926. I think it may be the same one we still have. There were about 30 ladies who took one day a month each to come in and polish, clean, dust, launder linens and take care of the flowers. They also made cottas and cassocks and mended vestments in their weekly meetings which included a corporate communion, instruction and spiritual reading by the rector. Reading the minutes was a fascinating glimpse into that quaint era when life was so much simpler.

On Saturday, hoping to find some storage space for St. James Marshall's projects, I discovered another shelf of wonders high in the undercroft storage space that we had somehow overlooked in last year's raid. I found a box containing the makings of a beautiful black velvet cope with a wonderful gold fabric lining. The cope was cut out and the hood was finished, a beautiful black and gold embroidered with Jesu Mercy in old English lettering, but the lining was a bit ripped and the details were left undone. It was miraculously unscathed from vermin which had destroyed some other bits of fabric that were also in the box. There was a ream of the gold fabric and some other nice pieces I think we can use. Along with this was a beautiful old book of ancient embroidery prints. Also found among the bits and pieces of a wooden jewely box I hope to restore, were some odd bits of costume jewelry, a few religious medals and a couple of letters and a marriage certificate left by one Alice Jones, who I am hoping to discover more about. Apparently, according to the letters, she went blind, one hopes not from embroidery work, but that could explain the unfinished cope.

I went back over to the church this evening to do a few things and found at long last in the mailbox the CD from Fenimore Art Museum containing the pictures of the Zabriskie family that I had requested back in early March. I had almost given up waiting for them, after calling and emailing Cooperstown several times, when they arrived, most appropriately on Memorial Day. So we now have pictures of the whole family and also Christian Zabriskie, Jr., Charles Frederic's father. I had also requested the series of Fr. Ritchie that CFZ had taken but alas they were not on the CD, so I will have to bother them once again.