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Pictured above, from left: St. Pius X, New Orleans, parishioners Annabelle Serpas, 101; Nettye Armbruster, 101; Mary Taylor, 100; and the late Jeannie Dew, 100, gathered at their parish center last month to reflect on a century of life. (Photos by Beth Donze, Clarion Herald; others courtesy of the centenarians’ families)
By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald
Lisa Taylor was struck by how many advanced milestone birthdays were being observed in her home parish of St. Pius X in New Orleans.
First, Taylor’s mother – and many of the peers with whom she worshipped at St. Pius X Church – began having parties and Masses to mark their 80th year of life.
Then, Taylor realized a significant number of those older parishioners were still attending Mass after having reached age 90.
Today, Taylor reports that a handful of St. Pius parishioners have hit – or exceeded – the awe-inspiring milestone of 100 years.
“You have the church at the center of the community; when you look at the map, it’s the (geographical) hub of Lake Vista,” said Taylor, citing one of the possible reasons for the many vibrant elders who call the parish home.
“We’ve been very blessed with the priests who have been here,” Taylor said. “In our (circular) church, no matter where you sit, you can see everybody!”
Taylor’s observations on parishioner vitality led her and St. Pius social media coordinator Amy Barrios to launch the Centenarian Project, an effort dedicated to preserving the stories of long-lived St. Pius faithful.
The Clarion Herald recently sat down with four of the centenarians – Nettye Menendez Armbruster, Jeannie Allen Dew, Annabelle Galle Serpas and Mary Ryan Taylor – to learn about their love for their parish home and the keys to their longevity.
St. Pius’ pastor, Father Jonathan Hemelt, praised the lively faith of his parish elders, some of whom are original members of the 1953-established church community. He called them “beautiful witnesses of faithfulness” who are among his parish’s most dedicated prayer warriors.
“It’s a challenge for them, yet they’re willing and faithful and want to be at Mass every week,” Father Hemelt said. “It’s a good witness to the young families who find that difficult. It’s hard getting little kids together for Mass, but when they see the older people at Mass – the people who easily could make that excuse of ‘Oh, I’m 100. I’m just going to stay home’ – it’s a beautiful witness!”
Editor’s note: Jeannie Dew passed away suddenly on Jan. 12, three days after being interviewed for this article. Mrs. Dew’s family wanted her story to appear in the Clarion Herald as planned, as they felt it would be in accordance with her wishes.
*****
Nettye Armbruster
Age: 101
Nettye Armbruster takes on a daily challenge that’s rarely entertained by people half her age. Every morning, she walks on a treadmill for a minimum of two miles.
“My goal is 2 1/2 miles, but a lot of times I’ll go three – it depends on how I feel,” said Armbruster, who grew up next door to St. Matthias Church in Broadmoor as the elder sister– by 20 minutes – of her fraternal twin Bettye.
After exercising, Armbruster enjoys the same “beautiful breakfast” that’s prepared for her every morning by her son-in-law George Foltz, the husband of her daughter Ali: scrambled eggs with sautéed spinach and mushrooms, bacon, toast with jelly, fruit and coffee.
“First, I have to thank the Lord, the doctors and (my housemates) Ali and George – they keep me going!” Armbruster said.
Sparks fly
Like most women born in the early 1920s, World War II impacted their lives and those of the men they would marry. In 1944, the 21-year-old Armbruster met her husband Charles, a bomber pilot in the U.S. Air Force.
“He had just come home from his 44 missions,” she recalled. “My sister and I were out on a date with other people, and after the movie we went to Lenfant’s (a now-closed restaurant on Canal Boulevard). Lenfant’s was the place to go!”
Although a mutual friend wanted to fix up Charles with Armbruster’s sister Bettye, “Charles asked Bettye if she minded if he took me out – and the rest is history!”
Just seven months later, they tied the knot.
“On my wedding day, my father and I walked down the stairs of our home, up the sidewalk and into the church,” Armbruster said.
After spending the early years of their marriage in St. Rose of Lima and St. Dominic parishes, the couple settled in five-year-old St. Pius X in 1958, moving into their Rail Street home on Mardi Gras Day. By 1961, they were the parents of three daughters, all of whom went on to graduate from the school and have children who also attended there.
“It was great to see my children have the freedom and space to safely play in the parks and ride their bikes all over Lake Vista,” Armbruster said. “I used to bring my youngest to my sister’s house in the morning. I would have coffee with her while the kids walked to school together.”
She recalls attending Mass in what is now the school cafeteria, in the years before the parish’s permanent church-in-the-round was completed in 1966.
“Before Vatican II, Mass was celebrated in Latin, and we all followed attentively in our missals,” Armbruster said. “There was a Communion rail where we knelt for Communion. A statue of St. Pius – the same statue that is in our church today – looked over us from across the altar rail. We really dressed up for church back then. The ladies wore dresses and gloves and veils or hats on our heads.”
Armbruster said her parish has been blessed with “wonderful” priests.
“Many of us can still remember Msgr. (Arthur) Screen’s 20-minute Mass with a homily that always hit home. Msgr. Screen, Msgr. (Clinton) Doskey, Father Pat (Williams), and now Father Jonathan (Hemelt), are all pious men of God who have given their lives to God to shepherd us,” she said.
Shortly before Armbruster’s husband passed away – in 2011 – Msgr. Doskey walked to the couple’s house to administer the sacrament of the anointing of the sick.
“Our school and parish have seen amazing growth in the last 70 years, but even with this growth we have been able to maintain that sense of family and commitment to one another and to our neighbors,” she said.
A proud blood donor who turns 102 in July, Armbruster, said she misses waving at her now-deceased friends sitting in their traditional spots in the pews – all visible due to the church’s circular orientation. Armbruster’s own preferred seat in church is a back pew, out of the path of the air conditioning.
She said a daily litany of prayers, accompanied by meditations and a daily rosary, bolster her.
“The best part (about being 101) is that I have Ali and George, but I can’t do what I used to do. I can’t go in the kitchen and reach up high,” Armbruster said. “I gave up driving when I was 80. I never did like to drive, so that was no problem!”
*****
Jeannie Allen Dew
Age: 100
During the lead-up to her 100th birthday on Nov. 15, 2023, Jeannie Dew had a humble request: a Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated by Father Patrick Williams, her former pastor, in her beloved St. Pius X Church.
“It was beautiful, the best gift I received,” said Dew, a parishioner of St. Pius since 1990, the year she, her widowed daughter-in-law and her grandson relocated from Florida following the deaths of Dew’s husband and son. The trio moved to Warbler Street, a stone’s throw from the church and close to the home of Dew’s daughter.
“Everything I loved about (the parish) right away,” Dew said, recalling the tender way in which her then-pastor, Msgr. Clinton Doskey, greeted her when she arrived at her new church to check out the Mass times. Coincidentally, Mass had just ended, and Msgr. Doskey was closing up.
“He said, ‘Welcome to the parish! Would you like to have Communion?’” Dew recalled.
New York-born and raised
A native of Utica, New York, Dew met her husband Bobby during World War II while both were attending college in Boston – Florida-born Bobby at MIT, and Jeannie at Emerson College, a school of speech and drama.
“When Bobby left (for the war), I kept receiving flowers every day, but I didn’t know who they were from,” said Dew, smiling. “So, I stopped in the florist one day to ask (and learned Bobby was sending them). The florist told me I would be receiving flowers every day until I graduated – every day for about six months. You know what the flowers were the first time? Forget-me-nots!
“Bobby was wounded in the war, so he came home,” continued Dew, who did her own part for the war effort by working summers at the Rome Air Depot in Rome, New York, a facility that repaired and maintained aircraft.
In her adopted city of New Orleans, Dew watched her four grandchildren flourish and even became a St. Pius room mother so she could be involved in her grandson’s education while her daughter-in-law worked.
Dew was also active in parish ministry, in charge of washing church linens for many years, taking part in the “Prayers for Priests” effort and fulfilling a weekly hour of adoration in St. Pius’ Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos Chapel.
Dew noted in an interview, conducted just days before her Jan. 12 passing, that she still walked – with the assistance of a walker – to the 8 a.m. daily Mass “every chance I get.” She said she enjoyed hearing the birds “singing the praises of the Lord to me” as she made her way across her parish’s oak-studded grounds.
She attributed her longevity to God, and God alone.
“I can’t do anything without him. He’s my friend. He’s my life, really,” Dew said. “I go to him every day in everything I do and say. He’s just always there for anything!”
*****
Annabelle Galle Serpas
Age 101
A clue to one of Annabelle Serpas’ major passions can be found in her chosen confirmation name: Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians.
For nearly 70 years, Serpas has taught private piano lessons in her home, celebrations of the arts featuring countless recitals and tea parties for her students and their families.
“I took piano, and my two sisters played violin – we’d do a little trio,” said Serpas, recalling her happy youth growing up in Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish, a church and school operated by the Benedictine priests and the Sisters of St. Benedict on St. Bernard Avenue and North Derbigny Street.
“My mother was the first lady in the neighborhood to drive a car,” Serpas said. “She used to pick up the nuns and drive them from the school over to their convent, about five blocks down on Lapeyrouse and North Miro.”
High school romance
After earning a bachelor’s degree in music/piano from Newcomb College in 1942, Serpas married Henry Serpas Jr., a commercial artist and portraitist whose wartime assignments included the painting of at least one military general.
She had caught Henry’s eye years earlier, during a dance held at her alma mater of John McDonogh High School on Esplanade Avenue. Annabelle had been selected as “Queen of the Ball,” and Henry, a student at the all-boys’ S.J. Peters, asked her to dance.
“He saw me, and he tells this guy Joe, ‘That’s the girl I’m going to marry!’” Serpas said.
Although Henry’s job as a professional salesman took the growing family to Wisconsin and then to Texas, New Orleans called them home in 1955. They moved into a house in Lake Terrace – joining the recently formed St. Pius X Parish – and relocated to a larger house on Crane Street in Lake Vista seven years later.
“It was so nice, because the kids could walk to school and enjoy the playgrounds during and after school,” Serpas said. All six Serpas children attended the school – an era spanning 1956-1974 – and received all their sacraments at the church.
“Perhaps because of its location at the very center of the parish, St. Pius has always had a true community feeling,” Serpas observed. “This feeling was enhanced by the long tenure of our parish priests, who were able to truly get to know so many of the parishioners and their children.”
Serpas was active in her own right by becoming a member of the Mothers’ Club and Ladies’ Sodality and hosting holiday and family meals for St. Pius’ resident priests.
Although she is currently unable to attend Mass in person every week, Serpas continues to grow in her relationship with the Lord by watching the morning and evening Masses on EWTN, the Sunday Mass broadcast from St. Louis Cathedral and praying a daily rosary. Suzanne Gravener, a St. Pius extraordinary minister of holy Communion, visits Serpas every weekend to pray with her and bring her Communion, the church bulletin and the Clarion Herald.
Recent health setbacks – including two bouts of pneumonia – have not dampened Serpas’ desire to return to teaching piano.
“I think it’s my health habits and my faith in the Lord that keep me going,” she said. “I received the anointing of the sick, but I’m still kicking!”
*****
Mary Ryan Taylor
Age: 100
Mary Taylor marked a century of life last August and has the collection of hats to prove it. In midcentury New Orleans, hats were de rigueur, a wardrobe staple worn for Canal Street shopping expeditions, dining out and Sunday Mass.
“My fondest memories of living in Lake Vista seem to revolve around St. Pius X Church,” said Taylor, who attended St. Stephen Elementary, St. Mary’s Dominican High School, and Maybin Business College, the latter which prepared the mother-of-five for a career as her husband’s legal secretary from 1976-93. Taylor met Tom – that future boss – at a cousin’s wedding in 1941. They married a year later, spending their honeymoon on the train from New Orleans to California – so Navy man Tom could report to his assignment as navigator on the U.S.S. La Salle.
After the war – in 1949 – the couple bought land in yet-to-be-developed Lake Vista, before St. Pius X Parish was formed, and were living in their house on Hawk Street by 1952. The first place of worship in the fledgling parish, shepherded by founding pastor Father Michael Killoughey, was inside the Lake Vista Community Center and subsequently in the building that now houses the school cafeteria. St. Pius’ iconic church-in-the-round wasn’t completed until 1966.
“Our faith was of utmost importance to Tom and me,” Taylor said. “I loved attending daily Mass with him (through the latter’s death in 1994). It was our faith that made us strong; it was our faith that drew us close; it was our faith that gave us the ability to love.”
St. Pius’ priests ministered to five generations of her family, and the Taylors were actively involved in all facets of parish and school life, including the Mr. and Mrs. Club, the Ladies’ Sodality, the Mothers’ Club, the Ladies’ Prayer Group and the Marians.
Never tardy for school
The Taylor children lived so close to campus they could hear the first bell ringing from their house and still make it to class on time.
“For the first 10 years of the school opening, my three oldest children were able to walk home for lunch each day – usually soup and a sandwich,” Taylor said.
She is still known in the parish as the lady who walked the three-mile perimeter of Lake Vista two or three times a day, a regimen that allowed her to eat her favorite foods without guilt – chocolate ice cream, roast beef and mashed potatoes. When Taylor was advised by her orthopedist to stop walking in her 80s, she began riding her bike.
A daily communicant through age 99, Taylor still attends weekend Masses in person, prays the Chaplet of Divine Mercy at bedtime and keeps in touch with her faith during the week through Masses and rosaries broadcast on EWTN and WLAE. She has told her children that she would like a dozen red roses placed at her customary Mass spot at St. Pius X Church – the third pew – when the time comes for her funeral Mass.
“I am grateful for my Catholic religion and am blessed with tremendous faith – it is this faith that gets me up every morning!” said Taylor, who was quick to respond when asked to name the best part of being 100 years old.
“Nothing!” she said.
For more on the Centenarian Project, visit stpiusxnola.org.