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THE STORY OF PINE HILLS
I he Seminary Chape! was . . .
The CENTRAL OBLATE PROVINCE had only five scholastic brothers in 1933. This small number increased to 13 in 1939, and to 22 in 1947. But as the second juniorate, Our Lady of the Ozarks College, merged her graduates with those of St. Henry’s, the total mushroomed to 33 in 1950. Other provinces already had their own crowded scholasticates. The need became even more urgent with the increasing amount of vocations produced by the province’s G.I. and belated vocation program. Central Province brothers were already studying in Rome, Italy, San Antonio, Texas, and Washington, D. C.; in Canada, at Ottawa, Ontario, and Battleford, Saskatchewan. The number approached 80, and was growing annually.
With post-war construction unthinkable, Very Rev. Edwin Guild, O.M.I., Provincial, and his council scoured the Midwest for adequate facilities. Each real-estate venture had too many disadvantages. Among the numerous proposals, a former business college in Chilicothe, Mo., and a convent in St. Louis were deemed
OUR LADY OF THE GULF PARISH
BAY ST. LOUIS
unsuitable. In Hopkins, Minn., however, a suburb of Minneapolis, the Hennepin County Old Folks Home furnished tempting bait. The council approved, and the bids were submitted. It seemed that the scholastics were to have their own home at last.
Meanwhile, two members of the mission band, returning from a preaching stint at Houma, La., discovered a large, erstwhile Methodist College at Brookhaven, Miss. When the Provincial council rejected it, however, Fr. Thomas Williams, the pastor, explained the Oblates’ unsuccessful search to the zealous Bishop of Natchez, Most Rev. Richard O. Gerow, S.T.D. Anxious to host such a missionary congregation in his statewide diocese of 82 cotton and timber counties, His Excellency requested realtors to ferret out a Southern location.
Up North in Hopkins, the Oblate hopes died as Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co. outbid them for the two story brick structure. A few weeks previously, however, a graphic brochure had arrived, relating to Fr. Provincial the sundry advantages of an abandoned resort hotel.
That forged the second link in the Pine Hills story, a history itself dating back to 1925. Long before Mississippi’s verdant Gulf Coast lured its present tourist trade, a group of progressive New Orleans’ business men planned an elite subdivision on the North
the Hotel Lounge in 1926
CHALKEY'S PLACE
STREATOR, ILL.