The ongoing renovation of St. James Proto-Cathedral, which we explored Friday, offered a reminder of how people’s names have become part of the historic Vancouver church in the last 129 years.
Several church members donated money for stained glass windows that were installed in 1885; the donors’ names are credited at the bottom of each window.
Some of those families still ring a bell, like the Paddens, who now share their name with a local highway.
Another donor is being honored in an exhibit at the Clark County Historical Museum, just a few blocks from the church: John Geoghegan was featured a month ago in a Columbian story about three Union soldiers who headed west after the Civil War and settled in Clark County.
Geoghegan was a member of Washington’s first state Legislature in 1889, and definitely was one of Vancouver’s most prominent citizens.
Pat Riley? Not so much.
He was one of several kids who recorded their names for posterity by scratching them in pews.
You can’t see those names unless you have a key and the inclination to do some climbing. They’re in a remote seating area reserved for a special group of worshippers.
A century ago, Mother Joseph and her Sisters of Providence sheltered about 90 orphans. When they went to Mass at St. James, they didn’t get to mix with the other members of the congregation. They sat in a perch above the choir loft, tucked under the vaulted ceiling. They even entered through a side door.
Riley left his name in several places, including one spot that he designated as “Pat Riley’s pugh.”
These days, the Rev. William Harris can see those orphans from a different perspective than his predecessor at St. James might have.
“If I had been pastor, I’d have had a fit,” Harris said. “Now I find it precious. They didn’t have any money. But you see the names and you remember the children.”
And if that area of the church ever gets renovated, those names that were scratched onto the “pughs” decades ago won’t be sanded away.
“Not on my watch,” Harris said.
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
