A Ghost of a Feast

A couple of summers ago, I drove to Bayonne, the Hudson County city where I grew up, to retrieve an item from my father’s safe deposit box. Despite living in Florida for the past 18 years, he kept an account in Bayonne even though we no longer had family there. When I told my sister, she reminded me it was August, so maybe I could swing by “the Feast.” She was kidding, but it struck me. It was a hazy summer day — and felt exactly as it did when I was a kid — except all my relatives were gone, along with many of the places I knew as a kid.

My sister was referring to the annual feast held at Assumption parish every August, celebrating the ascension the Virgin Mary into heaven. It was our biggest parish event — and as Bayonne’s primary Italian church, established over 100 years ago — it was also a week-long party - with pastry, zeppola, espresso, cold beer and amusements lighting up the street nightly. ?I could write a book on the “zepla,” warm from the vat, coated with sugar and delivered in those brown, paper bags. So good.

As kids, we anticipated the feast all summer.?Coming within weeks of the new school year, we would be returning from our family vacations at “the shore,” if we were lucky.?We’d soon be dreadfully trying on our new school uniforms that were shipped from a place in Hackensack - clip-on ties, creased nylon pants and shirts that never wrinkled – along with our black lace-ups from Hyman Shoe Store on Avenue C.?

After leaving the bank and circulating past my old neighborhood, I couldn’t help but drive over to Assumption to take a look. The school and church were still there, but that’s about it. The statues of various saints and the veterans’ memorial were long gone. It had been a ghost property for some time — empty of the flourishing parish that once stood there. I got out of my car and walked around. Where we began each day with a prayer and the pledge — there were now padlocks and weeds — and on this August day — silence — where booths offering games of chance and Italian and American flags once lined the street.

How such a vibrant parish would now look like this is a long story — and one that I have no license to tell. I wasn’t there when the last group of parishioners, many Hispanic, fought to keep the school — and then the church open — or when they wept at the end of the last mass.

What I do know is that Assumption’s fate was not uncommon. At one point, Bayonne had as many as seven Catholic grammar schools - as well as two Catholic high schools - all within a few miles of each other. Adding in several Temples, a flourishing Jewish Community Center and Baptist and Eastern Orthodox places of worship, and it’s no wonder some called the city “God’s Country.” As for parochial education, today there is only one consolidated Catholic grade school left. Demolition of Marist, my high school, was recently completed.?You can see what’s left of it on the way to the Holland Tunnel after crossing the Turnpike Bridge just across from Newark Airport.?

There are multiple reasons for the school closings and they have been long in the making. The enrollment drop off as the last of the baby boomers graduated, an aging population, suburban exodus, changing demographics, rising costs and evolving views on religious worship and education - all contributed to the mix. The social clubs, bars and markets that were part of the Assumption neighborhood are largely gone too.?Of course, other worship communities have emerged in the changing mix; Coptic Orthodox, Islamic and Hispanic Evangelical, among them.

There are familiar stories like Assumption’s nationally — with many urban parochial schools having succumbed to the wrecking ball — while others have been turned into condos or non-religious community facilities. Many, like Assumption, stand like empty monuments of a past culture that will never quite be resurrected in the same likeness.?

It’s hard to put the velocity and extent of the change into perspective. Across more than a century of its history, literally thousands of Assumption graduates went on to become teachers, nurses, physicians, lawyers, coaches, business owners and community leaders, not to mention the thousands who worshiped, married, mourned and gave thanks at Assumption. ?In other words, society. And now, silence.