The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Church gets new home
Building to be used as a wedding chapel in Milan
By Sue G. Collins, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: May 17, 2007
Photos by Sue G. Collins
Carol Kovalak spent more than two years campaigning to save the church, built in 1850 by founding members of St. Joseph Catholic Church. "It felt like my baby had finally been born," she said as she watched the building slowly move from Whittaker Road to Milan last Thursday.
A six-mile journey lasted six hours for the little, white church that for 157 years stood quietly and steadfast on Whittaker Road until it was moved to Milan last Thursday to be resurrected as a wedding chapel.
St. Joseph Catholic Church of Whittaker was built by Irish immigrants in 1850. Generations of area families attended weddings, baptisms and funeral services within the clapboard walls. Barbara Day Carpenter and her sister, Marie Day Laskey, watched the church being gingerly towed down the road past the Whittaker Post Office, where folks gathered to drink coffee, reminisce and watch history pass them by.
"Oh yes, I remember walking to midnight Mass from our family home on Willis Road in 1932 with mama pushing the baby carriage and we kids carrying lanterns," Laskey said.
Her sister brought along her wedding album with a few grainy, tattered black-and-white photographs tucked carefully inside. She and George were married at the church in 1953, and the worn photo was taken at her first Holy Communion in 1936.
When longtime parishioner and former Augusta Township Clerk Carol Kovolak heard the old church was scheduled to be burned two years ago to make way for a new housing development, she felt a calling.
"There was no way I could let that happen. If the Gem Theater could be moved, then I knew we could move this little old church," she said last week as she hugged her sister, Louise Hinzmann, who painstakingly researched and documented the building's history and created a power point presentation for township officials.
The two women were on a mission and spent nearly two years pleading with fellow parishioners, area historical societies, county staffers and even considered knocking on Domino's founder and Catholic philanthropist Tom Monaghan's door.
"I hope all the people I bugged along the way don't hold it against me," Kovalak said, laughing.
Finally, her path crossed with that of former Milan Floral Shop owner Gwen Gleason, who was dreaming of building a nondenominational wedding chapel in the Milan area. Gleason heard the old Whittaker church was for sale and one day drove over only to find the sign down. Not to be discouraged, she visited the township hall, where she was given Kovalak's name as caretaker of the church.
Since then, it has been permits, paperwork and perseverance for the two women, who watched as limbs were trimmed, power lines were pulled down and traffic stopped as people lined the pathway as D&B House Movers towed the 65-ton church to its new home at 5050 Milan-Oakville Road.
Thanks to Kovalak, Hinzmann and Gleason, the church that gave early Catholic settlers a place to pray and later provided members of the Good Will Baptist a place to worship will remain a place of serenity and joy in the Milan countryside.
"Maybe we'll call it, 'Field of Dreams,'" said Gleason of the chapel that will be tucked among the woods at the back of her property east of Sanford. "You know what they say, 'If they build it, they will come.'"
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