The church
In April of 1954, Cardinal Mooney purchased over 9 acres of wooded land from Ford Motor Company to be the future St. Martha parish and school It was ideally situated between the parishes of St. Sebastian, St. Mary Magdalen, Sacred Heart, and St. Joseph (Mission).
Fr. Peter Borkowicz, our first pastor and a priest for over 24 years, "inherited" nearly 700 families and single people from our neighboring parishes.
Our first months saw great enthusiasm, anticipation and cooperation as our first masses were celebrated throughout the summer at Snow School, moving in the fall to the auditorium of the museum at the Edison Institute at Greenfield Village.
Many of our founding families still tell of those "glory days" of our fledgling community. With the help of a loan from the archdiocese and much "sweat equity" from those early families, volunteers spent 3 months clearing trees off swampy land that then Mayor Orville Hubbard characterized as "the worst piece of property in the city".
Fund raisers, volunteer home visitors and enthusiastic support bolstered plans for construction of the church and school building. Over $135,000 was pledged and paid by the founding families.
In the chill air of December 19, 1954, Msgr. Walter Hardy, dean of the Western Deanery, presided at the ground breaking for our building, and a few months later, on March 13, 1955, the cornerstone was laid.
The building was ready for use by July, 1955, and more than 175 parishioners gave up their Independence Day Holiday celebrations to prepare the church for its formal opening. They cleaned, sanded, varnished, laid tile, washed windows, installed kneelers and an altar railing and set up rows of folding chairs for pews. Statuary and altars were put in place and the women of the parish decorated the sanctuary with linens and tabernacle curtains the had made themselves.
On July 17, 1955, our first Mass in the new church was celebrated as 60 children became the first first communion class.
The parish and its activities grew with an active Altar Society, Men's Club, Usher's Club and Holy Name Society. Plans included opening our school the next year and building a convent for the teaching sisters.
Fr. Robert Zindler was assigned as the first assistant to help Fr. Borkowicz. Over the years, the names of many priests who have served here are familiar to us:
Fr. Robert Zindler
Fr. Robert Schlaff
Fr. Raymond Klauke
Fr. Arthur Bell
Fr. William Lucken
Fr. Edward Oleksyk
Msgr. Vincent Horkan
Fr. William Rademacher
Fr. Francis Zdrodowski
Fr. William Griffith
Fr. Norbert Kendzierski
Fr. Robert Monticello
Msgr. Edward Burkhardt
Fr. John Child
Fr. Don Walker
Fr. Terence Kerner
School Days and the Good Sisters
The families who were funding and building their new parish at St. Martha's wanted their children to have the excellent parochial education that many of them had been given. So early on, building a school became an even higher priority than finishing the church structure.
A successful fund drive enabled the initial building of both the church and four classrooms. Original school furnishings were 464 used desks school desks from St. Cecilia's school in Detroit. One hundred sixty youngsters entered when school opened in September, 1955, just three months after the opening of the church on July 17. The teaching staff consisted of three sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (Pittsburgh) Community and a lay teacher: Sisters Mary Thomasine, Mary Agnes and Mary Martin, and Mrs. Beatrice Kocsis. Tuition was $25 per family, with a $5 book fee.
Initially our teaching sisters lived at St. Barbara's convent until it became overcrowded. Another successful fund drive under the direction of many of our lay people enabled us to complete our convent building and the sisters moved in November 1959. That same year four-more classrooms were added to the school, completing the original plan of eight rooms.
Religious formation for children attending public school was also a strong concern at St. Martha's. Religious education classes were held after school and in the evening, much as they are today on Sunday between Masses and in the evenings.
In 1965, when the parish was ten years old, further building added a hall with movable walls to double for additional classroom space, a library, principal's office,
lay teachers' room, storage room and a kitchen.
Catholic Education here flourished for a while until rising costs and the failure of state support for private schools began to raise tuition costs. Several times the Parish Council voted to continue the school beyond the availability of the parish budget to fund the expenses. So reluctantly, in 1974, the Council recommended that the school be closed because of high costs, declining enrollment with less than 100 expected to return the next year, and the withdrawal of the teaching sisters. By that time, St. Martha's had become a parish of older people with far fewer school age children.
In the ensuing years, the convent became the rectory for a while until it and the property upon which it sat was sold to Oakwood Hospital. Our school facility has been leased to Oakwood Hospital as a Day Care Center for Oakwood employees. Both little children and aging parents are part of their day care program.
Our buildings are now at the half-century mark. The church is in excellent condition, with various renewals taking place under such pastors as Fr. Norb Kendzierski and Fr. John Child.
