St. Patrick's long first chapter ender with that mockingbird's song, but because this is a place where the past is precious and where even mockingbirds are not forgotten, the old stories are told again and again.

In the rectory basement today there is a Holy of Holys, a cardboard box full of mementos collected from the parish RENEW celebration by Martha Roddy and Mary Plott whose great-grandparents came to Meridian when it was known as Sowashee after a Choctaw-named creek meaning "mad river".

Francis and Mary Semmes came from Georgia in 1845.  The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek signed in 1830 had opened up the area to white settlers.

The hilly forest lands were so rich in game that a man could stand in his front door and kill a deer or a wild turkey any morning.  But the Semmesses, like their relatives settling in Sulphur Springs, were slave-owners and farmers, searching for new farm lands.

Prior to the Civil War only five Catholic families lived in the area, and these were attended periodically by Father Ghislain Boheme from the Catholic stronghold at Paulding.

Railroads put Meridian on the map and created St. Patrick Parish, but by the late 1850's "Railroad Fever" was not the only fever afflicting the people of the South.  Secession was in the air as well.

Despite his being Catholic and despite the bigotry against them, Francis Semmes was the sort of man elected to the Mississippi Legislature in those days.  He owned 1,000 acres of land and 60 slaves.  He voted for succession.

In the days following the fall of Vicksburg when much of Mississippi lay in ruins, the Semmes' home, Cedar Grove, was spared by a miracle.  The story ranks as one of Meridian's "Sherman Legends."

Gen. William T. Sherman said " War is hell" somewhere near Jackson.  It was part of the nature of war, he believed, for the innocent and guilty to suffer alike, therefore no mercy could be spared the enemy.

His philosophy gave rise to the often mentioned atrocities committed by his soldiers, but the Semmes legend is about a "good Yankee".

The was had been good for Meridian, bringing to it more railroads, some industry and an arsenal.  The little village did not escape the general's attention.  His army entered Meridian on Valentine's Day 1864.

By the 15th, Meridian had been destroyed, and raiding parties were being sent out to the countryside.  One arrived at Cedar Grove, four miles northwest of town sometime that day.

Francis Semmes was away with the Confederacy.  Mary Semmes, one version has is she was pregnant, was alone with her children and perhaps a few elderly black women.

The frightened household huddled together on the front lawn while Union soldiers ransacked the house.  The young officer in charge ordered a fire started on the second story.

According to the legend, Mary Semmes sank to the dirt and began praying aloud for God to guide the hand of the young lieutenant.  At that moment a shaft of winter sunlight broke through the clouds, lighting her fair hair.  To the Union officer, it appeared to be a halo.  Acknowledging a power higher than that of the government of the United States, he withdrew the men.  Cedar Grove was saved.

Nearly a century later, the house did burn, by then it had played a critical part in St. Patrick's history and had sheltered generations of the family.

Reconstruction and the railroads brought more Catholics to the town, but the congregation, nearly 100 percent Irish, remained a poor one.  Father Boheme's successor in Paulding was Father Jerome Bennett, a timid young Irishman.

At Bishop William Henry elder's urgings, he initiated the building of the first St. Patrick Church, but the work went so slowly and the debts piled up so rapidly that the bishop was forced to call for reinforcements - Father John B. Mouton, the St. Paul of  Northeast Mississippi.

This little powerhouse of a Frenchman could be a "cultured gentlemen on Sundays, ' but on Mondays he donned overalls and saw to St. Patrick's completion.  Working alongside him was Bernard Daly, an Irishman from Mobile who designed the frame church, then did the lion's share of the construction.

Miss Elizabeth Smith of Enterprise embroidered the alter linens.  Bishop Elder dedicated the church in November 1868.

Earlier that year, he had recruited from France four young deacons, among them the diminutive Louis Vally.  The four were ordained in Natchez on December 21, 1868, and, on Dec. 29, young Father Vally found himself dispatched to Meridian with instruction to await Father Mouton at Col. J.J. Shannon's house.  Because Father Vally spoke so little English, the bishop had provided him with a letter describing his destination.

Four days later, Father Mouton arrived at Shannon's.  "So you are Father Valley," said the grizzled Veteran, eyeing the delicate-looking recruit dubiously.  "Yes Father," replied Father Vally.  Father Mouton sat down in silence and ate his supper.  Father Vally fidgeted uncomfortably.

From that beginning, an historic friendship grew.  Father Mouton became the younger man's mentor.  After a rigorous few weeks in the field, Father Mouton wrote the bishop, "Father Vally would make a fine missionary."

And four months later, Father Vally was writing the bishop, "I do not feel afraid to go around through the country except when impolite creeks come into the buggy without permission.  I like these people and I will be at home, I think, everywhere.

The story of this priest and this parish is one of the great love stories in our diocese.  Agnes Mosby Bullock, who never knew him but took care of his grave, explained it in an interview in the Meridian Star in 1983.  "I had all these memories of what our grandparents told me and how everyone loved him and I got to loving him, too."

His gift was human relations rather than eloquence.  He served Catholics in the surrounding Mississippi counties and over the Alabama line, as well.  He boarded with the Dalys, but many nights he curled up on a pew in the church so he would not disturb the family with his missionary's hours.

He established the town's Catholic cemetery and extended the parish holdings when only 12 Catholic families made up the congregation.  In 1877, when the Sisters of Mercy came to open St. Aloysius Academy, they were housed in a "dry goods emporium" he had converted into a two-story convent.

The first sisters in Meridian were Sister Mary Vincent Browne, the superior, and Sisters Camillus Callis, Germaine Martin and Bernard McGuire who spent 50 years in Meridian and wrote her "History of the Sisters of Mercy" there.  

An entire chapter of that book recounts events in Meridian during the fall 1878.

It was characteristic of yellow fever to make its way northward during the early days of autumn, giving the towns in the central and northern parts of the state time to evacuate and to establish quarantines.

Perhaps the fear of AIDS can give the modern reader some sense of  the panic rumors of yellow fever engendered.

The sisters were at a retreat  in Vicksburg when Father Vally wired them to return home immediately.  Meridian was about to be closed.

They packed and boarded the train, but before the first stop at Bovina, the conductor had been informed of a "shotgun quarantine" at Meridian.  The train was to go through the town at top speed.

"But our tickets are for Meridian," protested Sister Vincent.

"I have orders not to stop there," replied the conductor.

"How near can we get to Meridian?" asked the sister.  The conductor handed her a timetable.  By this time everyone on the car was watching the little drama.

"We'll stop in Chunky," said the intrepid nun, handing the timetable back to the trainman.  "It has a comfortable sound."

Chunky at midnight  in the fall of 1878 was anything but comfortable.  It was just a fishing settlement on the banks of the Chunky River, about 13 miles from Meridian.  But that is where the sisters were put off the train.  "Like cats," says Agnes Bullock when she retells the story.

Meanwhile Father Vally had enlisted the help of A. McMillan and James Griffin.  They went to Cedar Grove, the house the Federals did not burn, to get John Semmes and his son-in-law, Joe Baumer, to help them.  The men were to take two wagons and were to be prepared to meet the sisters at any point along the railroad line.

But they could not take the main road because it, too, was guarded.  Instead, they zigzagged through the forests, cutting down trees as they went.

Finally the sisters heard the lumbering wagons coming through the underbrush. "Is that the sisters?" a voice from the darkness cried out.  "Yes," came the reply, "we knew God would look after us."

It was nearly daylight when the sisters, their luggage and their rescuers made it to Cedar Grove, but the adventure was not over.  Father Vally drove out to the place early that next morning.  Upon his return to Meridian, he was arrested and given 20 minutes to get out of town.  He returned to Cedar Grove.

For two weeks, the Semmes family sheltered the refugees.  A special chapel for Mass was set up in the attic, but then the epidemic reached Meridian in such proportions that the sisters and the priest were needed in the town.

Father Vally helped organize the Meridian Aid Society, a group of young men who remained  in the town to nurse the sick, to comfort the dying, and to bury the dead.  It is said Father Vally's tenderness to the dying earned him the title "the Sunshine of Meridian's streets."

The sisters nursed the sick, as well.  They cooked for the afflicted families and cleaned their houses.  Through some miracle, they, Father Vally and Lucy Thomas, the priest's sturdy housekeeper and the only black Catholic in Meridian, were spared.

Lucy Thomas remained at her post, when she could have left, ringing the Angelus on time, "the only bell that sounded through the city during the leaden-footed days of that ghastly autumn."

First frost, believed to kill the fever germs, came on the Feast of All Saints but the diocese was greatly diminished by this epidemic.  Among its victims was Father J.B. Mouton, Father Vally's best and oldest friend.

Included in Mother McGuire's book is this letter from Bishop Elder to Mr. and Mrs. John Semmes.  It is dated November 1878.  "In remembrance of the days," it begins, "when fearing neither pestilence at home nor violence from around, you gave shelter to the spouses of Christ and the priests of God... May his blessings be upon you and your children down to the last generation.

In the years left to him, Father Vally organized Mississippi's first chapter of the Knights of Columbus and supervised construction of the present St. Patrick Church.  Laid in its cornerstone is a stone from Father Vally's own parish church, built in the 9th century in Lavandieu, France.

His 25th anniversary in 1893 was a community affair.  Jewish friends took it upon themselves to renovate his shabby rectory, making it comfortable.  Among the guests at the celebration was Father Vally's beloved Bishop Elder, by this time the Archbishop of Cincinnati.

About his final illness, the little priest was philosophical, "Our Lord has hewn and hammered this little pine knot," he said, "and now hi is using sandpaper."  He died November 27, 1898, and was buried by special permission beside his beloved church.  His is the only grave in Meridian not in a cemetery.

The tenures of the next two pastors, Fathers Bartholomew Bekkers and Wenceslaus Ten Brink, saw many of  Father Vally's dreams come true.  The Sacred Heart Brothers established a separate school for boys, a new convent was built, and , finally, a new Catholic high school was constructed.

Thanks to the Sisters of Mercy who accepted borders, a number of vocations to the Mercy order were nurtured over the years.  the following women were natives of Meridian:  Sisters Gonzaga Daly, Hilda Darcy, Louis Daly, Gonzaga Crowe, Aquina Shannon, Vincentia Crowe, Bernadine O'Neil, Philomena Giles, Michael McQuillan, Felicita McQuillan, Bernadine Curry, Mercedes Girardeau, Florence Quinn and Sidona Skiffington.

In addition, these women boarded at the school but entered from their home parishes.  Sisters Regina Cosgrove, Joseph Cosgrove, Noel Stewart, Matthew McCloskey, Amadeus Thaggard, and Columkille (Now Elizabeth Mary) Burns.

The next pastor, Father John J. Burns, is St. Patrick's other "big name."  Born in Ireland in 1889, he came to Meridian in 11923 and served there for the next 34 years.

When the Sacred Heart Brothers left Meridian in 1924, the Sisters of Mercy made their school coeducational.  The present rectory was constructed in 1927 and the interior of the church was decorated in pre-Vatican II splendor in 1929.

St. Patrick's first assistant, Father Patrick Muldoon, was appointed in October 1931.  Father Muldoon's appointment meant that Father Carl Wolf, SVD, the pastor of St. Joseph Parish, no longer had to celebrate St. Patrick's third Mass.  It also meant the mission in Newton, St. Anne, which was dedicated by Bishop Richard Gerow in November 1931, could be attended  to properly.

Foe those parish children growing up during the depression, St. Patrick was far more than a place to go for church or for school.  Long before CYOs were established, the oak-shaded grounds were a center for social life for boys.

Boy Scouts were established by M.B. Calhoun, a bachelor who believed in physical fitness and ran a gym on the 17th floor of the Threefoot Building, Meridian's beautiful are deco skyscraper.

A makeshift handball court where "we wore out the concrete," according to one former parishioner, was another extracurricular activity at St. Patrick.

Grandfathers today, the Depression boys will tell you, "I probably didn't get in as much trouble as I would have" because of the activities at the parish.

Father Burns is remembered as a scholar who played golf and handball, loved baseball, smoked cigars, was hard on alter boys, ordered sacramental wine by the cask making siphoning and extra sips necessary, and "got by on less money than any priest in the diocese."

And Martha Roddy confirms that last statement.  The priest always came by their house for Sunday night supper.  Afterward, she says, "we sat around the dinner table counting the collection...and it wasn't much."

But St. Patrick had its benefactors.  Among them were a Mr. Nause, Ben Pollman, and Leo Donnelly, "Mr. St. Patrick" who died this year.  Another was Miss Lucy Bailey, a Lebanese lady who came to Meridian in the 11890s and supporter herself by peddling fabric through the country side in a horse and buggy.  

She could neither ready nor write English at first, but she could "keep figures in her head" and she used that talent to establish a successful real estate business.

She gave St. Patrick her time as well as her money.  For years she opened and closed the church each day.  For years, she and Mrs.  Frank Covert served as joint sacristans - cleaning the church, laundering the linen, arranging the flowers they grew in their yards for that purpose.

Marie and Olga Bailey tend ST. Patrick's grounds today as a tribute to their aunt.  The flower beds teem with roses, verbena, impatiens, yarrow, day lilies and shrubs.  The lovely grotto of Our Lady Fatima, tucked in a corner behind the church, is kept in memory of the "Aunt Lucy," as well.

In 1945, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis opened St. Joseph Hospital in Meridian.  Twenty years later a new $3 million facility was built, but by the mid-1970s the hospital had been sold to a private company and renamed Meridian Regional Hospital.  By all accounts, the loss of the nursing sisters struck a terrible blow to this community.

The 1950s witnessed the purchase of a new convent, the closing of the high school, Msgr. Burns' retirement to pastor emeritus status, and the installment of the fifth pastor, Father Eamon Mullen.

Msgr. Burns' retirement marked the end of another era at St. Patrick.

The 1960s ushered in a time of sweeping changes.  Father John Bryan's tenure saw the building of the new brick school, St. Patrick Elementary School began serving all the Catholic Children in Meridian, but the junior high grades were dropped from the curriculum.

Lay leadership became the buzz word during the '70s and '80s.  Under Fathers Frank Cocoran and Brian Carroll supervised the construction of the beautiful new parish center.

While countless wonderful assistants have served this parish since the first on came in 1931, not many of them have been called "an angel" the way Father Anthony Quyet is called universally.

A religious brother when he escaped Vietnam by boat in 1975, he came to Meridian as a deacon through a friendship with Cardinal Bernard Law, then the Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo. Father Quyet was ordained at St. Patrick and considers Meridian his adopted home.

He has plenty of adopted mothers-- all the ladies in the parish, according to Martha Roddy.

"I know nobody can please everybody all the time," says Sara Newton when she describes the impact this compassionate man of sorrows has had on the congregation, "but Father Anthony defies that rule -- he really pleases everyone who knows him."

Parishioner Linda Nause is in the limelight these days.  When school opens this month, Linda will be the first lay principal in the history of the parish school.  She comes to the job well prepared.  She is a career teacher, the descendant of parish pioneers, a coordinator of RENEW, and the mother of five children ranging from 19 to four.

Sisters of Mercy continue to serve Meridian, however.  Sister Rita Killian coordinates religious education program, while Sisters Cabrini Fagan and Melanie Finnegan work at the school.

Sister Finnegan, incidentally, is a member of a pioneer Paulding family, a community with whom St. Patrick Parish has enjoyed a long friendship.  Capable Kathy Gough serves as the parish as secretary.

Priest-sons from St. Patrick have included Father Jack Smith and Father George Hutton, both now deceased, and Father James O'Bryan, a Trinitarian.  Father Richard Smith, associate pastor in Greenville, is the descendant of pioneers at St. Patrick.

Father Tom McGing, who served this parish of 1,800 people since 1985 and has sacramental duties at Good Shepherd Mission at Quitman, claims the Naval Air Base and the numerous area hospitals have been positive forces in the recent development of the congregation.  He is proud of St. Patrick -- proud of the beautiful parish center (with the best kitchen in the diocese), proud of the parish history, proud of the tradition of service he finds here.

"Meridian is a major medical center," he explains, "with four hospital and a number of nursing homes...the parishioners here very quietly, very persistently, very faithfully visit in these places every week...it is great work which will be recognized"...in that Light where things are really seen and known..."

The gallant little priest lying in the church yard rests easy.  He did his job quite well.

(Mississippi Today, Aug. 7, 1987)