Parish History

Interviewed June 2015

It was 1926 when George Strandtmann and his mother moved to Austin from Lockhart. He became a registered St. Austin’s parishioner in 1928 and has been ever since. George was born in 1919, the youngest in a family of five brothers and two sisters. His father died in the 1918 flu epidemic four months before George was born. In Austin, his mother took in roomers and boarders for extra income.

In 1928, Austin’s population was about 42,000 people and the enrollment at U.T. was over 10,000 students. The church then was known as St. Austin’s Chapel and was a small wooden building with two floors on Guadalupe Street. The Chapel had no fans and no air conditioning of course. George remembers the street cars that ran on Guadalupe and also on Rio Grande. He said, “You could go anywhere in town on the street car, but everything beyond 41^st street was fields.”

He attended St. Austin’s School from the second to the sixth grade. The school was a three room building with two grades in each room and their teachers were the Dominican nuns. George was an altar boy for many years, until his early teens at least. He once served six Masses in a row on All Souls’ Day. He said he was the only altar boy for all those Masses and it took over three hours. He was very hungry afterwards because there was a fasting requirement from food and drink after midnight. His teacher told his mother to take him home and feed him and he could skip school for the rest of the day.

When he was an altar boy at a funeral service, it was his job to stand outside the church and watch for the funeral procession to pull up in front of the Chapel. When he saw the first cars arriving, he began to toll the bell and he continued until the hearse arrived.

George graduated from U.T. with a business degree and began his work career a year later at U.T.’s Applied Research Labs. He joined the National Guard in 1940 and the Guard was mobilized after the Pearl Harbor attack. He served until 1945 and was stationed in Panama during World War II.

He and his late wife, Willie Mae, had been married for 70 years when she died in 2012. They had one daughter, Susan, who lives in Austin.

Although George cannot get to church often, he continues to keep up with news from St. Austin’s via the bulletin and with his computer. 

Published in the Parish Bulletin on April 19, 2015

Lay people have always played an important part in St. Austin’s Parish. In the early 1900’s, Mrs. Thomas F. Taylor was an Austin resident and a Catholic. She was very concerned about the faith life of Catholic students at the University. The “History of St. Austin’s Parish, 1908–1947” describes Mrs. Taylor’s efforts to build a Catholic church or chapel near the University of Texas. At that time, the only Catholic church in Austin was old St. Mary’s, a very small church at Brazos and 9 ^th Street in downtown Austin.

Mrs. Taylor made many trips to Galveston to bring this matter to the attention of Bishop N. A. Gallagher. Austin was then a part of the Galveston diocese. She also wrote many letters to the Paulists in New York urging them to visit Austin and establish a presence in the city to minister to the Catholic students at the University. Records show that in the fall of 1907, Bishop Gallagher wrote to the Paulists and invited them to “establish a center of Missionary activity for Catholics and non-Catholics throughout the Southwest, especially in the Galveston Diocese.”

When Father George Searle, Superior General of the Paulists, and Father Michael Smith, paid their first visit to Bishop Gallagher, the Bishop told them: “I have long worried about conditions surrounding the faith of the students at the University and when I heard from you, I was on the point of asking the Jesuits of New Orleans to undertake the work.” Thus, it seems the Paulists were predestined to take up the work in Austin. And we’re glad they did!

Published in the Parish Bulletin on June 14, 2015

In the fall of 1910, Fr. Michael J. Carey, CSP, was appointed Pastor of St. Austin’s Chapel. Fr. Charles Bradley continued as Assistant. The priests were frequent visitors in the homes of the parishioners. A note in the“History of St. Austin’s Parish” says these visits formed a bond between the Pastors and their flock. “The Priests were strangers in a strange land and lonely; they welcomed this touch of family life.”

Fr. Carey organized an inquiry class and held conferences with the University students. At the same time, theAltar Society expanded and began hosting breakfast for the children of the First Communion class and also theNewman Club on their Communion Sunday.
Fr. Carey introduced the rental of the church pews and the name plates of many families remained on thepews for several years. Many older parishioners continued to occupy the same pews as the early parishioners did.

Father Bradley left St. Austin’s in the fall of 1911. He was transferred to San Francisco to begin work with the Chinese Mission. He was succeeded by Father John Handly, a convert to the Catholic faith and a journalist before becoming a priest.  Father Carey left Austin in the spring of 1914.

Published in the Parish Bulletin on July 5, 2015

More than 140 Paulist priests have served St. Austin Parish since its beginnings in 1908 and the University Catholic Center since 1964. Some were here for brief periods, others stayed for years, and still others returned several times. Fr. John Elliott Ross first came as an Assistant Pastor in the fall of 1914 and was named Pastor in 1915, a position he held until 1923.

Father John Marks White Handly (pastor, 1914-1915) described Fr. Ross in an article he wrote for the Missionary: “Father Ross was the first Paulist to come to Austin accredited with the titles of University training. The faculty and the community of the University had been waiting for just such a man. The Catholic foundation was at last represented by one whom the University could consider an equal. As Doctor of Philosophy, Father Ross had specialized in ethics and political economy.”

Father Ross later wrote a book on “Christian Ethics” as a textbook for his class in Catholic Theology. He left St. Austin in 1923 to be the Chair of Moral Theology in the Paulist Seminary in Washington, DC.

Published in the Parish Bulletin on May 3, 2015

St. Austin was a young parish in 1915, when Fr. John Elliott Ross became parish assistant to pastor Fr. Theodore Petersen. Fr. Ross was also the chaplain of the Newman Club, which had its own building next to the church. It was the efforts of Fr. John Marks White Handly that got the Newman Club built with a national fund raising effort.

The Newman Club’s new home caused quite a stir in the anti-Catholic press of the time. The national anti-Catholic paper, “The Menace,” published an article entitled “Corrupting a State University” on July 10, 1915. Fr. Ross quoted from the page 4 article: “The Paulist Fathers have inserted the papal wedge at the great State University of Texas at Austin.” The article further states that this Newman Club was founded “at the command of the late Pope Pius X.”  

The Newman Club served for almost 40 years as the center of a busy campus ministry. It was demolished in 1952 to make way for the new church and rectory.

This early building had three stories of brick and stucco that displayed touches of Mexican Mission style. A large assembly room filled the first floor. There were classrooms, a library and a chaplain’s office on the second floor. There were living quarters and a chapel for the three Paulist priests on the third floor.

Published in the Parish Bulletin on May 17, 2015

It was in 1915 that Fr. John Elliott Ross met Mother Mary Pauline Gannon. She was the superior general of a Dominican teaching sisterhood in Galveston. According to notes from the “History of St. Austin’s Parish, 1908–1947,” Mother Pauline wanted her nuns educated at the University of Texas. She wanted to establish a residence where Dominicans and other nuns could live together.

At this same time, Fr. Ross and Fr. Theodore Petersen were being encouraged by Bishop N. A. Gallagher to start a parochial school. On March 22, 1917, the Bishop, the Dominican sisters and the Paulists reached a three-way agreement to sell the corner lots on Guadalupe Street to the sisters for a residence to be called Newman Hall. This would become a dorm for women students at the University.

The Paulists used the money from the purchase of the property and other funds to buy two small houses on San Antonio Street. This was the beginning of a school named after Cardinal John Newman to be taught by the Dominican sisters. The sisters were already involved with another school called Holy Rosary School in the neighborhood. Some years later, Newman School was renamed St. Austin’s School, and a new school building was built in 1954.

Published in the Parish bulletin on May 24, 2015

Something new and different happened at St. Austin’s in 2007. A parish graphic image and a mission statement took shape under the guidance of the Parish Staff and Pastoral Council. At that time, Pope John Paul II urged the Church to be more active in the modern world through verbal and visual statements.

The parish mission statement introduces St. Austin’s to the world by proclaiming that this parish is “striving to manifest God’s transforming love in the world.” The next step was to create a visual introduction for the parish. Since the parish’s beginning in 1908, we have been known as St. Austin, after the great Roman missionary, St. Augustine of Canterbury. This monk and his band of missionaries brought the Gospel message to the whole of southern England.

One symbol stands out from this story – the mighty oak tree. Augustine and his followers were greeted under the branches of a great oak by King Ethelbert when they landed in England. In the symbolic language of the Anglo-Saxon world, the oak tree stands as a prime expression of hospitality. The committee planning the new graphic image saw the oak tree as a fitting expression of our parish community.

The new graphic image includes the marks of this parish: the name of our patron saint, our oak tree symbol of hospitality, and the cross of Christ. Look for St. Austin’s graphic image on the front of the bulletin and on all parish printed material.