Recollections of parish picnics and happy marriages
Couples share stories of courtship in the churchyard
“Why don’t you ride my mule back to the shop?”
Stephanie Farnan looked around for a beast of burden with a stubborn disposition.
“I led her on for a little bit and then said, ‘It’s that machine up there,’” Doug Farnen recalled.
She had no idea how to operate the two-passenger ATV, but he told her it’s just like driving a car.
Several hours later, Stephanie called her mother.
“I think I just met the man for me, but I forgot to ask his name,” the daughter stated.
She made a point of finding out the next day.
Mr. and Mrs. Farnen were one of several married Catholic couples from around the diocese who shared the story of how they met at a parish picnic — and what that seemingly chance encounter led to.
Doug had been working in the quilt booth for several past St. Joseph Parish Picnics in Salisbury.
Itching for more excitement, the town’s Kawasaki dealer and former ATV instructor suggested bringing a few of the nimble vehicles up to the parish grounds for rides on picnic day.
A few years later, the couple in charge of the picnic took him up on the offer.
That was Stephanie’s first or second year as principal of St. Joseph School.
“We’d seen each other around but hadn’t really met or talked,” Doug recalled.
But when she walked by while he was setting up, he said, “You need to come by and try this. The kids at school are going to be talking about this all week.”
It was the most popular attraction at the picnic that year.
The pastor later asked Stephanie to help make sure all the booths were closed down and cleaned up before heading home.
She helped Doug get his ATVs back to his shop a few blocks away.
Doug and Stephanie were both exhausted, but they wound up staying up well past midnight, visiting.
A couple of days later, she dropped into his shop while he was working.
They talked some more while she helped reassemble a restored motorcycle.
He started thinking, “I’m pretty impressed with this gal!”
They wound up taking a ride on the motorcycle. That weekend, they took a long road trip together.
A week later, they traveled even farther.
Doug’s previous attempt at marriage had failed, and he wasn’t looking for a wife.
But he and Stephanie enjoyed each other’s company, and he showed her how to ride.
He remembers praying: “Lord, I already tried doing it my way. If you want me to have somebody, you have to put them in front of me.”
“He did,” said Doug.
The couple got married in St. Joseph Church in December of that year and are still going strong, almost 21 years later.
To go or not to go?
Parish picnics and fall festivals are long and storied traditions in parishes throughout the Jefferson City diocese.
They’re also great opportunities to have fun and meet people.
“I’ve seen so many people connect over buying a cold beverage and pouring one out for someone next to you,” said Tori Berendzen, a member of Our Lady of Snows Parish in Mary’s Home.
“Even just sitting down at a table and sharing a meal with people you’ve never met,” she said. “We’re still meeting new people that way.”
She and her husband Jeremy became acquainted at the Mary’s Home parish picnic 21 years ago.
Tori now serves as one of the head cooks during the annual event, billed as the diocese’s largest.
Jeremy grew up in Wardsville, but his parents are from Mary’s Home and would take him to the picnic every year.
Tori grew up in Mary’s Home and knew Jeremy’s grandmother, but Tori’s and Jeremy’s paths never crossed.
He was living in Ashland and studying at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She was living in Jefferson City and studying at Lincoln University.
She had gotten off late from her job at the Lake of the Ozarks.
It was rainy and muddy.
“I kind of went back and forth about whether I wanted to go to the picnic at all,” she recalled.
She decided at the last minute to go with her cousin, Jess.
Jeremy was visiting with one of his cousins around the biergarten when Tori arrived, and she struck up a conversation.
The attraction was instant.
“And that was pretty much it,” Tori recalled.
Later that night, they wound up driving around gravel roads, talking and listening.
“We had a lot of fun,” said Jeremy.
They started dating and got engaged in September of the next year.
The following July, they got married in Our Lady of Snows Church, where several generations of ancestors to both of them also had their weddings.
The couple bought a house and some land in Mary’s Home in 2006.
“We were ready to start having a family,” said Tori. “We wanted all of our kids to have their sacraments here.”
They’re active parishioners and spend about three full days helping to get ready for the picnic each year.
“Our four kids also help out,” Jeremy noted.
Tori said it was always important for her to meet and marry someone who shares her Catholic faith, along with similar values and interests.
As soon as she met Jeremy’s daughter, she began feeling called to be his wife.
“All the pieces started coming together,” she said. “I felt I was there to be part of her family life and his.”
Jeremy could see the same.
“They hit it off like they were natural mother and daughter,” he recounted. “It worked perfectly.”
Mysterious ways
Richard Schulte enjoyed making friends at Catholic Youth Organization dances and at the dances parishes would hold during their picnics.
“It was a neat way to meet people, and if you weren’t scared to death of dancing, you could meet a girl that way,” he said.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” he added.
Roberta Schulte liked dancing and went to a dance at the St. Thomas the Apostle Parish Picnic in St. Thomas.
“I had a friend who taught me how to do ‘the Hustle,’” she recalled. “I was toward the corner of the room and showing the girl I was with how to do it.”
Richard had never seen her before. He noticed that she danced differently from everyone else.
“There was something that drew me to her,” he recalled. “She was doing moves I never saw before. I was intrigued.”
Her bell-bottom jeans flared out over the clogs on her feet, highlighting the effect.
“That’s where it started,” he said. “I asked her to dance. We hit it off, and there it went.”
Before long, they were married.
“And we’ve been happily married ever since,” said Richard. “Forty-seven years and counting.”
He noted that he and Roberta have been blessed with great sons and daughters and a steady family life.
“I think faith has been a big part of that,” he said.
A friend encouraged them early-on to move to Holts Summit, where St. Andrew Parish had been recently established.
Less than six months later, they knew everyone in the parish by name.
Roberta came from a large family. Her mother and her mother-in-law insisted on gathering up their large clans for meals and fellowship.
“Our moms would always say we need to get together,” said Richard. “And the only way to do that is to stay in touch. You need that one-on-one contact to stay involved and stay connected.”
Richard and Roberta have friends who live in St. Thomas, and they never miss going back for the parish picnic, where it all began for them.
“Trust and forgiveness”
Sylvester and Mary Jo Kesel, members of St. Lawrence Parish in St. Elizabeth, don’t recall too many specifics from the night they first laid eyes on each other at the Our Lady of Snows Parish Picnic in Mary’s Home.
Neither recalls where on the parish grounds they met, how they were introduced to each other, what they were wearing or what songs they danced to that evening.
“Probably at the beer stand or in the dance hall,” Sylvester surmised.
They do know that they liked each other.
“For one thing, she was awfully easy to talk to,” said Sylvester. “That, and she said she’d go out with me again.”
They’ve been married for 58 years.
Sylvester was born in St. Elizabeth but had moved with his family to St. Louis.
Mary Jo had grown up in Frankenstein but had moved to Jefferson City to take a job.
She caravanned to Mary’s Home with a neighbor and some girlfriends from work.
“I wasn’t going to the picnic to find a guy,” she said. “I was just going to have fun like we always did. A group of friends would get together and visit and dance and have a good time.”
Sylvester and his cousin Mike, who lived in Jefferson City, also made plans to head to Mary’s Home that evening.
“We were more or less on the lookout for girls,” Sylvester conceded.
“How’s that for honesty!” his wife replied.
Since she was already acquainted with Sylvester’s cousin, he was likely their point of contact.
Sylvester and Mary Jo danced and talked and danced some more.
“They key is to be a little outgoing,” Sylvester noted in retrospect. “You have to be ready to smile at someone you meet and say hello.”
At the end of the evening, Sylvester offered to drive Mary Jo back to Jefferson City. But she was staying at a friend’s house nearby, so he drove her there and bade her goodnight.
They made a point of seeing a lot more of each other after that.
They got married in Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Frankenstein.
As members of St. Lawrence parish, they remain very active in the Church and in the community.
They agree that most of their days together have been good, but not all.
“We always knew we were in it for the long haul, and we always figured out how to make it work,” said Sylvester.
“Trust and forgiveness,” Mary Jo stated with tenderness. “You work through it.”
“Building the team”
Jeremy Berendzen said Picnic Day always starts in church and ends down the hill, surrounded by the festivities.
He and Tori would like to bask in nostalgia at this year’s picnic, but he’ll be on the morning shift making mashed potatoes and on clean-up detail later, and she’ll be on head-cook duty most of the day.
“Then, maybe we’ll go out and have a couple of cold beverages at the biergarten,” said Jeremy.
Tori noted that being a head cook has much less to do with cooking than ordering food and making sure everything runs smoothly.
“It is absolutely exhausting and completely time- and energy-consuming,” she acknowledged. “I keep doing it because I don’t ever want the picnic to stop.
“It’s so important for people to have this fellowship and visit with people they may not get a to talk with otherwise or who they might not have been in touch with since the last picnic,” she said.
For people who want to meet people, Tori recommended being open and friendly.
“For me, it was just going up to someone and talking to him,” she said. “He was attractive and was talking to people I knew, and I inserted myself into the conversation.”
She said she can’t imagine what life would be like if she hadn’t met her husband and become a wife and mother.
“Having that partnership with my husband is so important,” she stated. “And next to that, building the team that is our family is so incredible.”
Their marriage works because it’s built on faith, she said.
“A very good life”
Doug Farnan is convinced that marriage and family life are a vocation well worth pursuing.
“Yes, yes, absolutely!” he said. “Just make sure it’s a calling from God and not a selfish reason that you’re doing it for.”
Roberta Schulte suggested praying for families, specifically for guidance to stay united through all of life’s joyful and sorrowful mysteries.
“We’ve been very blessed,” she stated.
“I’ve told my kids,” said her husband, Richard, “that I’ve had a very good life, been very fortunate, awesome family, and if I died tomorrow, I would consider myself a luckily man.”’
As an aside, Tori Berendzen asked for prayers for good weather for this year’s Mary’s Home picnic.
“You don’t want it too hot or too rainy,” she said. “Good weather is the largest factor in our success.”
