St. Charles church singer leaves legacy of heavenly voice

How do you measure the importance of the men or women who sing every Sunday in your church, leading the congregation through songs that complement the day’s services?

Years later, do you remember who they were and how you felt when listening to them?

You do, if their voices seemed heaven-sent. Those, you don’t forget.

The many singers or choir members I have heard through six-plus decades of attending Catholic church masses deserve admiration and thanks, but one stands out above the others.

And I knew it the first time I heard her at St. Patrick’s Church in downtown St. Charles around 1982.

Her name was Marilyn Weinlader, the music director at the church from the early 1970s through most of the 1990s.

I wrote about Weinlader’s voice and her expertise at the organ for a newspaper special section about “Friends and Neighbors” in 1990. I noted that when you walked into a church in which she was singing prior to services, you would swear someone dropped in an angel to prepare us for Sunday worship. She was that good.

The Rev. Thomas Dempsey, the pastor at St. Patrick during most of Weinlader’s tenure, must have heard the same thing. The story goes that Father Dempsey walked into the church one afternoon, and Weinlader was practicing for an upcoming wedding.

He needed someone to oversee the church’s music selections and assemble its choir, offering her the job as St. Patrick’s music director. She initially turned it down. In a moment of totally underestimating her own skills, she told me she felt she just couldn’t do it.

Dempsey told her otherwise, with a simple, “Yes, you can.”

And she did.

My wife and I were fortunate to have Marilyn Weinlader in charge of the music at weddings at the church when we got married in 1984. I had other things on my mind, but worrying about Marilyn doing the music for the wedding was not one of them.

In looking back, it’s hard to imagine we could have found a better person. We had a friend sing a specific song, but Marilyn sang other songs and played all of the music.

It was just part of her week’s grind, so to speak, which included singing and playing the organ at four to six masses each weekend or directing her nine cantors, 25-member choir and a flutist or pianist.

I was curious if she ever got tired of singing. Her answer made me realize that a church music director can indeed get tired of the grind that is spiritual music — and trying to connect with an entire parish.

“After Holy Week, I need to get away from music for a while,” she said. “It sounds terrible, but it is just a human thing.

“But I can’t get away fully,” she added. “I love music so much. I consider it a privilege to serve in this way.”

Weinlader popped back into my mind this past week when going through some old files, and that story about her was in one of my folders.

I was curious about what her future beyond the St. Patrick days held, and it was good to see she had happily retired in Yuma, Arizona with her husband Jim after living in St. Charles since 1968.

She kept singing and playing music at her church in Yuma until she became ill. She passed away in early 2019 at age 85, after suffering with Alzheimer’s disease for a period of time. Her resting place is near her hometown of Clifton, Illinois.

It’s hard to imagine the disease could rob her of music, and maybe it didn’t. For sure, it couldn’t take away the gratitude for her work that flowed from so many people in St. Charles and in Elgin, where she was a member of the Elgin Choral Choir for more than 20 years.

She easily touched thousands of lives through a life’s passion from Clifton to Yuma, telling me it was the direct result of her first piano instructor, Augusta Fournier Omohundro.

Weinlader followed in the footsteps of the woman who taught her for eight years, from fourth through 12th grades. She said after she was established as a piano instructor and, eventually, as a church music director, she often realized it was the same career path Omohundro had traveled — and it turned out to be right one for Weinlader.

Market in the twilight

After my first time at the Wheaton French Market a couple of Saturdays ago, I decided it is a great marketplace to visit, but my preference remains the markets in the Tri-Cities.

They are just a little easier to navigate and, most importantly, it’s not a major hunt to find a place to park.

Taking it a step further, there’s nothing wrong with the concept of having a market in the early evening hours during the week. Weather permitting, Batavia’s weekly ritual returns from 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays along North River Street.

Batavia MainStreet officials promote this particular Wednesday evening market as a “smaller, more intimate market” featuring about 20 vendors.

When a market offers homemade baked goods, soups, sauces, fresh produce, flowers and plants, it doesn’t really matter what day or time they are open. I’m generally digging for my credit card or cash at any sight of the above.

But this has a good summer feel to it. Go to the market, then take in some live music or visit your favorite restaurant in downtown Batavia.

Tricky mowing task

Each time we walk across the pedestrian bridge from Pottawatomie Park in St. Charles west to a landscaped green space and path just south of the Scouting America Three Fires Council center, I ask the same question:

How do grounds crews mow the grass on the steep hills that stand out in this setting? They do a nice job, regardless of the strategy used to get this job completed.

I’m glad I was never asked to figure out how to do that. It’s far beyond my grass mowing skill level, even if a ride-on mower were designed specifically to handle steep slopes.

For those not familiar with this eye-catching spot along Route 31, it was created through a cooperative effort with the city from the U of I Extension Master Gardeners and the St. Charles Noon Kiwanis Club.

It came to be known as the River North Gateway, a key component of the River Corridor Foundation’s future vision for the river and a project the Kiwanis initiated and were happy to take on.

Prior to this multiyear effort, completed in 2000, the west banks of the Fox River and the west side of Route 31 in this particular area had become fairly shabby. Overgrown bushes and grasses were blocking the view of the Fox River.

That all changed with River North Gateway, which provides what was intended — an appealing sight for residents or visitors coming into St. Charles from the north.

Did you know?

This month marks the 40th anniversary of a scary time in the Tri-Cities when two local Catholic church pastors were among the 145 passengers on TWA Flight 847, hijacked by terrorists when heading back to the United States after sabbatical visits in the Holy Land.

The hijacking, by members of Hezbollah, occurred on June 14, 1985, leading to three weeks of worry and angst over the fate of the passengers and our pastors — Father Thomas Dempsey of St. Patrick in St. Charles and Father James McLoughlin of St. Peter in Geneva.

In the meantime, area residents were getting a crash course about negotiator Nabih Berri of the Lebanese parliament, the Islamic Jihad, the Shiite Muslims and other factions in the war-torn Middle East.

After the hijacked airline was rerouted to Beirut, Lebanon, negotiators were able to set up a release of hostages.

St. Patrick parish celebrated the safe return of its pastor with an outdoor Mass on July 4, 1985, in Lincoln Park, in front of the St. Patrick Church in downtown St. Charles.

It was considered one of the most joyous events in parish history, and the same type of relief and joy unfolded for McLoughlin at St. Peter.

It was interesting to listen to Dempsey upon his return. He said he came to realize most Lebanese people wanted the same things we did — a peaceful, loving existence and safe place to raise their families.

He talked to many of them as the hostages were being moved around to various living quarters within the city to make it harder for rescue missions to pinpoint their location.

She was his sister

Readers who have been around a long time spotted a mistake in last week’s entry about the new homes going up on Mosedale Street in St. Charles.

In mentioning the homes are in an area in which the practice of Dr. John Nickless was located more than 60 years ago, the item should have stated that Josephine, also a physician at that office, was the doctor’s older sister.

Many locals also remember the sad ending for Dr. Nickless, his wife, children and family dog. All perished in a single-engine plane crash in Geneva in 1971.

• dheun@sbcglobal.net