The 200th anniversary celebration for St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, on June 2, 2024 resembled a Catholic family reunion, with a Mass followed by a group photo, and then a banquet highlighted by video interviews with longtime parishioners.
Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the main celebrant of the 200th anniversary Mass at St. Mary of the Assumption Church, said he was happy to pray again with that parish family, “especially as you observe such a momentous moment in your history.”
The Mass on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ centered on the Eucharist, which was the motivation for the laying of the cornerstone of its first church 200 years earlier, when that area’s growing Catholic population sought a place for public worship. The anniversary celebration began with the Mass, and after the banquet, it concluded with a Holy Hour of Thanksgiving with Eucharistic Adoration at the church.
Joyful music at the Mass was provided by the parish’s Festival Choir, which included its combined Traditional, Contemporary and Gospel Choirs, and by its African Praise Choir. The diverse congregation of 450 people included parishioners whose families have prayed there for generations, and newcomers from different continents.
Father Thomas LaHood, the pastor of St. Mary of the Assumption for the past 10 years, concelebrated the anniversary Mass. In the parish bulletin, he noted how the parish’s history has included times of war, slavery and segregation, and “the transition of our parish from serving a largely farm and small town community to serving a suburban community (although we still have farmers in our parish!).”
The priest added, “We now have people from all over the world in our parish. Yet we are all still one in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”
In his homily at the bicentennial Mass, Father LaHood traced the parish’s beginnings. Maryland is regarded as the birthplace of religious liberty in the United States, because the colony was founded in 1634 on the principle of religious toleration. But by 1704, the royal governor ordered a Catholic chapel in St. Mary’s City, then Maryland’s capital, to be locked, and until the American Revolution, Catholics in Maryland could not worship publicly and faced a variety of restrictions. Father LaHood noted how during that time, Catholics in the Upper Marlboro area worshipped in small private chapels.
“On June 4, 1824, on this site, the cornerstone for a parish church was laid, and our parish was born,” the priest said, noting that the parish’s present church was built there and dedicated in 1899.
Upper Marlboro was the birthplace of the nation’s first Catholic bishop – Archbishop John Carroll, who in 1789 was named as the bishop of Baltimore.
Over the years, St. Mary of the Assumption Parish was served by Jesuit priests, then later by Dominicans, Carmelites, Mill Hill Fathers (Josephites), priests of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and then by priests of the new Archdiocese of Washington, which included the District of Columbia when it was established in 1939, and then eight years later was expanded to include the five surrounding Maryland counties.
St. Mary of the Assumption School, which was established in 1925 and staffed by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, will mark its centennial next year. One year after the school’s founding, the parish started a separate Catholic school for African American children, reflecting the segregation of the time. When then-Archbishop Patrick O’Boyle was installed as the first resident archbishop of Washington in 1948, he took steps to begin gradually integrating local Catholic parishes and schools. St. Mary of the Assumption School was fully integrated in the early 1960s.
In his homily, Father LaHood noted, “This parish has lived through civil war, two world wars, recessions, depressions, social unrest, floods and pandemics. We don’t know what the future holds, but we should be confident that the Lord who has seen this community through so much already will continue to pour out the grace we need to persevere in His service.” He added, “As we continue to live the faith given to us through those who came before us, we hope to pass on the faith to the generations that follow us.”
As the Mass was ending and before the group photo of the people in the congregation was taken from the choir loft, Cardinal Gregory noted that they may have noticed that he likes to sing, and he felt at home with the music provided by the Festival Choir and the African Praise Choir. He also offered thanks for the “platoon” of more than a dozen young altar servers who assisted at the Mass.
Afterward, Chidinma Ifeagwu, the director of the African Praise Choir, said the eight singers in the choir, wearing brightly colored and patterned dresses representing their native countries of Nigeria, Cameroon and Uganda, sang songs in Swahili, Igbo and English, accompanied by maracas, a keyboard, a tambourine and African drums.
“We love expressing God’s love through many languages,” said Ifeagwu, who has roots in Nigeria.
Choir member Catherine Lobe, who is originally from Cameroon, said, “We are very strong in our faith in this parish.” Velda Ijomah, a choir member from Nigeria who also serves as a lector and Eucharistic minister at St. Mary of the Assumption Church, said, “It’s my parish. The community is a huge family to me.”
Then hundreds of those parishioners gathered for the Bicentennial Banquet in the parish’s Msgr. Richard A. Hughes Family Life Center.
Among the people there was Ashley Lewis, who became the principal of St. Mary of the Assumption School five years ago after earlier graduating from the school and serving as a pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and third grade teacher and assistant principal there. She noted that about one-half of the teachers at the school are alumni or parents of alumni, and that she knew many of the people at the banquet from her years there. Reflecting on what makes the parish special, she said, “It’s a feeling of being home.”
At one table, Deacon Frank Klco, who has been serving at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish for nearly four decades, praised the parishioners there, saying, “They’re just loving people.” He noted how a group of men at the parish were volunteering to build a cry room at the church for infants and young children.
One of those volunteers, Jose Robles, had brought up the offertory gifts at the anniversary Mass with his wife Imelda and their daughter Jasmin. “I feel good to help my church,” he said.
Jasmin Robles, who will be attending the University of Maryland this fall, said, “I love the community (here) and how easy it is to make friends and connect with everyone.”
Along with recent parishioners, the banquet also included people whose families have attended St. Mary of the Assumption Church for generations.
Gloria Wyvill Garner, who is 95, has a very special connection to the parish. Her grandfather Joseph Wyvill and his three brothers had a construction company that built the present church in 1898 and 1899.
“They were country carpenters,” she said of the Wyvill brothers. “I wonder what they thought when they sat in the finished church, I wonder how they felt. They must have been so happy.”
She noted that her grandparents and parents were parishioners there, and she raised her seven children there. Her brother, Benedictine Father Christopher Wyvill of St. Anselm’s Abbey, died last year. The 64-page keepsake booklet produced for St. Mary of the Assumption’s 200th anniversary included a parish history written by Gloria Wyvill Garner, who over the years worked in the offices of the Prince George’s County government and its police department.
Father LaHood welcomed people to the banquet and offered an opening prayer. “This parish is God’s gift to all of us,” he said.
Guests at the banquet viewed videos of interviews held in recent years with longtime parishioners who had witnessed most of the past century there.
Among those offering oral histories was Girard Griffith, 97, who noted in the video that he later learned that he had been named after a Sister Girard at the parish who held him after he was born. He grew up on a family farm, and he was baptized and received his First Holy Communion and the sacrament of Confirmation at St. Mary’s Church. During World War II, he enlisted in the Army and served in Germany for about two years, his only time away from Upper Marlboro and St. Mary of the Assumption Church, where his parents and grandparents also prayed over the years.
“I never moved away,” he said in an interview, explaining that after the war, he began working for the government, first at the General Accounting Office and later at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. At St. Mary’s over the years, he was a member of the Knights of St. John, the Holy Name Society and the Knights of Columbus.
Another longtime parishioner featured in the video interviews, Ann Holley Robinson, is now 88 and retired after working for more than 50 years in Prince George’s County schools, first as an aide. After earning a degree from George Washington University in 1984, she began serving as a special education teacher, and from 2000-2022 she worked as a substitute teacher for all elementary school grades.
“I’ve been here since I was born… I like my church,” Robinson said in an interview, explaining her lifelong connection to St. Mary of the Assumption Parish, where like her eight siblings, she was baptized and received her First Holy Communion and the sacrament of Confirmation. She was married in the church and raised her three children there.
In the video interview, Robinson remembered how, growing up in an African American Catholic family, she and some of her siblings sometimes walked to church, but in times of segregation, they had to sit in the back. Her parents, she said, taught them to always go to Mass and never to be late.
One of the parish elders featured in the anniversary videos, Gladys Spencer, died last year at the age of 100. She described what it was like as a Black child attending a separate school at the parish, and sometimes having white children taunt them.
“It was part of history. That was then. This is now,” Gladys Spencer said in the video interview, She noted that her own children attended St. Mary of the Assumption School after it had been integrated.
Also interviewed for the anniversary video was Lucille Wyvill Gwynn, a cousin of Gloria Wyvill Garner, and whose grandfather was also among the Wyvill brothers who built the church. Lucille Wyvill Gwynn, who is now 87, received all her sacraments at St. Mary of the Assumption Church, including being married there in 1960, and her four children in turn received their sacraments there. She said it gives her goosebumps when she is in the church and thinks about how her grandfather and his brothers built it.
After her husband, David Harold Gwynn, died 10 years ago, she and her family donated a large dramatic painting by artist Henry Wingate depicting Mary’s assumption into heaven that is now displayed behind the altar at the church.
Gwynn, who still lives on her family’s farm, in an interview reflected on what St. Mary of the Assumption Parish has meant to her over the years. “It’s been family all my life… I’ve seen so many people come and go. It’s always family,” she said.
