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Holy Ghost Mission House opens in East Troy, Wisconsin as a high school seminary

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By 1920, Techny had grown quite crowded, and province administration made the decision to find a new site for its clerical novice members. The novitiate, as it is called, is an initial step of Catholic religious formation that focuses on discernment. A property on Lake Beulah in southern Wisconsin, roughly 30 miles west of Milwaukee near the town of East Troy, was soon chosen.

On September 9, 1921 the first group of 12 novices arrived with Rev. Herman Richarz SVD, the first SVD novice master in North America. They found the existing buildings were cramped and in poor condition, so when a larger property came up for sale in 1924 across the lake it was quickly purchased. The old property functioned as a vacation and retreat house until its sale to Hermann J. Gaul, the architect who designed Techny’s Chapel of the Holy Spirit.

Construction of the new novitiate was finished in early 1925 and dedicated to the Holy Ghost on July 23. Fr. Richarz died unexpectedly in 1927, and was replaced by Rev. Felix Glorius SVD in 1928. Fr. Glorius would remain the novice master for an astonishing 30 years, overseeing the spiritual training over hundreds of SVD clerical novices.

Due to more overcrowding at Techny, St. Mary’s high school seminary program was relocated to Holy Ghost Mission House in 1937 while the novitiate was moved back to Techny. For the next 54 years East Troy’s community was focused on high school education.

During World War II seminary enrollment declined precipitously, and the SVDs attempted to increase vocations throughout Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Chicago. In 1949, a boys’ summer camp began on the property. Christened Camp Richards in memory of Fr. Richarz, it too was seen as a recruitment tool as well as a funding source for the tuition of seminary students, and would remain a major part of the community’s summers for decades.

A fire in 1950 destroyed the seminary’s gymnasium, allowing for the construction of not only a new gymnasium but also additional living quarters and a larger chapel. The new facilities were completed in 1952.

The push for vocations and the building campaign proved successful, as by 1960 enrollment had swelled to an almost-unmanageable 170 students by 1963. In an effort to accommodate what the administration assumed would be continued growth, East Troy was again expanded.

1964 saw the completion of a new residential building, but unfortunately the student population did not grow as planned. In an effort to boost the number of students, East Troy administration agreed to be the new location of the province’s high school for religious brotherhood candidates, and in 1968 the two schools were combined.

Still, enrollment continued to drop, and those who did spend their high school years at East Troy rarely proceeded as candidates within the Society. In 1991, the province made the decision to close the high school seminary. Though other uses for the campus were considered, the school buildings, chapel, and gymnasium were eventually demolished in 1993.

Today, East Troy remains a small SVD community, and its location on Lake Beulah and the surrounding farmland, woods, and marshes lends itself to being a place of vacation and retreat for SVDs and other religious.


The text of this page is an adapted version of Communities of the Word, "The East Troy Story" by Rev. Edward Peklo SVD.
 

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