LIVING HISTORY
46
chemistry,
Latin. It was
a complete
program.”
Beerhalter
took a personal
interest
in every
student’s
progress.
Until his
retirement
in 1972,
he would
come
to each
classroom
and go
over students’
grades
as he
read
their
report
cards. “He would read out the grades and you made sure you
didn’t have a bad one — especially in Conduct,” he recalls.
Forget says that when Beerhalter became pastor the country
was facing the Great Depression and he had inherited
a great deal of debt. “It was quite a job to get everything
paid off,” says Forget. “But
monsignor was a kind of
financial wizard.”
Jeannie Guettler Lattner
was one of a family of eight
girls and five boys who attended
St. Anastasia School
and Church. Her sister,
Dorothy, became an Adrian
Dominican nun. Her uncle,
George Guettler, donated
the property where the current
St. Anastasia Parish is
located on South 33rd Street.
She remembers Beerhalter
as a family friend who
visited her home often. “He
would bring candy for us
and he would throw it up in
the air and all of us would scramble for it,” she says. “I loved
to listen to his German accent. You could always tell when he
was in the school because you could smell his cigar. He was a
great guy. He always had a twinkle in his eye and I certainly
miss him.”
SENSE OF COMMUNITY
For most of those early years, St. Anastasia Parish was
a tightly knit community. Many of the parishioners were
related. “It seemed like everybody was related to us,” Lattner
says. “We had six in our class and three would be related to
me. We would all run around together. It was an extended
Dorothy Clemenzi Scotto, second from left, as a young
graduate of St. Anastasia High School. Her children and
grandchildren all attended St. Anastasia School.
In this 1960 photo, Monsignor Michael
Beerhalter looks over plans for
a new convent for St. Anastasia with
Dominican nuns.
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