Father Jerome Luger
Jerome John Luger initiated the most extensive reshaping of St Peter Claver parish in its history, but did not live to see it completed. Even today, however, his memory is connected not so much with the buildings he dreamed of as with the gentleness of his life.
Father Luger was born in North St. Paul on December 18, 1907. He was ordained on June 3, 1933, assigned as an assistant priest at the Cathedral of St. Paul. He served later at St. Mary's Church in St. Paul and at St. John the Baptist in Savage. His first and only pastorate began when he was assigned to St. Peter Claver, effective June 10, 1942. At the same time he was given the "Mission for the Deaf Mutes of St. Paul," but no written record or living memory indicates the practical implication of that chaplaincy.
His pastorate began with a party, the 50th anniversary in October of that year. Soon thereafter began the serious planning for the work that would absorb the rest of his life. Parish records include copies of his frequent letters to the Oblate Sisters of Providence beginning 1944. A three-year "courtship" of that African-American religious community resulted in the 1947 arrival of three Oblate Sisters in St. Paul.
He wanted a new church, but the Archbishop would not permit any parish to build a new church without first building a school. Some sentiment in the parish feared that a Claver parish school would become a separate but unequal "Negro school," so discussion of a building plan extended over several years. School construction began in 1949, and the doors opened in the fall of 1950.
Stabilizing the operation of the school became his top priority. First communions, which had averaged about 20 in each of his initial eight years in the parish, jumped to 62 in 1951. He was anxious to reach out to the over 200 students in the school "many of whose parents are non-Catholic and have little interest” in promoting their religious practice, he wrote. The burden of the school also troubled him. Three days each week he would drive an old truck to make pickups of used clothing and furniture to stock the rummage sale that would become the Worn-A-Bit Shoppe.
A strongly built man of pleasant demeanor, still Father Luger suffered from health problems. He was hospitalized in 1949 for chronic intestinal pain, fearing an ulcer. The expanded work associated with a new school and plans for an entirely new parish plant took further toll on him. On Halloween in 1954 died of a heart attack.