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December 7, 2017Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press
UXBRIDGE – Our Lady of the Valley Elementary School now has an outdoor nativity scene – thanks to an Eagle Scout, a teacher, a parent and a pastor, among other people.
Before Advent, another pastor talked about and blessed it, with help from students dressed as – or toting – some of the major players in the drama.
Nov. 30 the school community gathered on the lawn by a wooden stable adorned with costumed pre-schoolers.
Kevin Wagner, a member of Troop 21 in Millville, told how he built the stable, with help from others, for his Eagle Scout project.
Father Thomas G. Landry, pastor of St. Peter Parish in Northbridge, one of the parishes the regional school serves, talked about nativity scenes and blessed this one.
“I was a parishioner (of St. Mary Parish in Uxbridge) my whole life,” Kevin told The Catholic Free Press. “I really wanted to find some way to give back to the church.” (He said he didn’t attend this school, which is behind the church. He’s now a senior at St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic Junior/Senior High in Worcester.)
He said he emailed his pastor, Father Nicholas Desimone, asking for ideas for an Eagle Scout project here.
“It was really perfect timing,” he told the school community. The previous day, Jennifer Nealon, a teacher at Our Lady of the Valley, and Peter McHugh, a parent, had asked Father Desimone if he knew anyone who could build a stable. They’d realized the school didn’t have an outdoor nativity.
“I just sort of made the connection” between them, Father Desimone told The Catholic Free Press later. He said the project was “a wonderful collaboration between the parish and the school.”
Kevin said he went to surrounding towns to get ideas from their scenes, which were not yet set up, and modified them to make his different.
“The main unique feature was how it breaks down into pieces” for easier storage, he said.
He said he presented his idea to his uncle Earl Wagner, who works for National Lumber in Mansfield. His uncle arranged for the company to donate the lumber, and Koopman Lumber & Hardware here donated screws and bolts, Kevin said.
He said his father, Stephen Wagner, and great-uncle Ron Pellegrino, helped with the woodworking, and his troop helped build and stain the stable.
“I could not be any more happy with how it came out,” Kevin said. He said it was a challenge to build, but challenges are what make it interesting.
The Our Lady of the Valley Parents’ Guild bought the nativity figures from the gift shop at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette in Attleboro.
They wanted to set up and bless the scene with the school community before Advent began, Mrs. Nealon said. Since Father Desimone was away, Father Landry blessed the stable and the figures.
But first he set the scene, you might say.
“How do you receive a good story?” he asked. “You can use money to get a book. … Where would you go to see a story?”
“Opera,” was one student’s answer.
Father Landry said they might also go to a movie or watch television.
But when St. Francis lived “there was no TV; there were no movies,” he said. St. Francis knew most people couldn’t travel to Bethlehem to see where Jesus was born.
“So he wanted to help them hear the story, but also see” who was part of it, Father Landry said. The saint, known for his appreciation of everything in the world around him, set up a living nativity scene.
But Our Lady of the Valley’s living nativity of pre-schoolers could not stay out all winter, Father Landry noted. So artists’ renditions of the characters were purchased for the stable the Eagle Scout built.
