New Year's Eve will ring in 50-year anniversary celebration at Saint Joseph the Worker Parish

Intermountain Catholic

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Saint Joseph the Worker's new church was dedicated by the Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake City, in 2011. IC photos/Marie Mischel

WEST JORDAN — Saint Joseph the Worker Parish has months of celebrations planned to commemorate their golden anniversary in 2014.

"We’ll try our best to make it a year of celebration; we hope you’ll join in and help us do that, beginning with our New Year’s Eve dance," said Father Patrick Carley, who has been the parish administrator since 2006.

Other events planned to celebrate the anniversary are a Super Bowl Party in February, a Mardi Gras Casino Night and a St. Patrick’s Mass and corned beef & cabbage dinner, both in March; a special event to mark the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker in May; and a Founders Day Picnic in June.

Headlining The New Year’s Eve party is James Romero and his band.

Romero is well-known as an entertainer, having spent years playing at festivals throughout Utah and the surrounding states. His music career began in 1963, after his wife gave him a guitar for Christmas. By New Year’s he was playing in a band, and soon he formed his own group with family members, known as James Romero y Los Amigos.

After the group disbanded, Romero and his wife, Elizabeth, began serving as disc jockeys for various events. However, for the parish’s New Year’s Eve party this year, Romero will play live music with some former members of his band, in addition to the DJ tunes.

The Romeros are among the parish’s founding members; their son was one of the first children baptized there. James Romero recalls helping build the original church, although he was young at the time.

The parish was founded "by a small number of families, many of whom were displaced from the little hamlets and villages on the side of the mountain as the [Bingham Canyon] mine grew," said Fr. Carley. "They moved into the valley … many of them families from very strong Catholic peoples, and so they formed the parish here. They started this parish, and 50 years later, look at how we have grown! We have a new church, we have a good, active parish life, and we owe so much to them, and we want to remember them."

The parish was established as a mission in 1964 and parishioners built a "temporary" church; that building was demolished in 2010 and the existing church dedicated in 2011 on Divine Mercy Sunday.

In the early years about 50 families comprised the parish, said Theresa Lopez, who lived on the site where the new church now stands. "They’re the ones who helped build the church, literally," she said.

She and her husband, Ed, were married in the original St. Joseph the Worker church.

"We knew almost everybody in the old church," she said, but now that the parish has grown so much, and a number of the founding families have moved away or died, she doesn’t recognize many of those with whom she attends Mass.

"You could walk in and almost the whole congregation would just say, ‘hello, hello, hello, hello,’ and now it’s like, ‘hello, hello, hello, goodbye,’" she said.

The Lopezes attend most of the parish celebrations, of which there are several each year. Ed Lopez recalls those events have their root in a festival organized by Father John B. Hart, who was pastor from 1987 to 1999.

"That started a little flame for our festival here, and Fr. Carley, when he came here, he picked it up and took it and ran with it," Ed Lopez said.

The Lopezes are looking forward to this year’s New Year’s Eve party at the parish; it is a tradition that started about a dozen years ago and draws people from throughout the area.

"We always get people from a lot of parishes, and it’s nice, because it’s a mingling of everybody," Theresa Lopez said. "When James starts playing … the first song that he plays, people are out there dancing, right off the bat. And he keeps people going and dancing with the music that he plays."

Although Romero’s band is no longer intact, three of the original members will reunite to play at the New Year’s Eve party.

"That’s the only reason I’m stepping up to get part of the old band back together … to start the 50-year celebration right," James Romero said.

The St. Joseph the Worker Parish New Year’s Eve Party will be Dec. 31. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Reservations are suggested. Tickets are $30 each, includes finger foods, party favors and the entertainment. Beer and wine will be available for purchase. Tickets are available at the parish office or may be purchased after the Sunday Masses.