Elementary students of Annunciation School in south Minneapolis in the 1930s stand in front of the school and Dominican sisters who taught there. COURTESY ANNUNCIATION
The Mass at Annunciation in south Minneapolis Oct. 1, 1922, was memorable beyond being the parish’s first. It took place in the storeroom of Minneapolis’ 13th Ward Municipal Tool Shed. A freestanding church wasn’t built for another 40 years, dedicated in 1963. Before then, Mass and other services were held at Community House on Pillsbury Avenue South, in a store at 54th and Garfield Streets, and in the building housing the parish school.
With the parish largely surrounded by farmland until the 1930s and 1940s, all roads in 1922 were cow paths, “and you’d better watch where you were stepping when you walked somewhere,” said one parish pioneer, Edward Owstrowski, quoted in 1979 in a parish history document.
First staffed by Dominican sisters, Annunciation School opened in August 1923, and today serves preK to eighth-graders. The convent was built in 1949. The former Visitation parish in Minneapolis merged with Annunciation in 2013.
Today, Annunciation has a thriving youth ministry, with 60 teenagers serving this summer on a reservation in South Dakota, said Teresa Thein, business administrator. “We know how to have fun, as well,” she said, with wiffle ball leagues, Tuesday evening pickleball games and the “huge celebration of Septemberfest.”
Chris Frank, 67, and her husband, Mick, 69, have been parishioners of Annunciation for 35 years. Their three children attended the parish school and she served seven years in the school’s development office. Parish attractions are many, she said. The couple formed many close friendships, feel blessed to have the priests who served there and the entire neighborhood is beautiful, she said.
Chris said parish families she’s known over the years have been “guiding lights,” faith-filled Christians dedicated to their Catholic faith who loved Annunciation. “They each did so much to contribute to the community,” she said. “You look up to them and hope you can mirror their beauty.”
Chris said she hopes the parish’s many young families today have the same experience of a family-oriented church nurturing them and their children.
One “amazing part” of celebrating a parish centennial is realizing that virtually none of the parishioners who started the parish are alive today, said Father William Deziel, pastor since 2020. “This is a powerful testament that the faith has indeed been passed from one generation to the next, and an inspiration for us to actively pass on the faith in our time,” he said.
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