David Coates / The Detroit News Father Mike Hrydziuszko of St. Isidore’s stands at the site where new church offices will be built. The name of the Macomb Township church has become an anachronism: It is named after the patron saint of farming.

Church outlives Macomb farms

Convenience stores, malls now replace pumpkin patches

By John Bebow / The Detroit News

    MACOMB TOWNSHIP — St. Isidore’s Catholic Church is an ironic symbol for Metro Detroit’s 50-year suburban diaspora.

    Named for the patron saint of farming, the church began in 1957 with masses in a farmer’s barn. Now it sits in the middle of the region’s biggest building boom. A new McDonald’s is next door. Subdivisions with names like Pinewood Villas and Middlebranch Estates cover more old farm rows every day.

    Once a parish of 100 families, St. Isidore’s now has 12,000 members, including 800 new families in the past two years. More are on the way: 22 additional residential developments are under construction within the parish boundaries. An $8 million church expansion began this spring, paid for mostly by parishioners.

    The transformation is bittersweet for longtime churchgoers.

    Mary Raska walked out of Mass at St. Isidore’s Church one Sunday a couple of years ago to see her homestead bulldozed.

    Her white, three-bedroom farmhouse across the street from the church was crackling under the dozer blade, more than 40 years after she and her husband moved to 23 Mile and Romeo Plank roads to escape city hubbub.

    She finally sold, more than 10 years after her husband died and developers came knocking. But money didn’t blunt the pain of watching it all end. She stared and cried for three hours then came back the next day to see her old red barn hit the ground. “I had cried many a night over that decision to sell,” she remembered. “Every day when I pull out of this church parking lot, it comes to mind.”

    Today, the land is home to a strip mall with a Damman Hardware, Subway, Hungry Howie’s and BoRics. What used to be Raska’s quick jaunt across Romeo Plank to morning Mass is now a 12-minute, rush-hour drive from her new subdivision, just a half-mile down 23 Mile.

    The sale gave her enough money for a comfortable retirement. Doctors and stores are closer than ever. The diner in the new shopping center, a few steps from where her own kitchen was, serves a good lunch.

    Those conveniences replace the pumpkin patches, starry nights and after-church gatherings in the shade of the Raskas’ box elder tree.

    “That section of my life is all gone,” she said, joking with a friend that their husbands, if they were alive, would get lost in the new neighborhood.