Time capsule reveals church’s and world’s past
Newspaper headline of Hitler invading Poland and start of WWII
BY KATHY CHANG
Staff Writer

SCOTT PILLING staff Kosmoski holds one of the newspapers — The New York Herald Tribune — that was found in the time capsule.

WOODBRIDGE — The Rev. David Kosmoski of St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church in Avenel said the most interesting item found in the church’s 1939 time capsule was the yellowed and brittle front page of the New York Herald Tribune newspaper.

The newspaper’s top headline on Oct. 1, 1939, was “Hitler Calls Italy to Confer and Summons Reichstag; Britain Notifies Ships U-Boats Will Give No Warning.”

World War II was poised to begin.

“The headlines carry the sad news that Hitler just invaded Poland and Warsaw was reduced to ruins,” said Kosmoski. “It’s two years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but we get a glimpse of what it is like two years before. It all is leading up to what was coming — World War II.”

The clues former parishioners left to the annals of posterity were found by Kosmoski in a locked filing cabinet a few years ago. The first church, where the capsule was originally laid, has already been demolished.

The Rev. David Kosmoski, of St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church in Avenel, holds the time capsule, which he found recently, which dates back to October 1939.

“These parishioners of St. Andrew’s left us these things as a legacy,” said Kosmoski, who presented the items of the time capsule to his parishioners at Midnight Mass on Dec. 25 to celebrate 50 years in the church’s building. “It is very similar to what is happening in the world today. The same suffering.”

Another headline read, “Reporter Flies Over Warsaw, Sees It in Ruins, Moon Was Red.”

Besides the sad headlines, the newspaper, which cost only 10 cents at the time, showed some brighter news.

A photo shows Joseph P. Kennedy’s children Jean, 11, Theodore, 7 — who has been a U.S. senator from Massachusetts since 1962 — and Patricia, 15, on the U.S. passenger liner Manhattan. Kennedy was the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James at the time.

KATHY CHANG The New York Herald Tribune’s top headline on Oct. 1, 1939, was “Hitler Calls Italy to Confer and Summons Reichstag; Britain Notifies Ships U-Boats Will Give No Warning.” The newspaper was one of the newspapers found in the time capsule of the first St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church in Avenel.

The time capsule, which was laid in the cornerstone of the first church on Oct. 1, 1939, contained a picture of Pope Pius XII, a program for the laying of the stone, documents in Latin referring to precious relics in sealed boxes — sanctification of tiny bones of St. Clementis and St. Perpetua, which currently lay in the altar — the front page of the New York Herald Tribune newspaper, and a folded-up Independent Leader newspaper showing that the movie of choice that year was the romantic drama “Golden Boy” featuring Barbara Stanwyck and Lee J. Cobb.

Kosmoski, who has been the church’s pastor for 16 years, said that while they are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the current church, it’s important to celebrate the building of the first church.

“Father John Egan held the first Mass at midnight in the newly constructed St. Andrew’s Church for the first time in 1956,” said Kosmoski. “While we celebrate what he has done for the church, we also celebrate Monsignor Peter J. Hart [who laid the time capsule in the cornerstone in 1939] and Father Charles A. Dusten, who was the church’s first pastor.”

Frances Larsen, 96, who has been a parishioner since 1947, remembers good times at the first church, which was on the same property as the current church, but facing Avenel Street.

“It was an old wooden church,” said Larsen. “I became a member when I moved to Avenel in 1947. Every Friday we would make clam chowder to sell around the neighborhood to make money for the church. We would clean the floors on our hands and knees. I did a lot of work for the church. My husband used to joke that I should move a bed into the church because I gave so much time there.”

Larsen, who still lives in the Avenel section of Woodbridge, said the time capsule brought back many memories.

“It was nice,” she said. “I can’t remember all my memories, but the ones I remember are good memories.”

Kosmoski will hold a luncheon at 12:30 p.m. Jan. 7 in the church hall to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the church.