New collection features historic wood from St. Joseph’s bell tower

Seeing the wood in a dumpster beside the church was too much.

The thick oak planks used as the stringers for the stairs and landings as well as poplar and pine planks for flooring, steps and risers were just being thrown into the dumpster as contractors built a new staircase up the 235-foot bell tower in St. Joseph Catholic Church in Jasper in 2006.

The wood was in bad shape, but Rosalie Ruell had to save it. After asking permission, she made several trips with her SUV full of the 8- and 10-foot pieces of the original staircase from the bell tower. Picking up stray pieces of wood is her past time. She likes to joke that some people bring home stray animals; she brings home stray wood.

“I love wood,” Rosalie said. “I would have loved to save all of the wood from the bell tower but I just couldn’t.”

While she was salvaging the wood, Rosalie found that someone had written a name on one of the boards, “Rev. S. Stenger, Jasper, Ind.”

“It looks like it was written in ink. I originally thought I would create a bench with the piece, but I decided to give it back to the church and Father Ray (Brenner) has it in the archive,” she said.

Rosalie researched the name and determined Stenger had been at the church from 1897 to 1898.

According to Dubois County Historian Ron Flick, Father Stenger came to the church in January of 1897. He was the associate pastor until Father Fidelis Maute’s death in June of the same year. Fr. Stenger was the director of the church until 1898 and is credited with the installation of the stained glass windows during his tenure.

Fr. Maute began construction on the bell tower during his tenure. It wasn’t finished until 1904 so Fr. Stenger was there during the construction process.

The thick planks of heavy oak were likely harvested in Dubois County from trees here when the area was first settled.

Rosalie started making crosses from the historic wood but with her busy schedule, the work went by the wayside. At the time, Rosalie was balancing her business, Sozo Café, with being a mother and her interior design business, Interior People.

The pile sat and made a couple moves over the years until finally ending up in the basement of Rosalie’s current home. Then, about three months ago, her schedule finally cleared up, and she began to wonder about the wood again.

“Originally, I was going to make it all into crosses,” she said, “but then as I started look at some of these large pieces, I didn’t have the heart to cut them up.”

Rosalie has been building furniture since her senior year of high school when she took several industrial arts classes. The experience has come in handy for her interior design work.

“If I can’t find a piece of furniture that works with a project, I make it,” she explained.

So she decided the larger pieces would make for great benches and tables. Her new collection — The Father Stenger Collection — featured at Just Whimsy on the Square in Jasper includes limited edition benches, tables, wine racks, bread boards and of course, a limited run of 200 crosses made from the original wood from the church’s bell tower.

In creating the pieces, Rosalie attempted to save as much character of the wood as possible. The tables and benches are marred and scarred from the thousands of pairs of shoes that have trudged up the ladders and landings in the bell tower. The wear of rot on the wood can be seen, but it only adds to the character of the pieces.

“All I knew is that I didn’t want to alter the wood any more than I had to,” she said. “I wanted it to be functional and I wanted to use as much of the wood as possible.”

She used some clear varnishes to seal the wood but did as little cutting and shaping as possible.

The remaining salvaged wood partially fills a small wastebasket. “And if I can find something to do with those pieces, I will use them too,” Rosalie said.

The collection is on display and for sale at Just Whimsy. The crosses are about $40 each. Each piece is stamped with Fr. Stenger’s scrawled signature that Rosalie found on the board that now sits at the church.

According to Rosalie, she just wants to be able to share the pieces with the community.