At 95, he's no altar 'boy'

Mr. Catalfimo, a parishioner of St. Joseph's Church in Greenwich since 1928, has been volunteering for a host of parish ministries for nearly as long. He can name every pastor who has been assigned at St. Joseph's for more than seven decades.

And every weekday, he serves 7:30 a.m. Mass, doing everything but carrying the cross up the steps to the altar.

Old-timer

The active senior citizen said he's done hard work from his first job at age 12. His family lived in Fort Edward then, having moved from Greenwich, and Mr. Catalfimo would get up early in the morning to help unload milk cans from freight cars for a local milk station.

"I got two quarts of milk for my pay," he said, laughing at the memory. Later, he became a shoeshine boy.

Ups and downs

Eventually, Mr. Catalfimo opted to go to barber school. After working for a few months at a shop in "the big city" -- Albany -- he was laid off and headed home to Greenwich.

He married, bought his own barbershop and raised two sons in the rural town. He also became an usher at St. Joseph's in 1934 and spent the next 65 years in that role.

"Back in those days, ushers had to go to Mass a half-hour early, because they would have seat collection at the door!" he recalled. "People would pay ten cents for the [early] Mass and 15 cents for the [later] Mass."

Pitching in

"Anytime anything happened, the pastor would call me to fix it," he stated. Among his more unusual duties was cleaning an electric shaver each morning for a vision-impaired pastor.

BY the 1970s, Mr. Catalfimo had retired and started attending daily Mass with his wife. "Being right across the street, we couldn't do anything different," he explained. Ten years later, he began lectoring, as well.

Altar 'boy'

Asked whether he now shows younger servers the ropes, the volunteer admitted that he occasionally used to, "but now they have classes" for that.

The daily Mass-goers at St. Joseph's are a community within a community. When Mr. Catalfimo's birthday rolls around -- he'll be 96 in September -- they have coffee and cake for him after Mass.

Getting it done

"Jimmy takes good care of me," Ms. McGrath said. "He's an excellent cook and a terrific gardener. The church wouldn't be able to survive without him; he knows where everything is! You take it for granted, because he automatically does all these things. He does a great job, and everybody appreciates it."

Mr. Catalfimo puts it more simply: "I see that everything is done."

(06-28-01) [[In-content Ad]]