Social media: Video stirs childhood memories for parishioner at Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Following is the text of an Instagram message to The New Bedford Light, published with permission from the writer, Rita Campoli.

New Bedford Light, I want to try to convey how much your video of the final Mass of Our Lady of Perpetual Help meant to me.

As a young girl of 11, my Dad died of a heart attack. He was Polish and had attended OLPH. I never got to know his Dad who also died at age 51 on June 1, 1944. His name was Stanislaw Jasinski, and he was a founding member of the Parish after emigrating from Poland.

Rita Campoli (then named Rita Jasinski) with her Polish Grandmother Anna Jasinski on May 30, 1966, her First Holy Communion Day. Rita and her Babci and were standing in their back yard at 154 Collette St., which was the tenement house that Rita’s Polish grandparents purchased in the early 1920s. Credit: Photo provided by Rita Campoli

My Dad was a staff sergeant in WWII and couldn’t come home for his own Dad’s funeral. My Polish grandmother, Babci, Anna Jasinski, owned and lived on the third-floor tenement where I grew up on Collette Street. Now that they have all gone to their eternal reward going to Our Lady.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help for Saturday morning Masses was my place of connecting to my Polish ancestry. My second cousin told me about your video and how well done it was. I saw it for the first time last week, and I am so impressed by what you captured.

I am the last voice on the video sharing my childhood memories of faith and family. I forever thank you for letting me be the last voice heard as we closed the Polish Church of our community for our ancestors who lit the light of Christ for us to follow on our way.

Heartfelt thank you’s to all of you involved in this worthy project. God bless you and make you all saints!

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