When we left Haslam’s, we thought we should take a minute to look at the
big fold-out tourist guide to the area; after all, we were nearly downtown and
figured there’d be interesting places to see while we were there. We opened the
guide fully and something immediately caught my eye. In the top corner was
an advertisement for The Virgin Mary Building. One of the reasons this sort
of jumped out at me was because Mary had played an important part in my
recent life with our forthcoming trip to Lourdes, and of course Claire’s funeral.
I think the other reason was that we’d been to St. Pete only six months earlier
and had obtained a tourist guide then as well, yet I know the previous one had
no such ad.
I saw this building was in Clearwater, which was a relatively short distance
away, and asked Dolly if she wanted to go and see it. She was anxious to do so.
We drove the 12 miles or so to Drew Street, which according to the map was
the building’s location. We must have driven the length of that street twice and
couldn’t find it. We were on the point of giving up, when suddenly we spotted
a sign saying “Virgin Mary” beside a tire and lube place.
We drove down the side street and there it was, a black-windowed building
with a fenced-off section in front. There were chairs and a couple of tables
inside the fence. One or two people were sitting there, but nothing seemed
to be going on. We parked the car and walked toward the building; then we
saw what it was all about. On the right side of the building slightly at an angle
to the rest of the place there were nine large panes of glass and all nine panes
were colored. The shape the colors made, even to my non-Catholic eyes, was
an image of the Virgin Mary.
Apparently, a few years earlier a customer had left the bank that occupied
the building and was astonished to see this image in the glass. I don’t know
the full history of what happened, but glass experts were called in and no one
could explain the markings, which were only visible from outside the building.
They couldn’t be removed by any recognized method. Some people thought
this was a sign from Heaven, and later the whole building was taken over by a Catholic group, The Shepherds of Christ. They’d run it ever since.
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