CUSP – Maggie Juscius
Tom Thompson: This is Tom Thompson and I’m interviewing Maggie Juscius, J-U-S-C-I-U-S in Swansea, IL. And so actually I had that down, I did the name, age, if you could just give me your age kind of a little introduction about yourself. Because its regional about Southwestern Illinois, but you are not originally from Southwestern Illinois could you just do a little of the background of where you grew up, how you ended up here, and then we will get into the object.
Maggie Juscius: OK, well I was born in the 1960s, originally Margaret Sullivan so I come from an Irish background, grew up out in the country, we lived about 18 miles from the nearest town. I am one of 8 kids. I went to college, met my boyfriend a the time the time, we got married, he was in the Air Force, we moved around for 21 years. He retired out at Scott Air Force Base and we settled in the Swansea area. And that’s where I am at this present day.
TT: OK, so could you describe the object that we want to talk about today that inspires you?
MJ: I have a piece of stained glass in my house, it is a picture of, they call it the infant of Prage. Is that what it is called?
TT: How do you spell Prage?
MJ: I don’t know, P-R-A-G-U-E?
TT: Prague, the city?
MJ: We should have thought about this.
TT: I’ll look that one up.
MJ: But it is a piece of glass from the church that I grew up in. Its probably about five foot tall. The glass is over 200, maybe 250, 300 years old and in old stained glass they used to paint the glass where as modern stained glass the glass is colored, so theres two different techniques of stained glass. This was made in Italy and shipped to the United States for this church.
TT: And the church was in what city?
MJ: The church was in Brockton, Illinois, it was a little country church. At best we had 250 parishioners, and they were probably, most all of them my relatives in one respect or another. They were pretty much all related out there in the country, especially the Catholics, because there were not many Catholics.
TT: It was Brockton, B-R-O-C-K-T-O-N?
MJ: No K, just B-R-O-C-T-O-N. Brocton, Illinois. About the late 1980s we had one priest for three Catholic churches. And he had to travel through the country pretty far and the priest was getting older so the diocese made a decision that they were going to close on of the churches and although our church was financially sound they picked it because it was furthest away. So we went from three churches down to two, and the parishioners did not want the church to deteriorate, and they did not want to see it slowly deteriorate so they made a choice to completely tear the church down. So when the church was going to be torn down we were allowed to scavenge pieces from the church and so I got a couple of pieces of stained glass. And I took it to a wood smith and a woodworker incased it in a wood from for me so that I could move it around since my husband was in the Air Force it had to be mobile as we were moving from house to house.
TT: OK, and did they sell off the pieces or did they just seek out former parishioners?
MJ: Nothing was sold. It either went to a parishioner, parishioner’s families, or it was buried in the rubble. But, I am one of eight kids and each one of us has a church bench. Again, my stained glass was absolutely free, but my free stained glass turned into quite an expensive project by the time I got the woodworker to make it for me and it turned out a little kid in the local community was practicing with his bb gun, could have been as much as 100 years ago and there was a little bb hole in one of the pieces of glass and to find someone who could fix that piece of glass, that one piece had to be shipped to West Virginia, to be repaired, to be shipped back. And it use to be that stained glass was put in with cement instead of lead, so the woodworker had to take it all apart for me and leaded it, took out the old cement so it could hold together the way it looks today.
That’s good, really good, good description. Why do you think it inspires you? Is it religious, or because it reminds you of your childhood or your family, or all of that?
MJ: Well, I think because going to church was like one of the few times when we would all load up in the station wagon and leave the farm which did not happen very often. So it probably has that connotation of socialization as well as the religious aspect. Church steeples or stained glass they do still give me that sense of peace and hope that you hope to find in a religious, church setting that I always did find and do to this day.
TT: OK, and do you want to describe where it is in the house?
MJ: Well, this is probably the third or fourth house that we’ve lived in since we had this glass and I always try to pick a spot with a lot of light behind it, so during the day the church it is illuminated naturally and in the evening I have a light behind it so I can still have light behind it. This house we have sun room so it was a natural fit in the sun room.
TT: and do you think other immediate, or your siblings feel the same way about it? Do other people in the family comment on it?
MJ: I have two children and it will be a toss up because they both remember going to this church. They were probably six and seven years old about the time we flew in from Dover, Delaware to be there at the last mass with my family, and my family was there. So they remember that plus we have a video tape so they won’t remember where this window was in the church but they definitely remember going to that church when they would visit their grandparents and so my guess is that they would both be interested and they understand the significance.
TT: OK, just in terms of if the picture doesn’t match with the tape for some reason, in terms of description I would say it’s a green architectural background and then Christ red robes and its 7 foot tall and three foot wide or so. And, like you said, framed in wood. And I don’t know what you would call that shape. It is a peaked …
MJ: Almost looks like a canoe shape.
Right, so I just wanted to get more of a description. And I’ll take a picture. That’s all I can think of, so that’s good.
MJ: I think if you match it with the picture people will understand that it could have significant family values as well as religious.
TT: Thank you
Note: Maggie Juscius called me later and told me that the picture is called “The Sacred Heart of Jesus” and that the church name was St. Thomas.