December 3, 2010
Dennis Mehringer: Vincentian retires after 58 years of service
Louise and Dennis Mehringer.
Dennis Mehringer was only 24 years old when his pastor at St. Joseph Church in Jasper, Msgr. Leonard Wernsing, was tragically killed in an automobile collision on Highway 57. That’s when Father August Fichter was assigned to pastor St. Joe Jasper. Father Fichter asked why there was no Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society at the largest parish in the Evansville Diocese in 1951. “Many blessings come to a parish when the St. Vincent de Paul Society is active in the parish,” he said.
So began his 58-year active membership in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for the care of brothers and sisters in need. He was the youngest of eight parishioners to launch the first St. Vincent de Paul conference in Jasper in 1952.
In 1961, when the Mehringer family moved to Evansville, Dennis joined five other Vincentians to answer a call for care of the poor. In those days, Vincentians at St. Benedict Church gathered around a kitchen table in the parish center to report on their home visits to persons in need, and to pray together, according to the Rule of the Society. Over the years since then, Dennis and Louise Mehringer took to heart the Vincentian care of residents at St. John’s Home for the Aged in Evansville.
Recently, he submitted his resignation due to declining health. His pastor, Benedictine Father Gregory Chamberlin, and members of the St. Benedict Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society gathered in the Mehringer home to celebrate his serving the poor in the Society, to give thanks, and to extend their hands in prayerful blessing of their friend and fellow servant upon his retirement from the society.
This information was provided by Deacon James Flynn.